Martin Kulldorff is identified in these excerpts as a professor of epidemiology at Harvard Medical School and as a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration. He does not speak in any of the excerpts; he is described by other guests, who cite him as a scientific authority on natural immunity and as a participant in litigation over a university vaccine mandate.
The Great Barrington Declaration
According to Dr. Jeffrey Singer, a group of epidemiologists met in Great Barrington, Massachusetts and authored a statement signed by thousands of medical scientists across the world, including a recent Nobel Prize winner in chemistry. Singer names the authors: Jay Bhattacharya, a professor at Stanford Medical School; Sunetra Gupta, a professor of epidemiology at Oxford University’s Center for Evidence-Based Medicine; and Kulldorff, whom Singer identifies as the Harvard professor and as a professor of epidemiology at the time at Harvard Medical School Free Speech & the Scientific Method (2022).
Singer describes the substance of the statement as it was presented in October 2020: that with more known about the virus, efforts should focus on protecting the most vulnerable — people with certain immunodeficiencies and elderly people in nursing homes — while allowing the least vulnerable to resume as normal a life as possible. Singer attributes to the declaration the position that public health involves not only controlling a virus but mental health and the socioeconomic determinants of health, and that the least vulnerable would eventually contract the virus and contribute to a pool of immunity without paying a big price. Singer says the authors were attacked viciously, mainly in the mainstream press rather than the scientific literature, and that Freedom of Information Act requests later revealed that Francis Collins, then director of NIH, emailed asking for a rapid takedown of these fringe scientists, with a response that people were already about to write things Free Speech & the Scientific Method (2022).
Senator Rand Paul, discussing his book, describes the same episode. He says Anthony Fauci wrote to Francis Collins in an email that they needed to do a takedown of scientists talking about natural immunity, and names Kulldorff and Bhattacharya as the epidemiologists who issued the Great Barrington Declaration. Paul’s account of the motive is that they did not want to mention natural immunity because they did not want to deter anybody from being vaccinated Senator Rand Paul Exposes the Great COVID Coverup (2023).
The Zywicki Affidavit
Kulldorff appears in the account of Todd Zywicki’s suit against George Mason University over its vaccine mandate. Zywicki, describing the steps that preceded the lawsuit, says he contacted an immunologist, Dr. Hooman Noorchashm, who wrote him a prescription for an antibodies test; the test came back at 900 times the baseline level of antibodies, and the immunologist said his levels were comparable to somebody who was fully vaccinated right after vaccination. Zywicki says he sent this information to George Mason and asked whether they would recognize natural immunity, and received what he calls typical bureaucratic garbage in response. He then contacted Jenin Younes and the New Civil Liberties Alliance, and they sent a letter attaching two medical affidavits — one from Noorchashm and one from the great scholars Professor Martin Kulldorff from Harvard and Jay Bhattacharya from Stanford — to show that vaccination was unnecessary for him and that there was an elevated risk of vaccinating him Vaccine Mandates, George Mason, and the Bill of Rights (2021).
Younes, describing the cause of action, says the plaintiffs raised several constitutional claims and that because George Mason is a state university it is subject to constitutional requirements. She cites a line of case law holding that under the 9th and 14th Amendments there is a right to bodily integrity and to decline medical treatment, and says they argued the mandate violated that right. She says she thought the natural immunity angle was compelling because when the government violates a fundamental constitutional right it must be balanced against the interest, and for naturally immune people no governmental interest can be shown since the person presents no risk of harm to themselves or to society and does not spread the virus for the most part. She names Noorchashm, Bhattacharya and Kulldorff as the best experts, saying they have amassed enormous amounts of scientific literature establishing the robustness and durability of natural immunity, and that people she used to consider good scientists have twisted the literature by claiming natural immunity does not exist Vaccine Mandates, George Mason, and the Bill of Rights (2021).
Across episodes
The excerpts show no development in how Kulldorff is treated: he is named in the same two capacities — as co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration and as a source of scientific authority on natural immunity — in the 2021 Zywicki episode, the 2022 Singer episode, and the 2023 Rand Paul episode, with no change in the claims made about him between the earlier and later treatments.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not record Kulldorff speaking in his own voice, nor do they state his own account of the declaration, the affidavits, or the response to either. They do not give his title beyond the descriptions quoted above, his date of birth, his career history, or any publication of his other than the declaration. They do not state the outcome of Zywicki’s suit beyond Zywicki’s statement that he eventually received a medical exemption, and they do not say what became of the takedown effort described by Singer and Paul.