Eric Feigl-Ding

Feigl-Ding's work focuses on nutrition, health economics, and epidemiology. He is currently a Visiting Scientist in the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.[1][11]

Feigl-Ding is also the Chief Health Economist at Microclinic International,[13] as co-principal investigator of several intervention programs for obesity and diabetes prevention in the US and abroad. He developed a 130-year cohort study of Major League Baseball regarding the dangers of obesity and mortality in athletes.[14] He has also developed and led public health programs for Bell County, Kentucky,[15] the Danish Ministry of Health,[16] and the UNRWA. Feigl-Ding has also served as a consultant to the World Health Organization, as a report chairman for the European Commission,[17] and as an expert member of the Global Burden of Disease Project.

One notable study by Feigl-Ding determined that Merck should have known the serious health risks of Vioxx several years before the drug was pulled off the market.[18][19]

Feigl-Ding is also known for developing a direct-to-science model for accelerating cancer research, and as advocate of crowdfunding for medical research.[10] His efforts, including the creation of the now-defunct Campaign for Cancer Prevention,[20][10] raised over $500,000 in public donations for innovative cancer research, and he led cancer prevention advocacy platforms totaling over 6 million members.[21]

Feigl-Ding also founded ToxinAlert.org, as a public alert tool to warn communities about drinking water contaminations to prevent future lead poisonings like the Flint Water Crisis.[22][23][24][25]

On January 20, 2020, Feigl-Ding went viral[7] on micro blogging Twitter after expressing in vocal terms his worries relative to the 2019–20 Wuhan coronavirus outbreak virus' basic reproduction number (R₀) of up to 3.8.[6] Feigl-Ding compared the virus pandemic potential to the 1918 influenza pandemic[6] which has an estimated R₀ of 1.8 and which killed ~50 million people out of 2 billion, and called for WHO and CDC to preemptively declare public health emergency and monitor aggressively the situation.[6] With the thread going viral, Feigl-Ding's appeals were criticized by his epidemiologist peers as alarmist and based on anecdotal data,[6] by journalists as misleading and misinforming the public,[26] and his announcements were reused to advance conspiracy theories about the virus.[27] While Feigl-Ding deleted the tweets,[27] the rapid development of the epidemic, first in China in January, then in Europe in February–March and in the United States in March, together with more studies on the virus, turned the perceptions of Feigl-Ding into that of an early messenger.[6][28] Feigl-Ding was invited as a commentator on the pandemic by news media.[29][30]

However, experts in infectious disease epidemiology, such as Dr. Marc Lipsitch, Director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, have warned that while Feigl-Ding presents himself as an expert, his expertise in public health is not relevant to infectious disease, that he has only amplified news stories without contributing any original critiques or insights, and that, in doing so, he has occasionally been misleading.[7][8]

Feigl-Ding's alert was used to hypothesize that such early reactiveness to weak signals, if it had occurred in the relevant governmental health leadership circles, could have prevented the pandemic.[6] Following Feigl-Ding's call and his raising of the alarm in January, better responses by government authorities could have led millions to have prepared earlier and better to the pandemic, upgrading their hygiene, such as hand-washing and implementing social distancing measures.[6] It was proposed that public policies and actions should be based on precautionary principles rather than waiting for incontestable and inarguable evidences or the tide of public pressure.[6] Feigl-Ding's early pandemic alert was compared to the warnings since the 1970s about human-induced global warming, which in the 1980s had sufficiently strong early signals to have started actively planning for and responding to, reducing the disasters and costs of global warming during the 2000s and 2010s.[6]

Feigl-Ding argued that the data alone was clear, for anyone with elementary engineering, statistical, or business analytical skills to see the pandemic potential early on.[7] It was hypothesized that social media constant noise made relevant alarms such as Feigl-Ding's inaudible,[6] while Feigl-Ding argued that media reliance on vetted experts on a given topic might reduce access to relevant early alarms.[7]