Vinay Prasad is an American hematologist-oncologist and professor at UCSF. He received his medical degree and masters of public health from the University of Chicago and Johns Hopkins University. Prasad has authored two books on ending medical reversal and the harms of bad policy and evidence in cancer treatment. He critiques practices with weak evidence bases and financial conflicts influencing drug approvals. Prasad is a skeptic of interventions like medical devices approved without efficacy evidence and criticizes pandemic responses comparing them to Nazi Germany.

1. Vinay Prasad
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Vinay Prasad
Born Vinayak K. Prasad
Alma mater Michigan State University
University of Chicago
Johns Hopkins University
Scientific career
Fields Hematology, oncology
Institutions University of California, San Francisco
Website vinayakkprasad.com
Vinayak K. Prasad is an American hematologist-oncologist and health researcher.
He is a professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California,
San Francisco (UCSF).[1]
He is the author of the books Ending Medical
Reversal (2015) and Malignant (2020).
Early life and education[edit]

2. Prasad was raised in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, before moving outside of Chicago
in northern Indiana. His parents immigrated from India.[2]
He attended Michigan State
University, where he took courses in health care ethics and physiology. In 2005,
Prasad graduated summa cum laude from MSU with a double major in philosophy
and physiology.[2]
He gave the commencement speech to the College of Arts and
Letters on behalf of the Philosophy Department.[3]
He completed his medical degree
at University of Chicago in 2009 and completed a residency in internal medicine
at Northwestern University in 2012. Prasad was certified in internal medicine by
the American Board of Internal Medicine in 2012 and earned a Master's of Public
Health from Johns Hopkins University in 2014. In 2015, Prasad completed a
fellowship in oncology at the National Cancer Institute and hematology at
the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.
Career[edit]
From 2015 to 2020, Prasad was assistant and then associate professor at
the Oregon Health & Science University.[4]
He currently works at San Francisco
General Hospital. Prasad is currently a full professor of a hematology-oncology at
UCSF.[4]
He is a cancer drug and health policy researcher. He also studies the
financial conflicts in drug approvals.[5]
In 2015, Prasad published the book, Ending
Medical Reversal, with physician and academic Adam Cifu.[6]
Prasad hosts the podcast Plenary Session[7][8][9]
and blogs at MedPage
Today.[10]
Prasad has won several teaching awards, including the 2017 Craig Okada
Award for best teacher in the Hematology Oncology Fellowship program, the 2018
faculty mentorship award from the internal medicine residency, the 2019 J. David
Bristow award from the graduating medical students, and the 2020 excellence in
research and scholarship mentoring as awarded by the internal medicine residents.[11]
In the spring of 2020, Prasad published the book, Malignant: How Bad Policy and
Bad Evidence Harm People with Cancer.[12]
Views and reception[edit]
In 2011, Prasad and colleagues published a research letter in the Archives of
Internal Medicine.[13]
Charles Bankhead, a senior editor at MedPageToday, covered
the topic, outlining the paper's primary point, which was the high prevalence of
research articles demonstrating findings that deviated from the accepted standard of
treatment at the time.[14]
Separately, "Retraction Watch" reported on Prasad's
personal remarks about the paper, saying "For a long time, we were interested by
what we believe to be a pervasive problem in modern medicine. Namely, the spread
of new technologies and therapies without clear evidence that they work, which are
later (and often after considerable delay) followed by contradictions, which, in turn,
after yet another delay, is followed by changes in practice and reimbursement."[15]
Matthew Hoffman, writing in 2012 for MedPageToday's KevinMD covered a paper by
Prasad and colleagues on "When to abandon ship" when it comes to failing medical
practices and treatments.[16][17]
Hoffman builds on the authors' proposed barriers to
market entrance, such as evidence of effectiveness in large randomized controlled
studies before broad usage, and links them to the insidious aspects of healthcare,
such as profit and status. In 2013, Prasad and colleagues addressed the necessity
for randomized controlled trials for the inferior vena cava filter (VCF) despite the
intervention's bio-plausibility.[18]
The authors suggest that since the intervention has

