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TRANSCRIPT to 36min dr shankara chetty mar2024 interview Professor Fired! Standing up for Science
Hi. Good evening to everyone. I'm doctor Philip McMillan. Thank you for joining me. As today, we have, the very first of our, hopefully, a longer term arrangement, McMillan and Shetty.
And we'll talk about topical news, which, in the first one we're targeting or looking at is professor Martin Kuldorf, who was just recently fired from, Harvard University. And so what we're hoping to be able to do is to capture our thoughts, share different perspectives, and look at the sands around COVID 19. And so without further ado, right after we've got our new, video intro, I'll bring in doctor Shetty. Great. Shankara, what did you think?
How did that look? I feel like it looks good. Yeah. I think the content needs to be yeah. We gotta we gotta be careful.
Excellent. Yeah. So yeah. So so Shankara and for those people who don't know, doctor Shankara, he is now a worldwide celebrity with regards to speaking about, 0 COVID deaths in the pandemic. And it seems that you've become a little bit of a target yourself, Shankara, and this is part of why we're doing these discussions.
The fact is that you have recently also been targeted, and this is why I think that this, story with professor, Kaldorf is so interesting. And just so for the perspective of the listeners, share a little bit more about what's recently been happening to you in about 30 seconds. Hi, Philip. I've received a complaint from a prominent professor here in South Africa to the Health Professions Council about my comments on the vaccine, my early treatment, and understanding of the pathophysiology. And the council found it prudent to charge me to say that I'm making outlandish pathophysiology claims.
I've used treatment that was not sanctioned, and I've made I've I've stirred misinformation and vaccine hesitancy with my comments about the vaccine. And so, I'm gonna get a chance on the 8th April to defend my truth. Yeah. So what that means, Shankar, is that you have firsthand experience of being targeted by the, system because your views and your practice are different from what they would want or what they'd expect. And I think it's very important for people to understand that in the context of the pandemic, you were only doing what you needed to do, which is to protect and save the lives of your patients.
Because you published that work, you never had any thoughts that this would become such an issue, did you? No. Not not, not really, Philip. At the start of the pandemic, my aim was to try and figure out where we at. How do I protect patients?
How do I save lives? And so I put my life at risk and made sure I examine every patient to understand the underlying pathophysiology. After all, That is where we need to start if we're going to get a treatment plan, understanding what's happening in a pathophysiologic setting. And with examining patients' clinical observation, understanding symptomatology, I noticed a biphasic illness, a clearly biphasic illness. And it was the second onset of the second phase that caused the severity.
So when we talk of mild and moderate COVID, we're talking about a viral infection that never led to the second phase and immune dysregulation. And so understanding that immune dysregulation, it, it, dictated the treatment that I used. And when I had seen the initial benefit, I felt obligated to share this with the world for the benefit of patients. Yeah. I I completely agree, Shankar.
And this is one of the interesting things is that, it's almost as if the system would have preferred you and this is what's really strange. They would have preferred you to stay at home, let the patients get sick and die, follow whatever protocol you had been given some months later, and at least you and your family would be safe. And, therefore, it wouldn't mean that we wouldn't have learned anything more about a different perspective. How can that be right? It's not, Philip.
And I guess, the the, censoring of my work has led to the judgments I had, how I've expressed of the system itself. Because clearly, if someone finds a way to negate the mortality and morbidity of a pandemic, then why wouldn't the world want to hear that? And why wouldn't we want to try it? Remember the medication I used was not controversial. It was a lot of it over the counter.
So it was just simply addressing a pathophysiologic perspective with simple medication that I proved to be absolutely effective. So I couldn't understand why we were we were not looking at this. We were not trying early treatment. And if they're seeing the lives that it was saving, it would have negated the need for any further intervention. And I think that was the that was the issue.
Yeah. Quite possibly. So let's just go straight into, this is let me just add this to the stage here. So this is from professor Martin Kuldorf. And so if anybody hasn't realized, he was a professor at Harvard University.
And, critically, he, he was also part of the lead with regards to the Great Barrington Declaration. And you can see here, and so he's talking about the fact that he has gotten fired. So you he got fired. Now this must have happened just a few days ago, and so he gave his story. So he went in front of it and shared his story.
And his background is he was a bar stat statistician, infectious disease epidemiologist. It's it's critical to understand that actually in 2020, he was part of the CDC group, with regards to making judgments at the time. And, as I said, the great Barrington declaration where they argued for age based focus protection instead of universal lockdowns. That was his view, and it was along with professor Sunitra Gupta as well. This was from the the UK, and 98 signatories had been involved in that.
