Medical Professionals Who Ignore the Science on COVID

"I find it absolutely fascinating [that a medical professional with years of science-based training could align with evidence-defying ideas]."

"It's tremendously problematic because they're leveraging the legitimacy they have with the general public to push misinformation."

"It just confuses and clouds the public perception of what the evidence actually says."

"Misinformation kills people. That's how serious this topic is."

Dr.Timothy Caulfield, Medical ethicist, health law and policy professor, University of Alberta 

"When someone certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine [ABIM], says something like ... 'vaccines don't prevent COVID deaths or hospitalizations', we are not dealing with valid professional disagreement."

"We are dealing with wrong answers."

Dr.Richard Baron, New England Journal of Medicine

Throughout the pandemic, complaints have poured into colleges of physicians and surgeons accusing doctors of flouting public-health rules, promoting conspiracy theories, and issuing bogus vaccine-exemption letters. Photo by Ernest Doroszuk/Postmedia/

During the endless time the pandemic has been bedeviling the globe, medical science has had to deal with vectors of misinformation, doubters about the science, those who sneer at governments' and medical bodies' reactions to the pathogen, and attempts to shield society from its worst effects. Colleges of physicians and surgeons in Canada have seen complaints flooding in with accusations of doctors flouting public-health rules, promoting conspiracy theories, prescribing unproven treatments, and issuing bogus vaccine-exemption letters.

One example can be taken by Toronto-area physician Dr.Jeff Matheson who refused to wear a mask, instructed patients not to wear them claiming they were harmful and informing his patients that the pandemic was a hoax driven by the media whose purpose was to bring profit to people like Bill Gates. COVID test results, he stated with a certainty, were being sold to China for DNA sequencing. Parents whose children's schools insist on students wearing masks should sue those schools, he urged.

His licence to practice was suspended for a nine-month period by Ontario's medical regulator which spoke of his actions as "disgraceful dishonourable and unprofessional". Six MDs in Alberta have seen their practice restricted, resulting from similar actions. A doctor in British Columbia was suspended, another cited, as numerous investigations are taking place across Canada by medical licensing bodies against some of their members.

Another Ontario MD, Kulvinder Kaur Gill, pediatrician and physical activist in Brampton, early in the pandemic received three cautions from the college of physicians and surgeons. She expressed her opinion in the public sphere that vaccines were unneeded to combat the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The response by some of these doctors, chided by regulators, was to challenge their disciplinary action with the argument they violate their right to free expression.

In the U.S., Republican politicians introduced legislation prohibiting state medical boards from disciplining doctors who spread COVID misinformation or prescribe unproven treatments. A warning was removed from the  website of the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners in response to such legislation. Just 55 percent of the Tennessee population has been double-vaccinated. The state suffered over four times the COVID deaths per 100,000 compared to Ontario.