3. known adverse effects but an uncertain benefit, well-designed studies are necessary
to shed light on the intervention's efficacy. The JAMA Internal Medicine article
received widespread media attention, with Reuters' Genevra Pittman interviewing
Prasad about his further views on the intervention.[19]
According to the interview,
Prasad advises against filter placement in all but the most extreme instances owing
to a lack of proof and possibility for adverse events.[19]
In 2013, Prasad's paper A Decade of Reversal: An Analysis of 146 Contradicted
Practices was published;[20]
The article was covered in a piece by The Huffington
Post, which highlights a key lesson from the paper: patients should become more
involved in their health care decisions rather than assuming a prescribed medication
or device is beneficial.[21]
Patients may do this by asking their physician pertinent
questions, such as what patient outcomes the intervention improved. Additionally,
the article discusses the concept of healthcare cost. With growing anxiety about the
expense of healthcare, utilizing limited resources on questionable medical practices
with a weak evidence base threatens to jeopardize both the healthcare economy and
patient health. Additionally, the authors of a Lancet Oncology editorial remark that
"almost 10% of practice reversals occurred in oncology," suggesting that certain
fields of medicine may be more susceptible to medical reversals than others.[22]
Prasad has criticized other medical skeptics for their choices of topics to tackle,
including homeopathy, as being poor use of their time.[23]
Skeptics David
Gorski and Steven Novella published criticisms of and counter-arguments to
Prasad's stance, pointing out the perils of not challenging alternative medicine during
a pandemic.[24][25]
Covid response[edit]
In October 2021, Prasad prompted social media controversy when he published a
blog post comparing the U.S. COVID-19 pandemic response to the beginnings
of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. Bioethicist Arthur L. Caplan said that Prasad's
arguments were specious and ignorant, and science historian Robert N. Proctor said
that Prasad was "overplaying the dangers of vaccination mandates and trivializing
the genuine harms to liberty posed by 1930s fascism".[26]
In January 2022, the conservative periodical City Journal published an opinion piece
by Prasad in which he attempted to demonstrate that the American public health
organizations were not being honest in their response to the COVID-19
pandemic. [27]
Writing for Science-Based Medicine, epidemiologist Lynn Shaffer
criticized Prasad's article for the various "mistruths" it contained about face masks as
a COVID-19 mitigation measure, for example the unevidenced claim that mask
wearing was stunting children's language development. In Shaffer's view Prasad's
writing "lean[s] heavily on pushing people's emotional hot buttons" and amounted to
a form of fearmongering.[28]
Prasad was an early member of the Urgency of Normal, a group that in 2022
campaigned against quarantines and mask mandates in schools during the COVID-
19 pandemic.[29]
He spoke in support of repealing such mandates in a March 2022
interview.[30]
Related Writings on Masking[edit]
In response to public health authorities encouraging masking, and handing out
masks, in response to pollution stemming from the 2023 Canadian wildfires, he