So they were the ones who were talking that you shouldn't have done a universal, lockdown. And they were then called fringe epidemiologists. They were disagreed with, but one place in the world seems to have followed their thinking, and that was actually Sweden. And it it's interesting, Shankara. Did you have any thoughts at the time?
I'll I'll well, let me just let me state my position. I remember when the great Barrington declaration came out, and I understood what they were thinking. My thought at the time was I I thought that the lower risk population should have been exposed to the virus. But when I talked it up the numbers and realized that there was a percentage, of younger people who appeared well who could then get severe disease and die, I thought to myself, the public isn't gonna accept it when they start to see people that they didn't expect to die start dying. And so I thought that the public wouldn't go along with it even if you tried it at that time.
Any any thoughts on that? I think, Philip, when you look at lockdowns as a measure of curbing the spread of, airborne virus, It's never worked. You can confine people, but you can't confine the air and air flows between people. So looking at a simple thing like Australia putting a line on the ground and telling people not to cross the line, I found that so unsan nonsensical. So when it came to lockdowns, I understood that it would have other implications socially, economically, and education wise, and we needed to be very cautious about how we do this.
It's going to have long term repercussions. And so we got to balance the benefit of a lockdown against the the effect, the long term effect of it. And we we didn't seem to want to accept that there's going to be a long term consequence to this in the education of children, in the economy. And, of course, there were inconsistencies in the way the economy was shut down. It didn't make sense.
Here in South Africa, I couldn't go to the local hairdressing salon to have a haircut even if I decided to wear 5 masks and socially distance by distance by at 50 meters. But the local grocery store that is run by big corporates was wide open and 500 people could walk into it. So the inconsistency was what drew my attention to the ineffectiveness of the measures and the illogic in the way it was implemented. Lockdowns do have its place. But like Martin had alluded to, we need to try and protect the highest risk group.
Those not at risk would form the foundation of our herd immunity without having severe illness. So straightaway, we've limited our ability to develop a herd based immunity by locking down people that are not at high risk. Yeah. And, of course, by not, by not acknowledging early treatment, those patients that were at high risk were at even higher risk. Yes.
No. This is the bit that I think, I was working my head around because you have to remember at that time, there was no acknowledgment for early treatment. And so when you look at a first world country, effectively, what they were saying is that if you get severe disease, you wait until you need to be hospitalized and then come in. They were not giving them any options outside of hospitalization and then treatment. That was where I said that the problem was because if you didn't have early treatment options, then the pressure would inevitably hit the hospital system because a percentage of the low risk or the apparent low risk would then end up in in hospital.
That's the bit that I realized was was an issue. If you didn't acknowledge early treatment, you were stuck. Any thoughts? Yeah. Philip, if you leave a patient that's getting ill untreated, obviously, they're gonna worsen, and you're going to have to have more critical care to take care of them eventually when they present.
So it was really, nonsensical to leave people that were infected unattended by medical professionals. So, yeah, I think it was it was a huge blow. But all these things drew my attention to there being something illogical in the way it was being handled. This wasn't a scientific way to handle things. And, of course, the stifling of the discourse, like what we've seen with Martin, is actually what led to the problem.
We need open scientific discourse with all opinions being considered. Yep. And here is an another bit here that, he has stated from his thing. So at the time, he says here because he was under threat. Remember, this guy was part of the COVID vaccine safety working group, with the, with the CDC.
So he's pretty high up, and he was making these statements. And so what they were saying to him is that listen. So he said, I was tempted to just shut up, but a Harvard colleague convinced me otherwise. And so he continued to speak because she reminded him that we needed to use what whatever openings we find to raise awareness of this perspective. And as he said, a month after, he continued to tweet about it.
He was fired from the CDC COVID vaccine group because not because he was critical of vaccines, but because he contradicted the policy. So it seems as though even in those organizations where they're supposed to be acting in the interest of, the patients, this is a a a this is an all boys club. You can only play if you agree. Yeah, Philip. I think the narrative that time was follow the science, but I think it should have been follow the policy.
Yes. So, yeah, it's the science was the policy and whoever came up with the policy. So yeah. So it so this is this is really, interesting. Now I'm gonna take it to another step that he, that he did here.
And so this is him again. Now he highlighted here. He so he shared his personal thing. He had a condition, alpha one antitrypsin deficiency, and it leaves him with a weakened immune system. Now in his view, he was he should, in theory, have been more concerned about getting protected and getting vaccinated.
And he said, I expected COVID would have hit me hard, and that's precisely why in early 22, 21, when the devoted staff at Manchester Hospital connected to save his life. So he ended up in hospital because of this risk. So this would have been probably before the vaccine just before the vaccines were available. Now it seems that what then happened is that although he survived it, he was then still expected to be vaccinated. Now this was an other thing.
