Juno News - Doctors unite to oppose censorship in medicine

00:00:00.000 At its core, freedom of speech was one of the first casualties of the COVID era because you

00:00:16.820 lost the ability to even really protest against what was happening. You couldn't get together and

00:00:22.300 have a protest. If you worked in certain fields like law or medicine, were unable to speak up

00:00:28.420 about your own opinion, even if it was rooted in your professional background. It was very

00:00:34.780 enthusiastic. I don't want to say I was excited to see it, but I was pleased given the circumstances

00:00:41.040 to see so many doctors put out so many statements, even knowing what was likely going to await them

00:00:49.200 in terms of the regulators cracking down. I think it's created a bit of a movement of these

00:00:53.880 dissident free speech loving doctors who have started to come together. And one of the fora

00:00:59.460 in which they've done this is a conference in this idyllic part of Nova Scotia that is called,

00:01:05.980 just to hit you on the head with the name, the Free Speech in Medicine Conference. And it's

00:01:10.360 actually coming up this weekend. So I wanted to chat about it with the co-creator and organizer,

00:01:14.960 Dr. Chris Milburn. Dr. Milburn, good to talk to you. Thanks for coming on today.

00:01:19.120 Hey, thanks. Thanks for having me. So just explain the genesis of this first off.

00:01:25.760 Yeah. So free speech was a problem in medicine. It's been a problem in medicine over several decades.

00:01:36.780 I think many people didn't recognize that that was happening, but then suddenly COVID hit and it's

00:01:43.800 like, oh, wow, doctors are really not allowed to say what they think. It was very obvious during COVID.

00:01:49.900 In fact, our medical regulators in most provinces put out statements to the effect that all doctors

00:01:57.300 are expected to be on board with all public health measures and are expected, like we were told in

00:02:02.480 Nova Scotia not to be, and they use the terminology not to be anti-maskers or anti-vaxxers, i.e. don't

00:02:08.760 criticize vaccines and don't criticize masks. We were explicitly told that in an email missive from

00:02:14.080 our college. So it became very overt, the restrictions around free speech. But truthfully,

00:02:20.440 the walls were closing in on free speech for several decades with things like you couldn't

00:02:27.100 talk about your, what's your opinion as a physician? What do you think about the trans

00:02:31.040 moment that we're in in society? What do you think about harm reduction drug policy? All of these

00:02:37.940 things had a right answer and a wrong answer. And you had to be very careful not to say the wrong

00:02:44.580 thing publicly because there were, there started to be consequences. Like myself, people can look at

00:02:51.140 jccf.ca and, you know, if they Google the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms in Milburn,

00:02:57.800 they'll hear about my case, which happened prior to COVID. I just wrote an op-ed and I used the word

00:03:04.060 criminals in the op-ed. And apparently that's a very offensive word. So a left-wing mob came after

00:03:09.860 me and they complained about me to the college and I got dragged through the mud for a year behind the

00:03:13.960 scenes just for writing an op-ed, which was broadly popular. A lot of people agreed with it. Some

00:03:19.240 people disagreed. And then COVID, like I say, COVID hit and myself and many other people ended up

00:03:25.540 suffering consequences and losing opinions for daring to question the orthodoxy. So

00:03:30.120 we just felt that it was time that we needed a venue to discuss all of those third rail nuclear

00:03:37.400 waste topics that nobody wants to go anywhere near. So that's what free speech in medicine is

00:03:41.660 about. It's a bug light for people who think that we need to hear both sides of issues.

00:03:47.860 To go to the, I guess, the status quo here, I think anyone that's followed along with what happens,

00:03:54.140 what's happening to Jordan Peterson knows that regulators are very powerful. And the government

00:03:59.280 has kind of done something quite insidious here. And I think maybe it started off with noble reasons,

00:04:05.700 but they say, you know, we're going to just outsource the regulation of these fields to the

00:04:09.780 fields themselves. So it's, you know, the lawyers that come together and deal with the law and make

00:04:13.380 the law society. It's doctors that come together and make the medical colleges. And then the government

00:04:17.520 kind of just takes its hands off them. But the problem is that these regulatory bodies are incredibly

