Stanford University To Welcome Vaccine Skepticism, Epoch Times At Upcoming Health Policy Conference

The controversial summit just got a lot more controversial.

This piece has been updated from its original email version.

The speaker lineup of a controversial health policy summit slated for next week at Stanford University has become more extreme. The event will now feature an outspoken opponent of the COVID-19 vaccines as well as a senior editor at The Epoch Times, a Trump-aligned, right-wing conspiracy-promoting publication.

As Important Context previously reported, the conference, “Pandemic Policy: Planning the Future, Assessing the Past,” is being organized by Great Barrington Declaration author and Stanford health economist Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and hosted by the university’s Department of Health Policy. The lineup of speakers already featured prominent contrarian voices who had routinely downplayed the risks of COVID-19.

At the time of our report late last month, public health experts and scientists expressed alarm at the event, which will open with remarks from Stanford’s president, Jonathan Levin. The lineup, however, had not been finalized. But now, more radical speakers have been booked.

Joining the panel on “Misinformation, Censorship, and Academic Freedom” is journalist Alex Berenson, who has been called the “pandemic’s wrongest man” by Derek Thompson of The Atlantic and a “prominent critic of the COVID vaccine” in a recent court filing from the Charles Koch-backed New Civil Liberties Alliance in a lawsuit against the Biden administration over alleged online censorship. Berenson was banned from Twitter for posting that the COVID vaccines were not actually vaccines, but rather “therapeutic with a limited window of efficacy and terrible side effect profile that must be dosed IN ADVANCE OF ILLNESS.” He has repeatedly expressed the view that the mRNA vaccines are ineffectual. According to a December 2022 report from the Commonwealth Fund, COVID jabs prevented more than 18 million hospitalizations and 3 million deaths in the U.S. in just two years.

Berenson also claims the be the victim of government censorship. He alleges that the Biden administration, in an alliance with pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, coerced social media companies into cracking down on vaccine skepticism on their platforms. He is currently suing the administration and two of the company’s executives for their alleged “conspiracy” to censor him.

The panel on “COVID-19 Origins and the Regulation of Virology” has been filled out as well with the addition of prominent promoters of the evidence-lacking lab leak origin idea. The discussion will now include Bryce Nickels, co-founder of BioSafety Now, an organization that has been accused of “poisoning the debate” on COVID’s origins and has Bhattacharya on its board of directors, and Princeton mathematical biologist Alex Washburne.

Moderating the panel will be Jan Jekielek, a senior editor at The Epoch Times, a Falun Gong-affiliated Chinese outfit that has aligned itself with Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. The publication, which is affiliated with a dark money group called The Epoch Times Association, faced a money-laundering scandal in June and is known for promoting anti-vaccine narratives. Epoch Times is closely allied with the Brownstone Institute, giving column space to its founder Jeffrey Tucker, a child labor advocate and ally of Bhattacharya’s who helped organize the Great Barrington Declaration. Tucker has expressed anti-vaccine views, calling the COVID jabs Bill Gates’s “potions.” 

Jekielek has promoted Tucker’s writing and has himself waded into anti-vaccine narratives. He has called the mRNA vaccines the “COVID-19 genetic vaccine” and suggested that the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should look into a connection between the jabs and “unusual blood clots.” The mRNA vaccines have not been linked to blood clots. 

Jekielek has also promoted Dr. Pierre Kory, founder of the pro-ivermectin group Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, who the Washington Post reported had his certifications revoked by the American Board of Internal Medicine in August for continuing to promote the drug as a COVID treatment. The antiparasitic is not effective against the disease. Kory has made statements suggesting the mRNA COVID vaccines are unsafe.

For more about the full conference, check out Important Context’s updated report.