Now before you say anything, be very careful how you say this. They what can you say? I mean, how do we say this without risking the wrath of the sensors? But as I always said, the natural immune system is extremely sophisticated, And I could never understand why there was a perspective that the combination would be better than just the immunity. Because as I said, immunity is like clotting.
Too little, you bleed. Too much, you clot. It needs to be perfectly balanced. So there is no such thing as super immunity. There's only autoimmunity or poor immunity.
There is no in it's just immunity. So if you have immunity, that's just immunity. Now for somebody who hadn't been exposed, having some degree of protection from a vaccine could make sense. But if somebody has already been exposed, you know, and the truth is, Ishagar, if we said that at this time, that would have been misinformation. Can you believe it?
Philip, it's such an easy thing to resolve. We could have just tested antibody titers. Simple as that. And if he showed antibodies, then he we we'd we'd leave him alone. And then when we get the vaccine rollout going, compare them.
Compare natural immunity and the the antibody titers it produces to the vaccine, and we're gonna resolve the issue very, very simply. But it seems like there was no, will to acknowledge decades of science that proved that natural immunity actually exists. Yeah. This is this is a a problem, but I'll I'll share one thought with you, Shankara. The the only reason I didn't like I understand what you're saying, but I didn't like that because for somebody who had good mucosal immunity, the virus doesn't penetrate beyond the mucosal barrier.
And so, therefore, they could have been exposed, had COVID, and not have antibodies. And so, therefore, they would then be even though they may know they had COVID, they didn't have antibodies, then they could be forced still even though they know they had the infection. And so I understand antibodies certainly demonstrated, but even without it, you do have to trust the person, you know, because, well, at that time, they thought that the vaccine would stop transmission. So this is why there was such a major push. But, you know, that's that's a whole different story that, we'll not deal with now.
I'm just gonna share with you some of the the counter perspective. Now this is from, NBC 15 News, and this was sharing about the former Harvard professor of blast in the university claims truth can get you fired. So this is professor, Kuderoff. And so they were, highlighting. He was recounting the pandemic response in 2020, and they ignored data from Sweden.
I think the bit here that, it stood out that they said is several leading academics began to allegedly refer to Kuderaffe and his peers as fringe epidemiologists and as a right wing extremist. So you can see how that can happen, but let let's put this into context a minute, Shankara. Isn't there a place for not listening to some people? We can't listen to everybody, can we? How do we handle that?
I guess, Philip, we know who, has reached, pinnacles in academic performance. We know where to listen to, and we also know who the village idiot is. So I think as a scientific community, we know whose opinions to trust, and, of course, we want scientific discourse. So if there's someone with an opinion, an educated opinion that has the background knowledge in formulating that opinion, we should take that that opinion into consideration. And there's nothing wrong with debating that opinion rather than just being slanderous in your responses.
Mhmm. Yeah. I agree. And, actually, one of the problems is is that because of the way how the system listened to. Now I can understand that at the beginning of the pandemic.
You have your experts there. But there has to be as what happens in the corporate world. So in the corporate world, because they're talking about financial, compensation and loss of money. If you are the expert and your decisions make companies lose money, I guarantee you, they will not listen to you again. That's the difference with science where people can make all the errors they want.
And just because they are considered an expert, well, it doesn't matter. I can then go on because we can see how many errors were made from the leading scientists, but they're still there, still being able to say, well, this is what you do. Where or how does the system find balance? I think, Philip, when it comes to academia, it is the movement of science or the advancement of science that should be bring the accolades. At the end of the day, scientific advancement doesn't necessarily come from academic institutions.
It comes from people with years of experience. It comes from people that understand pathology more than a textbook would treat you. So the textbook gave me my knowledge, but my experience gave me the understanding. And so it's the understanding that actually brings breakthrough, not the textbook. The textbook is there to be the foundation.
The education in university is the foundation. It's known knowledge. The research that comes and brings, development is from experience. And so the more experience you have, the more likely it is that you'll see something in a different frame and have a breakthrough. So I think, the academics, the way academics is, run needs to be relooked at.
How do who are the custodians of knowledge, and what is that knowledge? How do we how do we constantly challenge it to move forward? And that's how science progresses. It's a constant challenge to what is known, but we were not allowed to challenge this time around and the science stood still. You know, and I was just thinking as I was listening to you talk, Shankar, in in your position, the problem that the regulators who are targeting you have is that you actually have a voice, and so people can listen to you.