4. described masking for protection against wildfire pollution as, "An untreated mental
illness plaguing public health."[31]
Selected works[edit]
 Prasad, Vinayak K.; Cifu, Adam S. (2015). Ending Medical Reversal:
Improving Outcomes, Saving Lives. Johns Hopkins University
Press. ISBN 9781421417721.
 Prasad, Vinayak K. (2020). Malignant: How Bad Policy and Bad Evidence
Harm People with Cancer. Johns Hopkins University
Press. ISBN 9781421437637.
References[edit]
1. ^ "Vinayak Prasad, MD, MPH". University of California San Francisco. Retrieved January
17, 2021.
2. ^ Jump up to:a b Terry, Lynne (September 7, 2017). "Dr. Vinay Prasad, OHSU's
iconoclastic oncologist, calls out shoddy medicine". Oregon Live. The Oregonian.
Retrieved July 11, 2018.
3. ^ "Commencement" (PDF). MSU. Spring 2005. Retrieved January 17, 2021.
4. ^ Jump up to:a b
"Vinay Prasad, MD, MPH | OHSU People". Oregon Health & Science
University. Retrieved July 11, 2018.
5. ^ Piller, Charles (July 6, 2018). "Hidden conflicts?". Science. 361 (6397): 16–
20. Bibcode:2018Sci...361...16P. doi:10.1126/science.361.6397.16. PMID 29976808. S2
CID 206625989.
6. ^ Zuger, Abigail (October 30, 2015). "Book Review: 'Ending Medical Reversal' Laments
Flip-Flopping". NYT. Retrieved December 4, 2019.
7. ^ "Plenary Session". SoundCloud. Retrieved January 17, 2021.
8. ^ Harris, Richard (June 24, 2018). "Tweeting Oncologist Draws Ire And Admiration For
Calling Out Hype". NPR. Retrieved July 11, 2018.
9. ^ Hayes, Elizabeth (April 5, 2017). "OHSU's Vinay Prasad on being the medical field's
willing provocateur". Portland Business Journal. Retrieved July 11, 2018.
10. ^ "Articles You Will Definitely Read". Medpage Today. Retrieved January 17, 2021.
11. ^ Prasad, Vinay. "Vinay Prasad". Vinay Prasad. Retrieved January 17, 2021.
12. ^ "Malignant | Johns Hopkins University Press Books".
13. ^ Prasad, Vinay (October 10, 2011). "The Frequency of Medical Reversal". Archives of
Internal Medicine. 171 (18): 1675–
1676. doi:10.1001/archinternmed.2011.295. PMID 21747003.
14. ^ "New Studies Often Reverse Existing Practices". July 11, 2011.
15. ^ Oransky, Ivan (July 11, 2011). "So how often does medical consensus turn out to be
wrong?".
16. ^ "Bias and error are rampant in medical literature". March 18, 2012.
17. ^ Prasad, Vinay; Cifu, Adam; Ioannidis, John P. A. (January 4, 2012). "Reversals of
Established Medical Practices: Evidence to Abandon Ship". JAMA. 307 (1): 37–
38. doi:10.1001/jama.2011.1960. PMID 22215160.
18. ^ Prasad, Vinay; Rho, Jason; Cifu, Adam (April 8, 2013). "The Inferior Vena Cava Filter:
How Could a Medical Device Be So Well Accepted Without Any Evidence of
Efficacy?". JAMA Internal Medicine. 173 (7): 493–
495. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2013.2725. PMID 23552611.
19. ^ Jump up to:a b Pittman, Genevra (March 19, 2013). "Filters often used to stop clots
without evidence". Reuters.
20. ^ Prasad, Vinay; Vandross, Andrae; Toomey, Caitlin; Cheung, Michael; Rho, Jason;
Quinn, Steven; Chacko, Satish Jacob; Borkar, Durga; Gall, Victor; Selvaraj, Senthil; Ho,
Nancy; Cifu, Adam (August 2013). "A Decade of Reversal: An Analysis of 146
Contradicted Medical Practices". Mayo Clinic Proceedings. 88 (8): 790–
798. doi:10.1016/j.mayocp.2013.05.012. PMID 23871230.

5. 21. ^ "Changes in Modern Medicine: What Can We Expect?". January 30, 2014.
22. ^ Burki, Talha K (May 2020). "Shaping cancer policy to work towards the interests of
patients". The Lancet Haematology. 7 (5): e369. doi:10.1016/S2352-3026(20)30119-
8. PMID 32359451. S2CID 218490117.
23. ^ Prasad, Vinay (December 9, 2020). "Applying Skepticism to Medical Skepticism —
Debunking should focus on areas most in need -- which might not be
homeopathy". Medpage Today. Medpage Today. Retrieved July 27, 2022.
24. ^ Gorski, David (December 13, 2020). "Responding to Dr. Vinay Prasad's "dunking on a 7′
hoop" criticism of SBM". Science Based Medicine. Archived from the original on March
31, 2021. Retrieved April 27, 2021.
25. ^ Novella, Steven (December 11, 2020). "Skeptical of Skepticism regarding Medical
Skepticism". Neurologica Blog. The New England Skeptical Society. Archived from the
original on February 19, 2021. Retrieved April 27, 2021.
26. ^ Tracey A (October 8, 2021). "Did Vinay Prasad need to mention the Nazis to make a
point on the U.S. pandemic response?". The Cancer Letter (News). 47 (37).
27. ^ Prasad, Vinay (January 19, 2022). "Public Health's Truth Problem". City Journal.
28. ^ Shaffer L (February 27, 2022). "Dr. Vinay Prasad: 'Public Health's (Mis)Truth
Problem'". Science-Based Medicine.
29. ^ Schreiber, Melody (February 22, 2022). "Why Is This Group of Doctors So Intent on
Unmasking Kids?". The New Republic. ISSN 0028-6583. Retrieved March 21, 2022.
30. ^ Weissmueller, Zach. "How Politics Corrupted Science: Dr. Vinay Prasad on
COVID". reason.com. Reason. Retrieved April 8, 2022.
31. ^ Prasad, Vinay. "Forest fires and n95 masking". Substack. Vinay Prasad. Retrieved June
13, 2023.
External links[edit]
 Official website
 Vinay Prasad's publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic
database. (subscription required)
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