22 Comments

I think this is the sad state of the medical establishment today. It makes it hard to trust any doctor. They could be the best doctor on the planet, but if they are unwilling to stand up to the establishment, then what good are they?

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I thought that same thing. We are only silenced if we remain silent.

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Most doctors are just cogs in the wheel. A cog cannot stand up to the wheel, or to the engine that drives the wheel.

It has been like this for decades, if not centuries. Covid simply made it more obvious to more people.

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I'm mad Harrington silenced any of the Stanford faculty, including my former college classmate, Dr. Bendavid.

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Department Chairs actively suppressing debate on a clinical problem is like any front line physician failing to give a patient informed consent.

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Doing some googling, it seems that as a mainstream cardiologist, Dr Harrington, staunchly defends the cholesterol theory and the widespread (soon universal?) use of cholesterol-lowering drugs in primary prevention. Cardiologists who have rightfully questionned this doxa (with facts) have known for long what it is to be silenced, ridiculed and demonized by bullies. Thus, I am not surprised by this sad store.

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Chairs and deans DO decide what truth is - their truth - that maximizes their system income. That’s been my experience anyway.

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While I agree, it seems like this was more Harrington shoving his religious-scientific world view down his peers throats with the force of a Department Chair.

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Good call...

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Dr. Harrington is a highly respected leader in the cardiology community – I am glad he apologized to Dr. Bhattacharya. I think one can also see his ambivalence in the quoted emails. I think that many leaders were caught up in the great covid panic and felt the need to “get in line” during the “emergency”. I hold the top gov't health leaders more culpable for promoting the panic and the embrace of censorship.

The problem of quiet censorship, groupthink, and self-censorship in the academy is also bigger than one person and pre-dates the pandemic. I hope that more academic leaders will learn the right lessons from the past few years and embrace free speech and open academic debate of controversial topics. If not, then the special status of the university is likely to face more scrutiny.

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I have found referring to “shouting fire in a movie theater” is the preferred gaslighting narrative in response to the principles of free speech and open discourse. Since Dr. Harrington used this terminology, especially simplistically referring to the Bhattacharya\Bendavid positions/questions, (in addition to being inaccurate), his own words paint him as disingenuous in this instance.

I would like to see a full retraction of his participation in the censorship apparatus that likely contributed to excess deaths and despair during the pandemic, before I would recommend him to be hired for anything.

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Academic medicine is an autocratic system. There is tremendous power concentrated in the dean or now more commonly CEO of the medical school and in Department Chairs. There is no tradition of collegial debate among the faculty. Very few qualified academic doctors spoke out during the pandemic. Consequently, when the corruption of the CDC and FDA as well as Fauci and Birx, there was nothing said from the faculty in most medical schools, just obsequious deference to the experts.

Stanford is no different. Battacharya likely received little support from fellow Stanford Med School faculty. This is really shameful and explains why so many in the general public have lost respect for the profession of medicine.

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I had been thinking the twin pressures of Biden politics and Fauci financial interests were responsible for guys like Harrington to suppress the free speech and opinion of someone of Bhattacharya’s stature. But the email from Harrington where he equates previous vaccines with the genetic mRNA drugs and compares concern about the risk/benefit of these genetic drugs to yelling fire in a crowded theater, reveals this might be a simple case of scientific ignorance and group think. A Stanford Medicine Department Chair should have the intellectual curiosity to understand the pharmacodynamics of these drugs (mechanism of action, dose, distribution, and duration) resulting in the adverse events we have been observing. https://jackcaskinsmd.substack.com/p/the-duplicitous-design-of-dose-distribution

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It’s a sad story that our country is so authoritarian that, in academia no less, voices are muted!!!

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I found this interview enraging. I hate the term rogue faculty-all faculty should be rogue! They should be independent speakers, thinkers, researchers with their best work always in front of them. This is dinosaur thinking and so it will go.

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I’ve been thinking this all relates to McClelland’s “need for power”-- the emotional drive towards status, influence, control over others and winning. It was just too easy to spot these people during COVID-- school administrators, board members, rabbis, nurse administrators, community doctors and ID specialists long-ignored by the broken payment structure of US medicine... I don’t know, it’s all very frustrating but I don’t see it changing any time soon. People like Harrington ensure its entrenchment and perpetuation for generations. We need the VPs and Jay B’s of the system to keep talking-- LOUDLY!

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So..... Did Harrington lie then that someone higher up told him to silence those below him? Is that what I'm reading?

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Looks like it.

So all the bullying of 'contrarians' did not originate from Biden or Bourla. There were also many petty tyrants in the chain of command. Like Harrington.

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It's always important to understand who's buttering your bread.

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In his book "Take Two Aspirin and Call Me By My Pronouns:

Why Turning Doctors into Social Justice Warriors is Destroying American Medicine"

Stanley Goldfarb, MD laments the decline of American medicine and says the lack of expertise

and knowledge that a doctor in a high position (such as Stanford's Harrington) has does not stop him from making blanket statements and silencing those under his control who have other views.

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I think the unfolding story of Covid-19 may alert to many more things than we thought possible, and bad. Maybe this will be a long time good out of much tragedy in this and in academia of all sorts...be skeptical and questioning.

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