00:04:22.480 powerful. They're incredibly well-staffed. And they obviously have this culture that is not prone to

00:04:28.320 respecting free speech. But let me ask you if the culture that you see in the colleges

00:04:33.840 is reflective of the culture you see broadly in your field, or if everyone else is looking around

00:04:40.680 at each other thinking like you, but the college has just become this mammoth that is more powerful

00:04:46.400 than its members. Yeah, that's a great question. And actually, one of the topics of discussion

00:04:52.640 at the conference this weekend, we have a panel of lawyers who will be discussing the question,

00:04:57.600 is it nature or nurture? Is regulation creating the political climate or is the political climate

00:05:05.880 creating the legislation? And I'd say to some degree, it's just a vicious circle. They feed on

00:05:11.520 each other. So a bit of both. Certainly, the colleges have become very draconian. And as with many

00:05:19.700 institutions, they've been kind of captured by the left wing fringe. And there's a saying that if

00:05:24.620 you're not explicitly conservative, then you will become very, very progressive. And that's

00:05:29.560 John O'Sullivan's first law. Yeah.

00:05:31.580 Yeah, that's what's happened with the colleges, certainly. So what we've seen inside the colleges is

00:05:37.080 this, what I would say, a movement to have more and more and more wokeness embedded in the college,

00:05:43.460 like they put out missives about Black Lives Matter and all that, and, you know, kind of the

00:05:46.980 standard boilerplate stuff that we see from all organizations now. But and what they what's happened

00:05:53.860 is they use this term professionalism. And I call it I call it professionalism creep. It's my own term

00:06:00.900 for it. Professionalism used to be, you know, don't get drunk and scream at your patients. That's

00:06:06.200 unprofessional. And if you did that, you would understandably be hauled on the map. But then

00:06:11.520 professionalism became a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more. And now

00:06:15.380 professionalism is, hey, you forgot to use the correct pronoun for somebody when referring to

00:06:21.500 them in one of your reports, or you called somebody obese in your report, you know, they're 320 pounds

00:06:29.600 and five foot two, and you refer to them as obese. That's unprofessional. So professionalism has

00:06:34.780 crept and crept and crept to it now means if you offend anyone with anything you say, that's

00:06:41.500 unprofessional. And since you're a doctor, we can regulate you. So it goes beyond like, when I wrote

00:06:46.640 my op ed, that had nothing to do with my, my day to day practice of medicine, the complaints weren't

00:06:52.720 from people who I had ever seen as patients. It was just people who didn't like what I said, but they

00:06:57.920 used the medical regulatory college as a bludgeon to hammer my political opinion back with. And

00:07:05.520 colleges seem only too happy to oblige. You'll, I've never heard of anybody with an opinion that was

00:07:11.820 too far left wing for the colleges who they pursued. But there's all kinds of people with, with either

00:07:17.700 centrist or opinions that could be considered conservative who they've gone after. Is that

00:07:23.080 reflective of what's happening inside medicine to some degree? Yes. Medicine has become very

00:07:27.980 feminized and not, I don't mean just more females, but I mean, feminized. So medicine used to be a bit

00:07:34.820 of a cowboy free for all. You go out there, you work hard, you look after your patients best you can

00:07:39.660 bit of a, you know, an individualistic, rugged kind of profession. And now it's guideline driven.

00:07:48.140 And it's, there's so much about, uh, physician wellness that we hear every day and physician,

00:07:53.960 we're all physician burnout. We're all burnt out. We all need to pay more attention to wellness.

00:07:59.340 The volume of people we see is being cut down to take care of us better as a profession. So the

00:08:04.760 profession has become real issues though. Cause I I've heard from male doctors as well that have

00:08:09.560 talked about just increasing workload over the years. I I I've just, I've never viewed those as being

00:08:14.540 particularly gendered issues. Uh, true enough, uh, true enough, but certainly anybody, but either by

00:08:22.720 statistics or, or by a softer measures, we are a more feminized profession for better and for worse.

