Dr. Joseph Marine's Letter to Notre Dame

Notre Dame students need and deserve normal now.

Dr. Joseph Marine, a parent of a student at Notre Dame, sent the letter below to the President and to the Director of Health Services at Notre Dame University. The reply he received from administration is printed below his letter.

In short, Notre Dame contends that “a uniformly, highly-vaccinated campus community has helped to keep Notre Dame students, faculty, and staff safe and healthy throughout the pandemic” even though there is zero evidence to back up their claim. Like so many other colleges, Notre Dame refuses to follow evidence-based medicine. They continue to mandate COVID-19 vaccines for a population that is at near zero risk of severe disease, and they completely disregard evidence that COVID-19 vaccinations expose young adults to risks of severe adverse reactions.

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November 15, 2022 

President, University of Notre Dame 

Dear President:

I write as a doctor and a parent of a Notre Dame student to ask that you rescind the university’s recently announced bivalent covid booster mandate. The FDA and CDC had no scientific basis to determine that this experimental EUA product is “safe and effective” or that it should be recommended for anyone, let alone mandated for healthy college students. Forcing healthy young people to receive it is not pursuing "safety" for students, it is simply following the government’s irrational and unscientific covid plan. No one should be compelled to receive this experimental injection hastily pushed out by government agencies in the name of fighting a no-longer existent “public health emergency.”

I am a cardiologist who received 3 covid shots and has received every vaccine ever recommended to me. I personally vaccinated hundreds of my colleagues in January 2021 during the initial vaccination campaign. My children have received every vaccine recommended to them. I am not an opponent of vaccinations, but rather a believer in evidence-based medicine. There is no evidence basis to mandate this vaccine or any other covid booster for young healthy people. Several European countries and the nation of Australia have already abandoned covid vaccination for healthy young people in light of evidence of risk of vaccine injury and no clear benefit.

Free and voluntary informed consent is the single most important principle of medical ethics. It should be breached only if the therapy in question has an unequivocal public benefit. This is clearly no longer the case with covid vaccination, which has been widely acknowledged not to significantly reduce viral spread. There is even emerging evidence that repetitive vaccination may increase susceptibility to infection through the phenomenon of immune imprinting. No one knows what the long-term harms of repetitive injection of the mRNA product and lipid nanoparticle vehicles in young healthy people might be.

Forcing Notre Dame students to choose between taking an experimental EUA injection that they may not want and being expelled from the Notre Dame community is unethical, immoral, and unnecessary for the health of the community or any other rational purpose. It is policy unworthy of a great university.

After nearly 3 years, our young people have suffered enough injury to their lives in the futile pursuit of “slowing the spread” of a virus that is now largely harmless to them and has infected almost everyone despite the trillions of dollars of economic destruction and the vast psychological and social damage inflicted trying to stop it. Endless booster mandates based on no science or reason will only add further stress and moral injury to these young people. 

I urge you to please stop this irrational policy and end all covid mandates and restrictions for Notre Dame students. They need and deserve normal now.

Sincerely,

Joseph E. Marine, MD
Baltimore, Maryland

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Joseph E. Marine, MD, is a practicing cardiologist in Baltimore, Maryland, and Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

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Reply from Notre Dame:

Thank you for sharing your concerns about the bivalent booster vaccine requirement for the 2022-2023 academic year. I appreciate your taking time from your medical practice and advocating for the students, not just your child. Please know our decision to require the bivalent booster is neither arbitrary nor careless. Rather, our experience throughout the pandemic has taught us that a high rate of vaccination is critical to combatting COVID-19, which is why our strategy has always been one that takes advantage of available vaccinations and relies upon good health practices. 

A uniformly, highly-vaccinated campus community has helped to keep Notre Dame students, faculty, and staff safe and healthy throughout the pandemic, and current recommendations from national and local health officials include the addition of the new bivalent COVID-19 vaccine to maintain current levels of public health. Similar to previous COVID-19 vaccine requirements and like other endemic illnesses for which Notre Dame has required vaccinations (e.g., varicella, influenza, etc.), we continue to follow this guidance in an effort to keep our campus as healthy as possible.

We understand that your student may have reasons as to why the new requirement is not possible and therefore, I encourage you all to consider an application for an exemption. We will always continue to offer any student the option to apply for a medical or religious exemption for any or all required immunizations. Students who received an exemption for prior requirements do not need to apply again. Furthermore, any student who does not already have an exemption but now needs one should complete this exemption form and upload it to their UHS patient portal.