FDA Vaccine Chief Front-Runner Called mRNA Vaccines “Experimental Genetic Technology,” Compared Pandemic Response to Iranian Rule
Dr. Houman David Hemmati is closely aligned with the MAHA movement.
The leading candidate to become the nation’s next vaccine chief has a history of casting doubt on mRNA COVID-19 vaccines and attacking public health efforts to slow the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, drawing comparisons to Iran’s theocratic, authoritarian government.
FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary is reportedly backing Dr. Houman David Hemmati to lead the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. A Jewish Iranian refugee who came to the U.S. during the Iranian Revolution, Hemmati is a California-based ophthalmologist and a biotech veteran of several companies focused on vision loss.
Some media coverage has focused on this business background and has even suggested that Hemmati might signal a sort of return to normalcy after the tumultuous tenure of the outgoing CBER chief, Dr. Vinay Prasad, who drew criticism for delaying drug approvals and targeting mRNA vaccines. Prasad famously overruled his own staff to reject Moderna’s mRNA flu vaccine and authored a controversial memo claiming that they had killed ten children, without providing evidence.
Like Prasad, Hemmati lacks experience in vaccine development. A search of his name in the National Library of Medicine’s database PubMeb turns up no studies related to vaccines authored by the ophthalmologist. A review of Hemmati’s old social media posts and interviews reveals a pattern of public health and vaccine skepticism, as well as alignment with Trump.
Team Player
Hemmati has long been an admirer of Prasad and other top officials inside the department—namely Makary and NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who he has publicly asserted are his “most trusted friends.” All three men were on his “dream team” HHS roster, which he posted on X in May 2022. Hemmati included himself as FDA commissioner.
In multiple social media posts, Hemmati has thanked anti-vax HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. and his top lieutenants repeatedly for their leadership.
In May 2025, a month after Kennedy shuttered a number of Freedom of Information Act offices inside HHS, including at FDA, Hemmati praised the secretary and Makary for starting an official FDA podcast, writing “NEVER before have we seen this level of transparency & access from the @US_FDA !”
Vaccines
As the head of CBER, Hemmati would be in a position to influence vaccine and drug approvals. For years, he has called the COVID vaccines “experimental” and maintained that they were inadequately tested for human use. Hemmati has called into question the safety and efficacy of the shots, claiming the data was hidden from the public, and suggested that the risks of COVID vaccination outweigh the benefits—particularly for children, teens, and pregnant people.
”It was always WRONG to hastily develop a vaccine using experimental genetic technology, claim without proof that it must be perfectly safe, and censor and cancel and shame anyone who questioned that,” Hemmati wrote in a lengthy post on X several weeks after the 2024 election.
Dr. Arghavan Salles, a clinical associate professor at Stanford University, noted that the Covid vaccines “have been tested extensively, and it is irresponsible to suggest otherwise.”
“Data are particularly strong for pregnant people, whose incidence of complications is quite high if infected with SARS-CoV-2,” she said.
In a March 2023 interview on the unDivided podcast, Hemmati said that if he ever had “the opportunity in the future…to change how the FDA approaches safety assessments and drug approval,” he would force drug companies “to really allow patients to make informed consent decisions, rather than just ramming products down their throat.”
That August, he criticized the Biden administration’s decision to buy more booster doses, telling Fox News the decision was made to benefit the manufacturers. The following August, he called for an “objective look” at the childhood vaccine schedule, insisting, “It’s about ensuring safety, not being ‘anti-vax.’” When the FDA required a new safety warning label on the mRNA vaccines last summer, he celebrated Makary’s commitment “to public safety & a level of transparency we have never seen before from this critical federal agency.”
Masking
Hemmati was also a vocal opponent of COVID masking requirements, comparing them to Iranian theocratic rule. In a May 2022 thread about a Los Angeles student facing punishment for refusing to mask in the classroom, he wrote, “Belief in a sick new religion of the COVIDians. This is their form of extremism. Comply with our religious dress code or suffer. I left Iran when they started doing that…”
The term “COVIDians,” which Bhattacharya has also used, references the Branch Davidian cult and is a pejorative used by pandemic deniers and minimizers to describe people who took COVID seriously. Hemmati began using the term in February 2022. His May thread was not the only time he compared pandemic awareness to a religion.
In December that year, he accused mask-wearers of being in a cult, writing, “The concept of universal mask mandates is no longer just about respiratory viruses. That’s how members of mask cult got indoctrinated - they were drawn in by their fear of infection/death.”
”Now, however, it’s like [the hijab] mandate in Iran - about forcing strict obedience to ideology,” Hemmati added.
Salles, who is also Iranian American, rejected Hemmati’s comparison, noting, “hijabs have no health benefit, whereas masks do.”
“Hijab mandates come, at least in part, from a belief that men can’t control themselves if women’s hair is exposed,” she explained, adding, “Mask mandates, when they are used, are based on scientific data demonstrating they reduce the risk of transmission of infectious diseases that are spread through the air.”
Herd Immunity
While casting doubt on the vaccines and opposing masks, Hemmati championed so-called “natural immunity”—meaning acquired through COVID infection—as the way through the pandemic.
In his list of post-2024 election grievances, Hemmati wrote, “It was always WRONG to deny that natural immunity, which is by all measures a better form of immunity as it is against the ENTIRE virus, not just one protein, doesn’t exist to force mandated treatments on people.” Vaccine immunity has consistently been shown to be more reliable and safer to acquire than infection-acquired immunity. COVID has killed over 1.2 million Americans.
Hemmati was a staunch opponent of closing businesses and schools to combat the rapid spread of the virus across the country. In the March 2023 unDivided podcast interview, he called for “reparations” for business owners and funding for private tutors for disadvantaged children forced to do remote learning.
Classrooms turned out to be vectors of viral spread, and long COVID in children has been linked to lower grades and poorer academic outcomes.
Despite his advocacy for natural immunity and general opposition to pandemic control efforts, Hemmati—like Bhattacharya and Makary—is a proponent of the idea that COVID emerged from a laboratory in China. On unDivided, he suggested that the NIH may have funded the research that supposedly created the virus.
Evidence strongly points toward the virus having natural origins.
Right-Wing Politics
Like Prasad and current HHS leaders, Hemmati is broadly aligned with the political right. He has been a frequent guest on Fox News, a contributor to The Daily Wire, and made himself available to groups like The Atlas Society, which was founded to honor the ideology of Ayn Rand.
He has been particularly active in California politics as opposition to Gov. Gavin Newsom, a prominent Trump critic who observers speculate is gearing up for a presidential run. Hemmati has compared the governor to the Iranian regime for policies like AB2098, a now-repealed state law that allowed the state’s medical board to strip the licenses of physicians who spread COVID or vaccine misinformation to their patients.
Hemmati has called to oust Newsom—as well as Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who he criticized for masking at her 2022 inauguration, declaring, “I feel like I’m looking at a political event in Iran.”
In an appearance on Fox and Friends that August, Hemmati blasted the governor over a Democratic bill to protect transgender youth seeking gender-affirming medical care.
“I think a lot of it is political posturing on the part of the governor during an election cycle and in preparation for a potential presidential run,” he said.