00:08:28.900 There's some good things that have happened with that, but you know, ask, ask a teacher if their job

00:08:33.760 is easier now, ask a lawyer, ask a police officer, ask anyone in a position of authority in Canada,

00:08:41.380 uh, if they feel their job is easier or more stressful in 2023 than it was say in 1990 and,

00:08:47.980 and every, everything's become more stressful, but, uh, doctors, we like to feel, I would say we like

00:08:53.580 to feel particularly hard done by. Fair enough. Let me then ask you about the kind of the road

00:09:00.840 forward here. Cause I, I know that in Ontario lawyers a few years back, and I know you have

00:09:05.560 Lisa Bildy who's speaking at your conference this year, who was instrumental in this kind of did a

00:09:09.900 hostile takeover of their law society and they had some success. They organized around one specific

00:09:14.720 issue. Uh, they had a little bit less success in their most recent election, but is something like

00:09:19.720 that possible within medicine? Could you mount a hostile takeover of the colleges or is it really

00:09:25.100 not structured in a way where you could replicate what they tried to do in the law society?

00:09:29.640 It is not structured in that way. In, in theory, we have some say in who regulates us. In reality,

00:09:36.460 we have no say, um, it's still unclear to me exactly how, for instance, the, the college of

00:09:45.100 physicians and surgeons in Nova Scotia has a very bad reputation. If you talk to, uh, 20 doctors,

00:09:50.600 you get 20 negative opinions. Um, but how anybody would change that is, is beyond, beyond me. I don't

00:09:58.240 think there's any way to do that. And unfortunately, because medicine in Canada, we, we are the, you know,

00:10:04.320 I'm not saying it's communist, but it's communist. It was completely government run, completely

00:10:10.220 government regulated. There's no, the doctors are not independent practitioners who do their own

00:10:15.480 thing, set their own fees, set up the way they want to practice. It's all very much regulated on

00:10:20.740 the Canada healthcare act. So out of any profession, like, uh, law, law is the wild west compared to

00:10:27.380 medicine. Um, I, I think we're, you know, this is, this is a difficult issue. You know, the, in the

00:10:33.540 woke infiltration of the law society is an issue. It's way worse and way harder to solve in medicine

00:10:38.360 than it is in law. You've got a fantastic line of, of, of speakers. I'm actually sorry. I can't make

00:10:44.540 it this year to, uh, to report on it. You've got Kenneth Zucker and Amy Ham, who've been very front and

00:10:49.440 center on the, the trans issue. You've got Lisa Bildy. You've got my colleague, uh, Rupa Subramanya.

00:10:54.220 You've got, uh, Gadsad. I mean, I, I'm just going through the list. You, you've got great names

00:10:58.540 there. And I, I fear that all the issues that you and I have been talking about are keeping a lot of

00:11:04.160 good people out of medicine. And I, I'm wondering if that's true, uh, that you've heard even anecdotally

00:11:09.240 if people that have been looking at going to med school are kind of looking around saying, I,

00:11:13.260 I don't want to be a part of this. Absolutely. It's a problem, right? So you, as well, just a little

00:11:23.340 example to get into medical school at Dow now, now during COVID, they went to an online interview

00:11:29.440 process. Cause you know, you don't want to make anybody catch COVID. So there was an online

00:11:34.340 interview and you could, you could record a video of your answer to the question and you could record

00:11:39.960 it and edit it and then finally send it when you're happy. And one of the questions was, how are you

00:11:43.820 going to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion as a physician? And obviously when you're trying to get

00:11:50.060 into med school, you know, you, you can go into med school and make lots of money, or you can go and

00:11:54.460 do something else that'd be much less well paid. So people want to get in and they know the right

00:12:00.960 answer to that. The right answer is not, I don't think diversity and equity inclusion is a priority

00:12:06.400 for me. I think excellence is a priority and I just want to give excellent care and I want to be

00:12:11.200 colorblind. And you know, that, that is the wrong answer and you will not get in. So I've talked to

00:12:17.840 numerous young people, students who are considering medical school and have heard and know this

00:12:23.740 because it gets around pretty quick and they realize I can either act woke, which robs, robs me of my

00:12:32.340 soul, or I have to actually be woke. And those are the two choices. So it is going to drive good people

00:12:39.340 out of medicine. And basically we're going to have more and more and more of a, an ideological bent on the

00:12:45.020 people who enter the field and that that's happening already. I definitely see that already.

