Wolfgang Wodarg MdB a. D. | |
|---|---|
| Member of theBundestag forSchleswig-Holstein | |
| In office 26 October 1998 – 27 October 2009 | |
| Preceded by | Wolfgang Börnsen |
| Succeeded by | Wolfgang Börnsen |
| Constituency | Flensburg – Schleswig |
| In office 10 November 1994 – 26 October 1998 | |
| Preceded by | multi-member district |
| Succeeded by | multi-member district |
| Constituency | Social Democratic Party List |
| Head of theFlensburg Health Department | |
| In office 1981–1994 | |
| Deputy | Gert Postel[a] |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1947-03-02)2 March 1947 (age 78) |
| Political party | dieBasis(2021–) |
| Other political affiliations | Social Democratic Party(1988–2021) |
| Residence | Mecklenburgische Seenplatte I – Vorpommern-Greifswald II |
| Alma mater | University of Hamburg |
| Occupation |
|
| Website | Official website |
Wolfgang Wodarg (born 2 March 1947) is a German physician and politician. He was a member of theBundestag for theSPD from 1994 to 2009.
As chair of theParliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe Health Committee Wodarg co-signed a proposed resolution[1] on 18 December 2009, which was briefly discussed in January 2010 in an emergency debate and he has called for an inquiry into alleged undue influence exerted bypharmaceutical companies on theWorld Health Organization’s globalH1N1 flu campaign.[2]
Born and raised in the townItzehoe inSchleswig-Holstein, in 1966 Wodarg went, after hissecondary school exams, on to study inmedicine inBerlin andHamburg. He got his physician's licence in 1973, and in 1974 he received his Dr. med.doctorate degree from theUniversity of Hamburg with a dissertation on theMental Diseases of Seafarers – a study of suicide, alcoholism and other major psychiatric disorders. He subsequently began work as aship's doctor, and following a research trip toSouth Africa he began in the position of port doctor in Hamburg. Since 1983 he has held the position of Amtsarzt at thehealth department ofFlensburg, of which he became director in the same decade.[3] Wolfgang Wodarg is a lecturer at theUniversity of Flensburg.
Wodarg is member of the partyDie Basis. He has been member of theSocial Democratic Party (SPD) from 1988 until 2021. From 1992 to 2002 he was the head of the SPD'sSchleswig-Flensburg district. From 19 November 2005 to 1 December 2007 Wodarg was chairman of the SPD district of Flensburg.
Since 1990 Wodarg has been member of the executive committee of the national Association of Social Democrats in the Health Sector, and since 1994 the federal deputy chairman, and in 2002 he became elected chairman of the federal Committee.
Wodarg first came to the attention of the general public in the 1980s when he was head of the Public Health Department (German: Gesundheitsamt) in Flensburg, Germany and hired the medical impostorGert Postel as deputy head, later famously revealed to be a postman by training.[4] This caused controversy, though he retained his position until elected to the Bundestag. He later appeared in the documentaryDer Hochstapler – Die schwindelerregende Karriere des Postboten Gert Postel.[5]
From 1986 to 1998 Wodarg belonged to the parish council of his nativeNieby.
From 1994 to 2009 he was a member of theBundestag. Here Wodarg was spokesman from 2003 to 2005 of the SPD caucus in the inquiry commissionethics and law of modern medicine and spokesman for issues of minorities in the German-Danish border area.
He was a representative for the directly elected Bundestag seat for the Flensburg-Schleswig constituency from 1994 but lost his mandate in the2009 German federal election.
Since 1999 Wodarg has also belonged to theParliamentary Assembly of theCouncil of Europe. Since 2002 he has been vice chairman of the Socialist Group, and since 2006 president of the German social democrats and deputy head of the German delegation.
Wodarg gained notoriety during public discussion of theCOVID-19 pandemic when he argued that SARS-CoV-2 was only one of many similar viruses which usually go undetected as part of an ordinary seasonal period of respiratory infections, and that the worldwide activities to stop the pandemic were "hype" caused by the selective perception of researchers.[6]
His comments on the COVID-19 pandemic drew criticism from German scientists and some German media outlets. According to the critics, Wodarg's claims largely contradicted the verifiable facts; some of his statements were neither verifiable nor falsifiable; and because the facts Wodarg presented had nothing to do with each other, his statements had proved to be misleading.[7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]
In a December 2020 petition to theEuropean Medicines Agency, Wodarg and former Pfizer scientistMichael Yeadon called for allmRNA vaccine trials to be halted.[21] Their petition, which suggested without evidence that the vaccines could causeinfertility in women by targeting thesyncytin-1 protein necessary forplacenta formation, soon began circulating on social media.[22] The misinformation caused by the petition spread from social media into doctors offices, where concerned women began asking their gynecologists if it was true. A survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation in January found that 13% of unvaccinated people in the U.S. had heard that COVID-19 vaccines caused infertility.[23]David Gorski wrote onScience-Based Medicine that Wodarg and Yeadon were "stoking real fear that the new COVID-19 vaccines will make women infertile and [...] doing it based on speculative nonsense".[24]
Transparency International Germany, on whose board of directors Wodarg serves, distanced itself from his statements on 17 March 2020: "Transparency International Germany rejects board member Dr Wolfgang Wodarg's sweeping criticism of the government measures to protect the population from the coronavirus. (...) Wolfgang Wodarg is speaking on this matter as a private individual and not in his capacity as a member of the Management Board."[12][25] On 25 March 2020, the board decided to suspend his membership in the association "until further notice", which means that Wodarg can no longer exercise any functions on the board or as head of the health working group for the time being. The Board of Directors will commission an independent committee to look into Wodarg's statements about the coronavirus and to determine whether his behaviour has harmed the interests of Transparency International Germany. Transparency Chairman Hartmut Bäumer said that the reason for this was that Wodarg had expressed his views on "radical media" such asKenFM,Rubikon, Geolitico, and in an interview withEva Herman; all of "which regularly work with conspiracy theories, with anti-democratic and sometimes anti-Semitic prejudices" and "oppose the basic democratic principles of Transparency"; while "some of them are personally close to theAfD".[26][27][28]
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| People | |