And I I'm just thinking. I was thinking as you were talking. Anybody who listens to you speak should recognize that this is someone who has learned, who has put deep thought into things, and is trying to apply the science. And that's a problem that they've got because it's easy to target somebody who nobody knows about. But as I said, you've been speaking now for almost 3 years, and you've been sharing your knowledge.
And anybody I I challenge anybody who has listened to you to say that what you're saying doesn't make sense. Do you think that will help you when you come to facing the music with regards to regulators? I think, Philip, my journey was never about acknowledgment. It was about sharing knowledge. And, let's let's put some perspective.
We're dealing with the new you know, completely new, pathology. A pathogen that was never seen before causing a pathology that was never recognized before and, using that knowledge to figure out a treatment intervention. So I don't see who's an expert on COVID. You might be an expert on infectious disease, but this is a new infectious disease. So at the end of the day, at the start of the pandemic, no one was an expert.
We were all fishing in the dark trying to figure out what happens. Now as as as the pandemic evolved and my understanding became more widely known, I was invited by my college of training, JSS Medical College in India, as an expert COVID faculty to address the academic society and present my work. So my institution of training recognized me as an expert COVID faculty. Now I'm not a self proclaimed expert, and I don't claim to be an expert, but my teachers claim that I am. And I think that's the acknowledgment that I wished for, Not the acknowledgment of people, acknowledgment of other academics.
It was the acknowledgment of my teachers. And being acknowledged by my call by my college makes me a COVID expert. Now I'm not self proclaimed like many of the others out there. And I think, it's the egos of people around us that came to play came to bear. I've I've been a doctor that never looked to for acknowledgment, but I've always been one that seemed to supersede my peers.
That's always made me controversial. Yeah. Yeah. No. I'm gonna show you here.
This is a perspective from professor Prasad, that was shared, just today, actually, 13th March. And so this is on sensible medicine. And, what he was saying here was that, he thinks that, professor, Khodoroff, being fired was, was not right, and that's what he says. He thinks he was wrongly fired. And he was saying that, school closure was misguided policy.
Lockdowns were inappropriate, and draconian vaccine mandates were unjust. Natural immunity conferred protection against subsequent severe disease. Kids did not need to be vaccinated, and that 2 year old children should never not wear cloth masks in day care. So you you have here, an perspective of another professor who disagrees with the decision. I mean, do you think Harvard will care?
I don't think they I don't think they actually do, Philip. I think there's more more at play here than science. There's people that are involved in subsidizing and financing the universities. They seem to have a an interest or in in what is taught in universities. So the medical establishment education and the broader, practicing medical establishment is dependent on the financing of the industry, and the financing is held by a few people who dictate the terms and conditions of our employment.
Yeah. Here is, his his conclusion at that, and I'll show you here. It says, worse, this sends a chilling message that you can't speak out against policy even if it's in your wheelhouse in times of crisis. And he highlighted that the universities are full of petty rules, and you can find that you violated 1 or the other, and they can enforce and fire you. And so, obviously, he says, I think Martin was correct, but I am stunned that even those who disagree with him would want him fired.
And this is the other thing. You know? It's one thing scientifically to disagree with somebody. But a completely other thing to say that person should be fired and shouldn't be allowed to work. What is that about?
That that is, you know, that clearly must just be university politics. Yeah. I think, Philip Science is a clash of opinions, and it is it is we we debate it in a in an honest, ethical, respectful way with each other. And if someone says, that someone should be fired for their views, then they've run out of discussion, debate. They can't counter the point, and the only counter they can have is to fire the opposition.
So I think it is just a strategy to silence the debate because you're losing it. And listen to his conclusion. So this is now professor Kuldorf again, and he says, science cannot survive in a society that does not value truth and strive to discover it. The scientific community will gradually lose public support, I can see that happening, and slowly disintegrate in such a culture. The pursuit of truth requires academic freedom with open, passionate, and civilized scientific discourse with 0 tolerance for slander, bullying, or cancellation.
And he ends with, my hope is that someday, Harvard will find its way back to academic freedom and independence. Those are big words. And as it says, professor Kuller, a former professor of medicine at Harvard University and Mass General, Birmingham, founding fellow of the academic for science and freedom. So these are big statements that he's making, and you can see you can imagine how it hurts him after all his years of ex expertise. He's technically been demoted all the way down from being part of the lead for COVID for vaccine policy in the US and then to lose his professorship at the university around vaccine mandates, that must hurt.
