We would much rather people submit robust responses to columns that appear here than attack us for publishing pieces they disagree with.
In a previous article, I discussed Dr. Vinay Prasad who said:
Yeah, I don’t believe in forgiveness because in my opinion these pieces of shit are still lying I mean like if you want forgiveness the first thing you have to say is what you actually did wrong And they’re still fucking like this well based on the best information we had that the time cloth masking two -year-olds was a sensible No, it wasn’t you fucking liar.
These vulgar threats are a routine feature of Dr. Prasad’s communications. However, because they are directed towards anyone who tried to limit COVID, his collaborator Dr. Adam Cifu is totally fine with them. Even though public health officials have needed bodyguards, Dr. Cifu continues to amplify Dr. Prasad and he has never criticized his incendiary rhetoric as far as I know.
However, Dr. Cifu feels that another class of doctors, namely those, like him, who profit from spreading pro-RFK Jr. propaganda, should be spared even the gentlest rebuke. Indeed, Dr. Cifu is a leader of Sensible Medicine, a monetized misinformation Substack that publishes agitprop such as Why Doctors Should Learn to Stop Worrying and Love MAHA by Dr. Joseph Marine, which deliberately covered-up RFK Jr.’s anti-vaxx disinformation.
While Dr. Cifu is fine profiting from such misinformation, he doesn’t want anyone to think he agrees with it. To maintain the pretense that he is a very reasonable doctor, Dr. Cifu published a rebuttal by Dr. David Taylor titled RFK Jr is NOT the Contrarian We Need. While one could question Dr. Taylor’s decision to create the illusion of false balance, his article was perfectly cromulent. Of course, criticizing RFK Jr. for his role in killing 83 people in Samoa, mostly children, is a very low bar, and Dr. Taylor passed it.
However, because Dr. Taylor accurately conveyed the risk of RFK Jr., nearly all Sensible Medicine readers hated it. This was entirely predictable. Sensible Medicine has repeatedly told its readers not to trust doctors who defend vaccines, and they’ve been effective at communicating this message. A typical and popular comment read:
Literally tens of thousands of parents can tell you in detail how they watched their healthy happy child spike a fever, scream for 24 hours, then descend into autism following vaccination. Their accounts are legion, and they are consistent. They were there, they watched it happen, they have no reason to lie. All the investigations of a possible vaccine-autism link by pharma and government have been blatant attempts to discredit parents’ first-hand accounts, not to investigate the truth. People no longer buy stories just because the press and officialdom repeat them ad nauseam. RFK Jr. is calling for nothing other than honest investigation of the truth. Hopefully we can have vaccines AND safety, but not until you and your brethren open your eyes, stop blindly repeating the lies, stop settling for whitewashing data manipulation and sleight of hand, and demand real well-designed studies.
This is the audience Dr. Cifu has cultivated and empowered. This is what he accomplished during the pandemic. This is his legacy.
Indeed, in the introduction to Dr. Taylor’s article, Dr. Cifu portrayed vaccines as little more than an intellectual parlor game, as if they were completely disconnected from the real world. Dr. Cifu wrote the following:
At Sensible Medicine, there is nothing we like better than spirited debate. It is even better when it happens without me having to respond to one of Dr. Prasad’s prompts. We welcome pieces arguing with anything we publish. We would much rather people submit robust responses to columns that appear here than attack us for publishing pieces they disagree with.
Dr. David Taylor submitted this essay disagreeing with one of Dr. Joseph Marine’s recent columns (Why Doctors Should Learn to Stop Worrying and Love MAHA). Personally, I have been worried that in some people’s eagerness to move on from the status quo, they have been too willing to ignore worrisome signs about what comes next. I have also heard people grant appointees opinions that they hope they hold, without evidence that they actually do. I think Dr. Taylor echoes, and extends, my worries.
Should we let RFK Jr. do to the U.S. what he did to Samoa? According to Dr. Cifu, reasonable people can “disagree” about this, and what really matters is that no one hurt his feelings. Dr. Cifu feels tone matters for his critics and only for his critics. They must be kind and gentle.
