Juno News - Doctor sues Queen’s University over job loss for Covid opinions (ft. Dr. Matt Strauss)

00:00:00.000 One of the people who stands out as, and I don't use the word lightly, a hero of the

00:00:13.960 last several years is Dr. Matt Strauss.

00:00:17.220 Now, Dr. Strauss, you've seen on this program before, he's been a tremendous advocate for

00:00:21.900 not COVID denialism, not anti-vaccine rhetoric of just science and medicine and of taking

00:00:28.340 a very traditional view of medicine, which is that you should try to personalize it to

00:00:33.320 the patient and not paint entire societies and countries with a one-size-fits-all solution

00:00:39.160 when that may not fit their individual needs.

00:00:41.920 And he's also spoken at great length about the harms, the adverse effects of some of the

00:00:47.060 purported remedies and treatments, such as lockdowns, for example.

00:00:51.040 And it's his COVID skepticism that Dr. Strauss argues jeopardized his role at Queen's University

00:00:59.100 and ultimately led to him being forced out of that role.

00:01:01.740 He has now filed a lawsuit against Queen's.

00:01:05.860 And while we can't talk about this matter because it is before the legal system, I did

00:01:10.100 think it was a good opportunity to talk in general about the retrospective on this last

00:01:14.980 few years and where it all went so wrong from an academic freedom, a medical freedom and

00:01:20.540 a free speech perspective.

00:01:21.780 So Dr. Matt Strauss joins me now.

00:01:24.540 It's good to talk to you again, Dr. Strauss.

00:01:26.020 Thanks for coming back on the show.

00:01:27.680 It's always nice to talk to you, Andrew.

00:01:28.960 That introduction was too kind.

00:01:31.620 Well, it was very much deserved.

00:01:33.800 And I say that just to not to toot your horn even more, or maybe I am trying to do that.

00:01:38.840 But I say that because a lot of people didn't realize how much doctors were putting on the

00:01:43.780 line if they did speak out.

00:01:45.780 And I would say there were probably some cases where people didn't realize their own power

00:01:50.180 and they didn't realize that they did have a voice.

00:01:52.200 But but there were a lot of times where people said, look, it's if I speak up, I lose the

00:01:56.860 ability to practice medicine or they feared that was going to happen.

00:02:00.320 And I was wondering where you sort of land on this now, having seen some of your colleagues

00:02:04.700 and you've seen people go through this process.

00:02:06.860 Do you think that the negative consequences for those who spoke out are over?

00:02:12.240 Oh, no, certainly the negative consequences aren't over.

00:02:16.760 And that's not just for physicians.

00:02:19.520 You know, since I started speaking out about some of my concerns about pandemic management,

00:02:24.680 but especially since unfortunately, this news of my lawsuit was made public, I've heard

00:02:31.180 from so many Canadians.

00:02:32.320 A real estate agent texted me today to say that she had had a hard time being able to

00:02:36.460 speak out child, a child psychologist reached out to me, a construction company executive.

00:02:43.160 I've I've heard from school board trustees like it.

00:02:45.480 It seems to me that throughout Canada exacerbated during the pandemic.

00:02:49.480 But in all areas of public life, people feel that they can't speak their mind.

00:02:55.700 And my my fundamental concern is we're not going to have good public policy if we don't

00:02:59.700 have good public debates about things.

00:03:02.620 So I see in every area that people are still suffering from things that happened to them.

00:03:08.460 And, you know, I think you were speaking about wildfires and climate change before I came

00:03:12.920 on.

00:03:13.900 In some ways, we're suffering from it now.

00:03:15.720 I want to hear from a forestry expert.

00:03:17.820 I want to hear from firefighter experts about what could be better about our wildfire response

00:03:22.400 right now.

00:03:23.200 So so no, I don't I don't think this problem has gone away.

00:03:25.920 And I think we all need to keep pushing against it and just speaking out for a free, open,

00:03:29.920 liberal, democratic society where people can speak their mind.

00:03:33.420 You know, in some cases, there is a reason that we have certain established facts in science.

00:03:39.840 And I'd say in medicine, there are probably certain things that are fairly universal and,

00:03:44.960 you know, certain medical treatments of history that have been lost to history and probably

00:03:48.840 for good reason.

00:03:49.560 So on one hand, we don't want the doctor that's going to come out and say, oh, you know what?

00:03:53.220 I think bloodletting needs to make a comeback or something like that. 0.69

00:03:55.920 But at the same time, we also need to have room to discuss and to debate.

00:04:00.520 And when the science isn't clear to say, well, hang on, I you know what I'm seeing in my

00:04:04.040 patients is this or what I'm seeing in this study is this.

00:04:06.660 And I'm curious where that I mean, how should you let yourself as a physician be guided in

00:04:13.100 that?

