An unvaccinated scientist running a clinical studies unit at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the agency headed by Anthony Fauci, will be making a case against COVID-19 vaccine mandates during an ethics debate within the National Institutes of Health.
Matthew Memoli, who has worked at the NIH for 16 years, will make his argument in a Dec. 1 live-streamed roundtable session, which will be open to the agency, patients and the public, according to The Wall Street Journal.
"There’s a lot of debate within the NIH about whether [a vaccine mandate] is appropriate," David Wendler, a senior NIH bioethicist in charge of planning the session, told the newspaper. "It’s an important, hot topic."
Memoli, who emphasized that he is not "anti-vaccine," has previously expressed the importance of vaccinations for at-risk populations, such as the elderly and obese, but told Fauci in a July 30 email that he believed mandates were "extraordinarily problematic."
“I think the way we are using the vaccines is wrong,” he told Fauci, who, on numerous occasions, has advocated for vaccine mandates.
All NIH employees are required to be fully vaccinated by the Biden administration's Nov. 22 deadline for federal employees. And while 88 percent of the agency's employees have been fully vaccinated, Memoli applied for a religious exemption and has said that he would risk termination over the mandate, according to The WSJ.
Memoli believes that vaccinating low-risk populations could hinder the development of strengthened natural immunity.
He also noted that his children are vaccinated and said he supports having the discussion on vaccines even if his view is the sole outlier.
"I do vaccine trials. I, in fact, help create vaccines," he told the newspaper. "Part of my career is to share my expert opinions, right or wrong.… I mean, if they all end up saying I’m wrong, that’s fine. I want to have the discussion."
This comes after an appeals court temporarily froze President Joe Biden’s mandate requiring employers with at least 100 employees to mandate their workers to get vaccinated or undergo weekly coronavirus testing.