Medical wannabe dictator gets his comeuppance

Medical tyranny is relatively new in human society, but the impulse for it has always lurked beneath the surface. The release (accidental or intentional) of SARS-CoV-2 from a Wuhan laboratory brought out the worst impulses in academic doctors worldwide. And for the most part, those who run academic medicine did not even try to resist that tyrannical urge. One such wannabe medical tyrant (not Anthony S. Fauci) ran into something from which his world largely insulates him. This did not make him happy, and in fact he bitterly resents it. That resentment blinds him – and most of his colleagues – to the monumental resentment of patients everywhere who have lost trust in the medical profession. This particular medical tyrant is now trying to justify certain policies that violated that trust.

The latest medical tyrant – not Anthony S. Fauci

Everyone remembers Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease. We remember him declaiming, “I am the science,” which sounds suspiciously like King Louis XIV declaiming, “I am the state.” (And how even National Review told its readers to stop playing that game on his terms.) But over the weekend, a new medical tyrant emerged. He didn’t take Fauci’s place in government, but he certainly took his place as an apologist for tyranny.

Ladies and gentlemen, may we present Peter Jay Hotez, M.D. While your editor was getting his medical degree at Baylor College of Medicine, Dr. Hotez was getting his at Weill Cornell Medical College. (Not only that, but we two graduated from Yale together, he in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, and your editor in Engineering and Applied Science.) But our paths have differed markedly. Your editor never lost respect for human liberty and the concept and practice of informed consent. Dr. Hotez lost his, if he even had it to begin with. (Yale graduated about 5,000 students in 1980, including ourselves, and our paths never crossed.)

Today he serves as the founding Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine, established at Baylor. More to the point, he serves as Director, Center for Vaccine Development, Texas Children’s Hospital. Parasitology (especially lesser-known parasites) and “vaccinology” are his two special fields.

On COVID-19

But he has made his big mark as a COVID-19 scold. He has long insisted that young adults could expect to sicken from, and transmit, coronavirus and not realize it. On August 7, 2020, he predicted “years and years” of bad effects from COVID-19, and said the federal government was not doing enough to contain it, according to The Huffington Post.

In short, he has invested himself and his career – totally – in the proposition that all immunizations work. Furthermore, he seems to believe that any side effects from immunizations pale in comparison to the effects of the spread of the diseases against which they are supposed to protect, upon the general population. On that ground, he has called publicly for achieving a 100 percent vaccination rate by any means necessary, including coercive. And whenever anyone dares tell him to take a second look, he quashes the conversation with a predictable appeal to:

• The authority of duly appointed public health officers and “recognized experts” (argumentum ab auctoritate), and
• His own medical graduate and postgraduate training and research (argumentum a gradis, or perhaps argumentum a dignitate).

(Note: the ancient Roman concept of dignitas went far beyond the concept dignity today. It referred to a person’s total standing in society and social and professional circles.)

Tragically, he appears not to recognize either of the logical fallacies above as logical fallacies. As we will show, he saw fit to urge medical authority to take the full force and effect of law.

The medical tyrant and the skeptical layman

Last week, podcaster Joe Rogan (The Joe Rogan Experience) interviewed Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on his program. In the process, Mr. Kennedy held forth on his signature campaign issue: medical tyranny and especially the tyranny of coronavirus vaccines, and vaccines generally. Anna Merlan at Vice took exception to the episode even airing.Dr. Hotez, in this tweet, took up her refrain.

Separately, he offered this:

Rogan took exception to that and challenged Dr. Hotez to debate Kennedy, with Rogan as moderator.

Dr. Hotez’ immediate response was to send this demand:

Be serious, Joe, that’s what you throw out for your hunting buddies on a weekend. A $50 million endowment (which You/Spotify/RFK Jr can easily afford), not for me but so we can continue making low-cost patent-free vaccines for the world’s poor. Preceded by RFK Jr.’s public apology.