Motivating biases need not be considered nefarious, only considered.
Who attacked Dr. Cifu? I suspect Dr. Cifu was referring to myself and several others who asked him on social media how about much he profits from Sensible Medicine. My query was motivated by Dr. Cifu’s 2019 article The Case for Being a Medical Conservative in which he said:
The medical conservative, therefore, is pragmatic about human nature and the prevailing business model of medical science. To wit, content experts, professional societies, or journal editors who too harshly criticize an industry product jeopardize future funding. Motivating biases need not be considered nefarious, only considered.
Dr. Cifu now rejects this reasonable sentiment, believing that anyone who considers his business model and his motivating biases is “attacking” him. However, I can’t help but consider Dr. Cifu’s business model and motivating biases, and I’ve found them quite nefarious. Critics of the article Why Doctors Should Learn to Stop Worrying and Love MAHA don’t just “disagree” with it, we recognize it’s dangerous, as in children will suffer and die needlessly because of it.
He already has a body count. As Brian Deer wrote in his article I’ll Never Forget What Kennedy Did During Samoa’s Measles Outbreak.
For months, families grieved over heartbreaking little coffins, until a door-to-door vaccination campaign brought the calamity to a close. The final number of fatalities topped 80.
Any doctor who legitimizes RFK Jr. isn’t just wrong, they are saying tragedies like this don’t really matter, an attitude they expressed with COVID as well. It does not bode well for the future that doctors who can casually brush aside children killed by viruses will soon be in charge of so much. The danger is real. However, by pretending that it’s 100% fine for doctors to legitimize RFK Jr., but it’s unprofessional to “attack” such doctors, Dr. Cifu is minimizing the real threat RFK Jr. poses. Dr. Prasad told the world RFK Jr. was sane and normal, and Dr. Cifu told the world Dr. Prasad was sane and normal, while portraying his critics as hysterical and inappropriate. They “attacked”, and so the substance of their arguments could be summarily dismissed.
Dr. Cifu’s demand that he should be spared such scrutiny raises some obvious questions. Why is he exempt from such criticism? Why shouldn’t we “attack” doctors who elevate an anti-vaccine disinformation agent, especially considering he is likely to gain power? If doctors who profit from anti-vaccine disinformation are not worthy of censure, then who is? Is it OK for doctors to publish articles opposing seat belts or swim lessons? Why does Dr. Cifu refuse to disclose how much he profits from Sensible Medicine?- even though $1 is too much. Why should anyone center the feelings of privileged doctors simply because they don’t want to be reminded of their very real role in normalizing dangerous pseudoscience?
I actually believe in civil discourse, and so I hope no one launches profane, Prasadesque attacks against Dr. Cifu. However, doctors who profit in any way from pro-RFK Jr. propaganda should be calmly and politely reminded of this at every opportunity for the rest of their careers. It’s all they should be known for. If RFK Jr. succeeds in doing to the U.S. what he did to Samoa, these doctors will have paved his way no matter how much they claim to be “pro-vaccine.” This is the sad, obvious truth, though Dr. Cifu will falsely label it an “attack” to intimidate potential critics and squash the “spirited debate” he pretends to embrace, but somehow always manages to avoid.
If I were associated with an organization that normalized RFK Jr. in any way, I’d denounce it and run away with shame in my heart. In contrast, Dr. Cifu chose to stay, legitimize, and profit from it. While Dr. Cifu believes his sensibilities should be prioritized above children’s health, no one is obligated to provide him the safe space to which he feels entitled. If he feels “attacked” when people remind him of his decisions and their potential real-world consequences, that’s too bad. He should have made different choices.
If Dr. Cifu truly welcomes “pieces arguing with anything we publish”, he has my blessing to publish this article. However, something tells me this is as sincere and genuine as his claim that he is “unabashedly pro-vaccine.”
And I’ve never called anyone a “lying piece of shit”. Not even close.