Eric Liang Feigl-Ding (born March 28, 1983) is an American public health scientist who is currently an epidemiologist and Chief of COVID Task Force at the New England Complex Systems Institute. He was formerly a faculty member and researcher at Harvard Medical School and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He is also the Chief Health Economist for Microclinic International, and co-founder of the World Health Network. His research and advocacy have primarily focused on obesity, nutrition, cancer prevention, and biosecurity.
In January 2020, Feigl-Ding sounded an early alarm about COVID-19 and called for preparedness. His call for pandemic alarm went viral on Twitter and was amplified by media outlets. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Feigl-Ding's Twitter posts on the matter have been popular. His tweets on the pandemic have been criticized by other scientists as alarmist, misleading, or inaccurate.
Early life and education
Feigl-Ding was born in Shanghai, and his family emigrated to the United States when he was five years old. He was raised in South Dakota and Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, where he graduated from Shippensburg Area Senior High School and is an alumnus of the Pennsylvania Governor's Schools of Excellence.
In 2004, he completed his undergraduate studies at Johns Hopkins University with Honors in Public Health. He completed his dual Doctor of Science doctoral program in epidemiology and doctoral program in nutrition from Harvard University in 2007. He attended Boston University School of Medicine, but did not complete the M.D. program. Feigl-Ding was awarded a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for his graduate studies.
Work
Research and work
Feigl-Ding's work focuses on epidemiology, health economics, and nutrition. He is the Chief of the COVID Risk Task Force at the New England Complex Systems Institute. He was a Senior Fellow at the Federation of American Scientists. He was a researcher at the Harvard Medical School, and at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Feigl-Ding is also the Chief Health Economist at Microclinic International, 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 relationship between obesity and mortality in athletes. He has also developed and led public health programs for Bell County, Kentucky, the Danish Ministry of Health, and as a report chairman for the European Commission.
In 2006, while completing his doctorate at Harvard, Feigl-Ding co-authored a study on COX-2 inhibitors that confirmed serious risks specifically associated with the drug, Vioxx, which Merck had withdrawn from the market two years earlier, in 2004, and which argued that Merck should have known about the risks. He participated in the Global Burden of Disease Study, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
He founded Toxin Alert, as a public alert tool to warn communities about drinking water contaminations to prevent future lead poisonings like the Flint Water Crisis.