Yeah. I think I think, Philip, I've been aware of this kind of hierarchy in medicine for many years, and I think it's the reason I've chosen to be a private independent practitioner in a little town far away from the prying eyes of academia. I I think at the end of the day, rising up amongst the ranks is a dangerous thing to do. Your life is at someone at the mercy of someone else, and they might not have the best interests, of promoting good science at at the center of their heart. And I I I can I can understand why Martin feels aggrieved?
It's his life work and contribution to a science that is now being discounted and disregarded. You know, it made me wonder, Shankara, if we are at the forefront of another time of censorship, kind of like what happened early in the pandemic as mistakes are tried to be wiped away so that no one will see them. And this this statement of pulling one of the leading critics down in this way seems like we are heading into this kind of period of time. What would you be wanting? Actually, I I I want to highlight this point before we close out.
When you think about your case coming up, what would you want to be done in a different way for those people who are making a judgment on the standard of your practice? Philip, from the start of the pandemic, Philip, the vaccine rollout was cloaked in propaganda and prejudice, and we can't deny that. From the safe and effective narrative to the 95% effective that seemed to just dwindle month by month, There was this propaganda pushed out to the public, and there was the prejudice against people that questioned the vaccine. Anyone that questioned the vaccine was duly labored anti vaxx. I'm not anti vaxx.
I've taken all my vaccines. I couldn't be called an anti COVID vaccine because I wasn't convinced by the technology. Now we're clearly aware of the prejudice that was sown. It caused people to lose their jobs. It caused families to break up.
Today's siblings don't talk to each other because of this vaccine prejudice that was clearly sown in public. People were told that if you don't take the vaccine, you're gonna kill those around you. Children were told that if they don't take the vaccine, they put their grandmoms at and put granddads at risk, and they would be and they would be, they would die in their hands. And so I think the the prejudice around the vaccine is clear for all to see. You couldn't get into a restaurant.
You couldn't fly until you were vaccinated. So clearly, the vaccine instigated a prejudice. Now from my point of view of the case, my case itself, I think the most important thing to have an unbiased case, unbiased, view of this, the adjudicating panel should be constituted of an equal number of vaccinated and unvaccinated people. The loss of all these cases based on good science is solely because we are leaving the judgment of this to people that are vaccinated pro vaccine, And it's always easier to fool someone than to convince someone that they were fooled. So if I have a vaccinated judge in front of me, I'm trying to convince a vaccinated judge that he was fooled, and I stand no chance.
And so I think it's vitally important when we look at fairness and bias, we have to acknowledge the prejudices that were instigated by the vaccine policy. And so the people that are in charge of deliberating over these issues should have a healthy, equal, balanced mix of people that were vaccinated and people that were unvaccinated. If we leave it to the current crop of vaccinated pro vaccine, individuals that are in the judiciary, then we're never gonna get the outcomes that are unbiased and, and actually, fair to all around, and that won't move the science alone. So I think the most important thing is to inquire on the vaccine status of those that are going to judge you. We can't have a racially charged case where a black person is the defendant and you have only white people on the on the on the judiciary.
That would never be allowed. This case is about vaccination. And with the prejudice around vaccination, for me to have a fair hearing, the constitution of the board should be in equal parts vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals. They can go hang that jury for the next 10 years. I don't care.
I'll get a fair case. They can argue about it all they want. But me trying to convince a vaccinated judge that he's made a mistake and he's being fooled, it's never gonna happen. And I think that's the most important thing going forward in any case dealing with the vaccines. That's a very powerful end, Shankar.
And I did want you to to capture that thought because when you had said it, I thought that was very profound thinking. You're right. There are camps. You know? Some people will never accept that it's right.
Some people will always criticize it. And in order to get some degree of balance, you do require those people who are making the judgments to have to have that conversation. And that I think is probably more important than the judgment, is the fact that if you put them together and you let them discuss their views and their own views and share their challenges from each side, you are more likely to get a balanced and fair judgment. And, I think that's a very powerful you must push for that, Shankara. I think that that would be very well worth it, and it would set a precedent for Yeah.
I think across the world where whenever anyone is making a decision. So even in professor Kuderoff's case, it should be put back to the university that they ensure that those people who made the decision that he should be fired, if this was all vaccinated, then that in itself should discredit the decision because it's bad and it's prejudiced. And I think that therefore that's a really powerful point, Shankara, and I think it's a a great point for us to end on. Thank you again very much. We will continue to talk.
And for those people who are not aware, this is what we're trying to do. Probing COVID, Macmillan Nuncetti will continue to take on different topics over the next few weeks, and we'll continue to hear about his case and what is happening with it. Thank you again, Shankar. If you just stay with me, thank you everyone for joining us. We hope you valued this conversation.
Have a great evening. Thanks, Vinod.
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