00:12:49.540 So do you anticipate this being an annual thing or do you hope that you could actually make this

00:12:53.680 conference obsolete in the next couple of years? Oh God, that's great. It would be lovely if we

00:12:59.820 didn't need this, right? I have lots of other things I'd rather do. I live here in Cape Breton.

00:13:04.340 I love kayaking. I love cutting a little bit of wood and sitting in front of my fire, but instead we've been

00:13:09.340 slaving away for three months trying to get ready for this conference. I would love to put myself out

00:13:15.780 of business. Do I see that happening anytime soon? No. I think the trends for free speech and medicine

00:13:21.560 are still, sadly, they're heading in the wrong direction and there's a lot more work to do.

00:13:27.360 Are we going to turn the tide? To some degree, there are a fair amount of doctors behind the

00:13:33.120 scenes. They come up to me in the mail room. They make sure the door is shut and nobody's there.

00:13:36.440 And then they'll say, Chris, I really like what you're doing, but I don't think I can really come

00:13:40.780 to the conference because they just don't want to be seen to be associated with this. So hopefully over

00:13:46.380 the next few years, as more and more people are like, okay, this is crazy. This is crazy what we're

00:13:52.500 doing. We have to do something, but hopefully more people will grow the courage necessary to speak out

00:14:00.200 and to start to turn the tide. Not happening yet, but I'm hopeful that it will.

00:14:04.220 Yeah. Don't doctors get like professional development credits or something for attending

00:14:08.560 conferences? Do they get those at yours? Yeah. We couldn't get officially recognized

00:14:15.160 as educational. We would have had to jump through all of the woke DEI.

00:14:19.720 You would have had to have started off with the land acknowledgement to put pronouns on the name tag

00:14:23.720 and basically undermine it all, like you were just saying, right?

00:14:26.380 We don't make the cut for that.

00:14:29.000 Yeah. Good. Well, that makes it all the work. That's like real professional development right

00:14:32.920 there. Screw the credits. You're going to learn a lot. All right. Let me just ask you, because I know

00:14:37.120 a lot of people listening may be interested, perhaps not this year, but for the future.

00:14:41.440 Is it just for the medical field or do you have kind of a layer outside of that of people that are

00:14:46.680 just interested in the field?

00:14:48.700 No, not at all. So when people sign up, I ask them, it's voluntary, but I ask, you know,

00:14:52.480 what's your profession? What's your interest in the conference? We have everything from,

00:14:55.860 we have lots of doctors, we have nurses, we have a strange number of, strangely large number of

00:15:01.500 dentists. We have psychologists, we have teachers, we have contractors, we have stay-at-home moms.

00:15:09.220 We have, you name the profession, we have some of them coming. So it's all over the map in terms of

00:15:17.500 the people's background. The one thing that everybody has in common, their interest is

00:15:23.080 they're afraid that they're not getting the whole balanced story on these difficult subjects,

00:15:30.020 transgenderism, drug policy, the general issue of free speech. They don't feel that they're getting

00:15:37.220 both sides of the story and they want to hear it. So the people we have are just above average in

00:15:44.280 terms of their interest, their desire to dig into things and really find out. They're not just going

00:15:51.700 to listen to CBC TV and formulate their opinion there. They want it. Well, yeah. I mean, when

00:15:56.580 doctors' rights are suspended in this way, patients' rights are as well, because if your doctor can't

00:16:01.860 speak their own mind, you as a patient are now denied the benefit of what would have happened had you

00:16:06.760 heard that doctor's opinion. So very, very well said. Dr. Chris Milburn, one of the good ones who's

00:16:12.140 going to be assembling with the other good ones in Nova Scotia this weekend for the Free Speech in

00:16:17.200 Medicine Conference. Hopefully we'll be able to check out a future one there. But Chris, thanks so much

00:16:21.480 for coming on today. Have a good event. Thank you very much for having me on, Andrew. Hope to see you soon.

00:16:25.740 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show. Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

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Juno News - October 30, 2023

Doctors unite to oppose censorship in medicine

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