(That last is an apparent break with Fauci, who build a nasty reputation for himself as a patent troll.)

Later, thinking better of that, Hotez deleted the tweet. Instead he sent this:]

But other users noted that Dr. Hotez has blocked several influencers’ accounts, and criticized him for it.

Rogan, in reply to Hotez, reiterated his debate offer.

Dr. Hotez repeated his refrain about excess deaths among the unvaccinated.

Rogan asked him again:

Dr. Hotez then offered to appear on Rogan’s show – alone. But he also appeared to apologize for the $50 miillion demand.

This did not satisfy Rogan, who referred to an earlier bit of invective by Dr. Hotez.

Since then, others have come forward, offering to help underwrite a charitable honorarium to induce Dr. Hotez to debate. At last report, the offered honorarium has grown to $1.5 million.

A professional speaks out against him

But Dr. Hotez has come in for opprobrium from even his fellow professionals. Simon Goddek, Ph.D. (Biotechnology) dropped this thread:

In apparent reply, Dr. Hotez appeared on Mehdi Hasan’s show on MSNBC. He dropped this thread afterward:

Yesterday morning he dropped another thread, touting a new book he has written.

Separately, Elon Musk actually jumped into the conversation on Saturday, provoking this sequence:

With regard to that last: among his other titles, Dr. Hotez once wrote a book disputing the vaccine-autism link. He might want to address this press release, from nearly nine years ago, from the author of a study on that subject. He admitted that, ten years earlier, he had omitted data suggesting that African American males, who had received the Measles-Mumps-Rubella vaccine at 36 months or younger, were at increased risk of autism.

That’s close to Andrew Wakefield’s original premise. Thus far only the MMR vaccine has an apparent increased risk of an Autism Spectrum Disorder in its recipients.

A reply

Dr. Hotez is a disappointment to your editor, who is a fellow Yale man. He might have done better to take some courses in History of Science in Medicine, a thriving department then. Then he might have learned that the history of medicine is replete with example after example of imperious authorities insisting that their science was settled, and quashing innovators whose discoveries disrupted and thereby unsettled that science.

CNAV offers two examples. William Harvey (15787-fl. 1618-1657), besides being the King’s Own Physician, contributed to our modern understanding of blood circulation. Before then, the medical establishment insisted that human blood flowed more like ichor, the transporting substance found in insects. Harvey proved that the human body had not only arteries (carrying blood out from the heart) but also veins (carrying blood back to the heart).

Ignaz Semmelweiss (1818-1865), the “Savior of Mothers,” tried to encourage his fellow physicians to wash their hands before attending births. This was especially important in his day, as many doctors practiced both pathology and obstetrics. So they were attending births with their hands still dirty from handling the bodily fluids of the dead. For his pains the medical establishment shut him up in an insane asylum, where guards beat him, doused him with cold water, and gave him castor oil. After two weeks of this abuse, he died. He would therefore never live to see future generations of doctors vindicate him by the simple expedient of washing the hands between procedures.

Fast forward

Today Peter Jay Hotez behaves exactly as did those detractors who shut Ignaz Semmelweiss up in that mental institution. As one supposedly schooled in the first principle of the Hippocratic Oath, he should know better. Then again, your editor’s former profession watered down that Oath after the Supreme Court handed down its most infamous decision: Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973).

Medical science can never be settled, any more than any other kind of science. Any doctor who so suggests, is a tyrant. And to paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, a doctor whose bedside manner is thus marked by every attitude that might define a tyrant, is not fit to attend or advise a free person. He is even less fit to advise a country of free people.

Playing Capo di tutti i capi di stato maggiore di tutti gli ospedali americani didn’t help the career or reputation of Anthony S. Fauci, M.D. Dr. Hotez should learn from his example. At Baylor, at least some of your editor’s professors tried to teach us not to affect tyrannical attitudes. To see this attitude come from a full professor at BCM is a further disappointment.