Juno News - August 28, 2023


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


Episode Stats

Length

16 minutes

Words per Minute

195.784

Word Count

3,164

Sentence Count

166

Misogynist Sentences

1

Hate Speech Sentences

2


Summary


Transcript

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.
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
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.
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.
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