00:04:13.300 Because on one hand, you want to do what's in the best interest of your patients.

00:04:16.000 And but on the other hand, if a problem is presenting itself, you don't always have

00:04:19.700 time to go through that, you know, academic discourse and study when you're figuring

00:04:23.420 it out.

00:04:23.780 And I'm talking, of course, about the pandemic.

00:04:25.380 I believe that it provided a sense of urgency for doctors.

00:04:28.680 But but what was the proper response to that without, you know, basically belaboring

00:04:33.740 something where urgency was required?

00:04:35.580 So the practice of medicine needs to be sacrosanct.

00:04:40.960 It needs to be approached with great humility and a lot of caution.

00:04:45.460 And professional bodies do need to govern how medicine is practiced.

00:04:48.860 So if if I were going out saying Andrew Lawton, I think that you should you should treat your

00:04:54.460 COVID with acupuncture.

00:04:55.840 That would be wrong because acupuncture doesn't treat COVID and I'm not your physician.

00:05:00.900 I haven't done a history and a physical on you.

00:05:03.400 We're speaking in public.

00:05:05.000 You're not benefiting from physician patient confidentiality right now.

00:05:08.300 So I really take very seriously the sorts of recommendations that physicians give to their

00:05:15.580 patients.

00:05:16.000 But that that's different than having a concern about public policy.

00:05:19.680 And again, I don't want to get into the facts surrounding the case, but it fundamentally

00:05:24.680 it was made clear to me that the problem I was having with the administration was that

00:05:29.360 I criticized the government.

00:05:30.300 And that's that's very different from practicing medicine.

00:05:32.820 So physicians need to be able to criticize the government.

00:05:35.540 They need to be able to criticize public policy.

00:05:37.860 Um, but I 100% agree that physicians cannot cannot recommend quackery to their patients

00:05:43.700 and nor should they be making medical recommendations to people who are not their patients in public

00:05:47.320 or otherwise.

00:05:48.340 The funny thing too about universities, and I don't want to draw a false equivalence between

00:05:52.640 real science and, you know, political science, which I studied, but, you know, universities

00:05:57.320 pride themselves on being anti-authoritarian in so many other disciplines.

00:06:01.200 You know, they would celebrate a professor who came out with some scathing report that condemned

00:06:06.180 the government's approach on, you know, some national security law or something like that.

00:06:10.380 And it's weird that that skepticism of academic inquiry and really the purpose of academic

00:06:15.720 inquiry, which in university medicine, I think is incredibly important, is completely gone

00:06:20.140 on this.

00:06:20.640 The government says it, ergo, we just accept it.

00:06:23.880 Yeah, I think this is a bit new.

00:06:26.360 I think I think it was seen, um, prior to COVID, uh, around things to do with, I think,

00:06:32.560 I, obviously the, um, the Israel and Palestine conflict will be with us forever, but I know 0.96

00:06:37.720 that on both sides of that, uh, that set of issues, professors ran afoul of their administration

00:06:43.360 over the last 10 years.

00:06:44.580 But, uh, 100%, this, this idea of academic freedom being sacrosanct was a foundational

00:06:50.480 principle to universities for hundreds of years.

00:06:53.060 Um, in one meeting that I went to, I brought up Chomsky was a, uh, uh, I think it's fair

00:06:58.900 to say a radical leftist and a very interesting thinker, um, was, was arrested by the government

00:07:04.880 at one point for attending a Vietnam war protest.

00:07:06.840 And as, as far as I'm aware, his institution, uh, stuck, um, with him, uh, through thick and

00:07:12.280 thin.

00:07:12.620 And, and thank goodness, because I don't, I certainly don't agree with Chomsky and everything,

00:07:16.180 but I, he's a profoundly interesting thinker.

00:07:18.800 And I have benefited from, uh, hearing his thoughts and I, and I've come to agree with

00:07:22.520 him about how many of the things that he has said since, since the sixties and that

00:07:25.760 arrest.

00:07:26.760 And one of the problems with, with governments, and I'm, I'm using the, them, that in the

00:07:31.020 broadest possible sense of, of just institutions in general is that they are fallible and, and

00:07:36.620 they know they're fallible in some cases.

00:07:38.300 They don't often admit it.

00:07:39.360 Uh, one example that comes to mind is Western university, my alma mater, you went there for,

00:07:44.580 for med school as well.

00:07:45.640 This is a university that had, uh, I think it was a one of a kind or maybe one of two

00:07:50.080 in the country, which was this academic year, putting in place a booster mandate for students,

00:07:55.100 not just a vaccine mandate, but a booster mandate, which was supposed to go into effect

00:07:59.040 in, uh, September of, I guess it would have been 2022.

00:08:02.840 And there was a rally held a round a year ago at which I spoke at which you spoke at

00:08:07.700 which, uh, your, your medical colleague, Dr.

