A UC Irvine professor of psychiatry and human behavior has been fired for refusing to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, who is also the director of the medical ethics program at UCI Health said he was fired on Dec. 17 after refusing to follow UC Irvine’s vaccine mandate.
“Two years ago I never could have imagined that the University would dismiss me and other doctors, nurses, faculty, staff, and students for this arbitrary and capricious reason,” he wrote in a blog post.
According to The Los Angeles Times, Kheriaty sued the University of California Board of Regents and president Michael Drake in August, arguing that he should be exempted from the mandate because he has developed “natural immunity” after being exposed to the virus. He argued that it is unconstitutional to treat him differently from a fully vaccinated individual given that he too has antibodies to the virus.
“Once I challenged one of their policies I immediately became a ‘threat to the health and safety of the community,’” he wrote.
Research shows that unvaccinated individuals are more than twice as likely to be reinfected with COVID-19 than those who were fully vaccinated after initially contracting the virus.
