Medical ethical meltdown during covid

Edited April 4, 2023 (edits in italics or strikeouts)

Covid led to my discovery that I am an “activist” journalist in the medical community. This took the form of expressing my opinion sharing data regarding lockdowns, masks, quarantine, hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, and covid vaccines. This occurred privately at first, among peers and fellow analysts at work and on social media. Later it became public, via social media.

I discovered that there were other physicians, far more outspoken in Canada - Dr. Kulvinder Kaur spoke early on about the harms of lockdowns. She was criticized publicly by numerous colleagues, as well as the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario. Dr. Francis Christian of Saskatchewan spoke about the lack of necessity for covid vaccination in certain instances. He was fired from the University of Saskatchewan and had his medical license suspended by the Saskatchewan College of Physicians and Surgeons.

There were physicians who were more active in the realm of early treatment of covid - a field of practice that was condemned by pharmaceutical companies such as Merck (manufacturer of ivermectin) and Sanofi (manufacturer of hydroxychloroquine). Physicians such as Dr. Patrick Phillips were investigated by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario. Dr. Phillips had his license to practice medicine suspended. Other Ontario physicians who prescribed ivermectin had restrictive conditions placed upon their license to practice medicine, and had to hire lawyers in order to defend themselves.

While these examples come from Canada, this pattern of public activism and journalism by physicians, combined with loss or suspension of licensure, repeated itself in several US states, Australia, the United Kingdom, and likely elsewhere.

This is unheard of during my twenty-five years in the medical field, that large numbers of physicians would be targeted for prescribing medicines previously regarded as extremely safe -owing to pressure from pharmaceutical companies.

In fairness to the pharmaceutical companies, also due to pressure from the World Health Organization, the American Medical Association, the Food and Drug Administration.

When I consider my own actions as a physician during covid, I see the ways in which I compromised my professional ethics due to pressure from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario. While I saw a potential role for both ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine in the treatment of covid, I sat on my hands. While I saw the significant potential for harm from covid vaccines, as well as the psychological harms rendered by coercion and threats to employment, travel, or education to patients who did not want vaccination, I did not write letters of vaccine exemption.

On the single occasion where I expressed an opinion to the courts regarding benefits and harms of covid vaccination for children, I was advised by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario that they were investigating me for doing so, and had to hire a lawyer for my defense.

In these two respects, I failed to adhere to the code of medical ethics - to treat patients to the best of my ability. The choice was between doing my best and getting my license suspended, or doing less than my best and continuing to practice medicine.

Nonetheless, I have been engaged in legal defense from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario for my actions on Twitter for over a year now.

As vaccine mandates recede into the Canadian sunset at long last - although still in place in hospitals and nursing homes to my knowledge - some colleagues are able to express their grief at having been forced to bend their necks, knowing that to stand tall was to lose their livelihoods.

How to continue to regard with esteem our erstwhile medical leaders, who threatened us for actions that are increasingly being revealed as helpful, while forcing us to perform actions that increasingly appear harmful?