00:08:09.760 Martha Fulford spoke and a number of student activists and Western eventually backed off that.

00:08:14.600 Now they didn't credit it to the backlash.

00:08:16.160 They just kind of just let it die on the order paper.

00:08:19.080 And then a few months later said it's no longer necessary.

00:08:21.460 But, uh, there's a case in which Western said one day the science requires a booster

00:08:25.640 for students.

00:08:26.280 And the next day said the science no longer requires a booster for students.

00:08:30.040 Uh, so this deference that was expected of you at Queens and of people elsewhere is on

00:08:36.480 its face absurd because how is that deference supposed to factor into a world in which governments

00:08:41.440 will change what they believe the science leads them to?

00:08:45.480 Yeah.

00:08:45.800 I, and thank you for bringing up that episode with Western and I I'm biased.

00:08:49.840 I love Western.

00:08:50.760 I'll always love Western.

00:08:51.760 I'm glad they did the right thing in the end.

00:08:53.720 Um, and I, I was so proud and lucky to be part of that, that student led movement.

00:09:00.440 Um, and, but it is true that whoever was doing the university's press releases at that time,

00:09:06.760 um, who I'm almost sure was not a scientist, but a communications professional of some sort

00:09:11.320 or another was, was claiming that the science was on their side and science, um, science doesn't

00:09:16.120 really take sides.

00:09:16.920 Science is a process of open inquiry and debate and evidence gathering and, um, argument synthesis.

00:09:23.000 So it, it certainly wasn't the case in that instance that the science was on their side.

00:09:27.960 Um, and I'm, I'm glad Dr. Fulford and I were able to, to draw some attention to that.

00:09:33.160 And I, I guess I, I, I like to think that we had some effect on that ineffective and harmful

00:09:40.440 mandate being withdrawn.

00:09:41.640 Um, I, I would have liked to have seen maybe a bit of a mea culpa from the university on that

00:09:46.520 point of view, but I, I still love them.

00:09:48.200 Um, when you look around at Queens in your situation, and again, I'm, I'm very careful.

00:09:53.720 I know you can't talk about too much of the facts of the case.

00:09:56.360 So if I'm, if I'm asking too much, please let me know and I'll, I'll back off.

00:09:59.640 But, but when you look around and saw the dynamic with your colleagues there, were you just the

00:10:04.280 outspoken one and, and everyone else was kind of the same as you were on this, but didn't

00:10:08.960 want to put their neck out or, or did you really feel like you were alone in this and

00:10:13.320 that, you know, everyone else was really, uh, adopting that line that you were expected

00:10:17.640 to adopt genuinely?

00:10:19.880 I certainly am not the only one who felt the way that I did.

00:10:23.080 Um, I was the only outspoken one who, to my knowledge, I was the only outspoken one to

00:10:29.960 maybe have a set of, uh, views that I had.

00:10:32.920 There were several, I had several outspoken colleagues who took maybe some views contrary

00:10:37.480 to mine, and I would have loved to have had a debate with them, uh, either, you know,

00:10:41.720 either on a podcast or somewhere at the university.

00:10:44.760 Um, it became clear that you were, it became clear to me at many universities that individuals

00:10:52.360 who were towing the party line were allowed to be outspoken and people who criticized the

00:10:56.040 party line were not allowed to be outspoken.

00:10:57.960 But I, um, throughout all of this, uh, like I said, I've heard from so many Canadians of all

00:11:02.680 walks of life, but many of them were, um, colleagues of mine at the university.

00:11:07.000 And I'm not a political person.

00:11:09.880 I'm not a political organizer.

00:11:11.080 I, I never, I never thought, oh, I know what I'll do.

00:11:13.800 I'll organize a demonstration or I'll organize a petition or something like that.

00:11:17.240 And maybe that was an error of mine.

00:11:19.480 Um, but I, I, they, you know, they had careers, they were doing work that was really important.

00:11:25.160 Um, they also have mortgages and kids and that sort of thing.

00:11:27.640 And I, it never occurred to me to, um, ask someone to stick their own neck out.

00:11:33.480 Um, and, but, and I, and I, I understand that it's, I, it's a, it's a lot to chew off.

00:11:42.120 Uh, and one does not want to bite off more than one can chew.

00:11:46.040 Well, one of the challenges, I mean, you literally had your, I, I didn't, I'd missed this part of

00:11:50.760 your story.

00:11:51.160 And I, when I read about it in the national post, you had had your belongings shoved into

00:11:54.520 a cardboard box.

00:11:55.800 I mean, one of the most sort of depersoning things that, you know, an employer can do.

00:12:00.360 And, and you had that done to you.

00:12:01.640 And, and at the time, if I recall, it had kind of blindsided you in a way, because you weren't

00:12:06.520 even aware there was an issue.

00:12:07.640 Like you weren't even aware that you had been doing something even purportedly wrong in the

00:12:12.360 university's eyes.

00:12:14.840 Um, I would, I would rather not speak with great specificity about what I thought and when,

00:12:23.080 and, and what I perceived and when, because I, um, uh, that would, that would be a little

00:12:28.120 bit from the hip.

00:12:28.760 And, and I, I just want, I want to be really, really careful.

00:12:32.120 Well, let, let, let me, let me take a different approach then on, on this, which is to ask you

00:12:38.440 how you feel about what happened moving beyond it.

00:12:41.480 I know that's sort of a sappy question that I would, you know, criticize most hard hitting

00:12:45.640 journalists for asking, but, but I'll ask you how you feel looking back at it.

00:12:48.680 Because I, I've never seen from you, even when this has been going on anything resembling,

00:12:53.160 uh, bitterness or antipathy to Queens.

00:12:55.000 In fact, I've only ever heard you speak highly about your, your time at, in academia, both

00:12:59.720 as a student and as a, as on the, the admin side.

00:13:03.640 I guess I have a few things to say about that.

00:13:04.760 One is I, I, it was a great privilege.

00:13:08.040 It was, um, the best job I've ever had getting to, to teach medical students.

00:13:13.400 Um, and you know, I still practice medicine.

00:13:16.440 It's, it's always a privilege to get to look after, uh, folks who are having a hard time,

00:13:20.280 uh, who are ill.

00:13:21.480 So, um, and, and to my former colleagues, even the ones who disagreed with me, um, I, I, I, I honestly

00:13:29.560 have nothing but, but love.

00:13:30.760 Um, I, this lawsuit is a dispute with, with some, some elements of the administration.

00:13:37.240 Um, but frankly, I, I received, um, not just from colleagues, uh, uh, texts of, of, uh,

00:13:44.280 support, but, but also from professors in other departments.

00:13:47.560 So a professor of law and a professor of bioethics both reached out to me, you know, way back

00:13:51.720 when, when, when all this was happening.

00:13:53.400 So I, I have so much warmth for the, the Queens community that, that, that is not at all what,

00:14:01.160 um, what this is about.

00:14:02.200 And I wouldn't want it to be framed as me having anything other than, um,

00:14:07.960 warmth for my students and the colleagues and my colleagues, um, former colleagues, I guess.

00:14:12.600 And the other thing I will say is everyone had a really bad pandemic.

00:14:15.880 I had a bad pandemic in some ways, but, um, I, I saw horrible things that, um, that happened

00:14:23.720 to my patients both because of COVID and all the other ways that, um, the pandemic and the

00:14:28.680 pandemic restrictions, uh, affected their lives.

00:14:31.480 So I, you know, I had folks who were, um, between life and death in the ICU for three months,

00:14:36.520 who weren't allowed to have their family visit.

00:14:38.200 And I, uh, it was like Russian novel levels of misery and despair. 0.99

00:14:44.680 Um, so I can't, I can't even somewhat feel bad about, uh, about what happened to me, I guess.

00:14:52.840 Like in, in contrary, and, and, and so I would say that if I'm, if I'm outspoken

00:14:57.880 about these issues and if I'm maybe pugilistic in terms of defending this principle of academic

00:15:03.400 freedom, I hope I'm doing it for these more public concerns than what happened to me.

00:15:08.280 Cause I, I'm fine.

00:15:09.000 I have a roof over my head.

00:15:09.880 I have, I have three square meals a day and I have a family that loves me.

00:15:13.400 Um, so I, I, I can't complain.

00:15:16.680 Well, that's a wonderful, wonderful way to put it.

00:15:19.000 And I actually think it's an incredibly thoughtful way of putting it because so much of what we've

00:15:24.200 seen of the edicts have come from people that weren't affected by what they were doing.

00:15:28.840 I mean, someone who's married and has a family at home telling someone who lives alone that

00:15:34.760 they have to stay at home alone and can't go see their neighbors.

00:15:37.640 Someone who doesn't have a family member dying in a care home telling other people that they can't

00:15:43.080 go and visit their loved one, their grandma or father or whatever in a, in a care home.

00:15:47.320 So all of these things that I would agree were, were absolutely horrible.

00:15:49.960 And I, I'm glad you've come through it the way you have.

00:15:52.440 And, uh, I wish you well in this lawsuit, Dr. Matt Strauss.

00:15:55.560 Always a pleasure.

00:15:56.200 Thanks for coming on, Matt.

00:15:57.160 Nice to see you.

00:15:58.040 Thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton Show.

00:16:00.680 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:16:07.640 www.tnc.news.com

Juno News - August 28, 2023

Doctor sues Queen’s University over job loss for Covid opinions (ft. Dr. Matt Strauss)

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript