The bigger problem is that lockdowners like Howard (an NYU doctor, I think), think that living your life is an irresponsible act. Sending your kids to school is an irresponsible act.
As SBM readers know, my articles extensively quoted Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and explained in great detail why I disagreed with him. I provide references so anyone could check my work. I don’t just lob schoolyard taunts at him or make dishonest straw man arguments. I always try to include videos of him speaking in my articles, and I have a YouTube channel devoted to preserving doctors’ words. We Want Them Infected presented the Great Barrington Declaration its entirety. I wanted my readers to know exactly what he said about natural immunity leading to herd immunity. My criticisms of Dr. Bhattacharya may have been blunt and snarky, but they were also serious and in good faith.
That courtesy was not repaid to me. Dr. Bhattacharya never engaged with any argument I made or data I presented. He engaged with me entirely on an emotional level and refused to have any discussions of science and data. It was impossible to converse with him in good faith. He called me “unhinged” and “inane”. He was livid I refused to silence and censor him. In response to one article- A Letter to My Critics: To Refute Me, Stand Up For Your Own Words– that quoted him extensively, he said:
Wait, you’re sending me to a Jonathan Howard essay? I didn’t realize that you were a troll.
I wasn’t trolling Dr. Bhattacharya. Its not my fault he was angered by his own words.
In contrast, Dr. Bhattacharya left a long review of We Want Them Infected that did not quote me at all. Instead, he used straw man arguments to try to discredit my collection of quotations. Dr. Bhattacharya signaled that he was too important to look up where I work and said:
The bigger problem is that lockdowners like Howard (an NYU doctor, I think), think that living your life is an irresponsible act. Sending your kids to school is an irresponsible act. The implication is that unless you comply with his prescription — lockdown with no logical endpoint — you are irresponsible.
I never said anything like this, and Dr. Bhattacharya later admitted he hadn’t read my book. His “review” was entirely fake.
However, beyond running from substantive discussion, Dr. Bhattacharya’s dishonesty served another valuable purpose. He blamed me for the problems I discussed. For example, I recognize that in August 2021, when Dr. Bhattacharya helped run the show, the headlines read School Closures Reported In Five Florida Counties; Districts ‘Drowning’ In COVID. Because I acknowledged such unwanted realties Dr. Bhattacharya claimed I actively campaigned for them- sending your kids to school is an irresponsible act. In reality, I didn’t write about schools and COVID until the end of 2022, after schools had been open for over a year.
However, by falsely claiming that my “prescription” was lockdowns forever, Dr. Bhattacharya sought to erase SARs-COV-2 and displace its impact onto those of us who refused to deny its impact. Anyone who recognized reality became the villain in his narrative, not the virus, and Dr. Bhattacharya tagged me to summon a social media mob. This obviously served as a deterrent to anyone else who might be similarly motivated to recognize reality. No one wants to be blamed and attacked by online marouders for problems they merely identified. I didn’t call for 5 counties to close their schools in Florida 4 years ago.
I will establish a culture of respect for free speech in science and scientific dissent at the NIH.
Dr. Bhattacharya’s behavior may seem like just another example of bad faith engagement, and it certainly is. However, it is worth discussing because it is still happening now and because Dr. Bhattacharya promised that things would change once he came NIH director. During his confirmation testimony he said:
I will establish a culture of respect for free speech in science and scientific dissent at the NIH. Over the last few years, top NIH officials oversaw a culture of coverup, obfuscation, and a lack of tolerance for ideas that differed from theirs. Dissent is the very essence of science. I will foster a culture where NIH leadership will actively encourage different perspectives and create an environment where scientists – including early career scientists – can express disagreement respectfully.
Dr. Bhattacharya said this because he felt he had been unfairly treated himself. On his first day in office, when over 1,000 NIH employees were purged, Dr. Bhattacharya lamented in a podcast with Bari Weiss that he had been called “fringe” in a private email by the previous NIH director. He felt he was owed a public apology. Of course, as those of was who worked on COVID units know, being called “fringe” isn’t that bad, and we only know about this email because of a FOIA request. Dr. Bhattacharya made this email famous and built his identify around having been called “fringe”. Without his tireless efforts, no one would have ever known he had been insulted. Predictably, Dr. Bhattacharya never engaged with the merits of Dr. Collin’s arguments regarding his plan for herd immunity via natural infection. He just wanted everyone to know he had been called “fringe.”
He made a video about this not long ago titled Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya Responds to Being Called ‘Fringe’ in Collins, Fauci Emails.
“There are some patients who might have to wait until September,” Rosenberg said. “These are all patients with metastatic cancer that is progressive. You can imagine the difficulty as we have to tell them these things.
Though Dr. Bhattacharya claimed to value a “culture of respect for free speech in science and scientific dissent” the news headlines under his leadership read: More Than 70 Nutrition Scientists Call for Freedom From Censorship at NIH, NIH Staff Lambaste Agency Head for Censorship of Science, Leading Nutrition Scientist Departs N.I.H., Citing Censorship, and NIH Employees Call for Academic Freedom and Scientific Excellence in the Bethesda Declaration Dr. Bhattacharya was also mentioned in an article titled His Custom Cancer Therapy is in an NIH Freezer. He May Not Get it in Time that said:
Richard Schlueter, 56, was planting cucumbers and squash in his community garden plot in Greensboro, Georgia, in May when he tore open a bag of soil and heard a pop. His collarbone had snapped.
In early June, a scan revealed that the cancer that started in his tonsils was racing through his bones. That day, he called a medical team at the National Institutes of Health that had created an experimental cell therapy, custom-made to attack his cancer as part of a clinical trial. He needed it. Now.
Instead, he received more bad news: His therapy would be delayed at least a month because of staff cuts at NIH.
A week later, Schlueter and his wife, Michelle, saw NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya push back on concerns raised by his own staff that the ouster of essential employees and other disruptions to the biomedical research agency were harming science and patients. Bhattacharya said on X that objections raised in a document called the Bethesda Declaration contained “fundamental misconceptions” about NIH’s new direction. Each termination was being reviewed, and some workers were reinstated, he added.
The article also quoted Dr. Steven Rosenberg, a giant in cancer research. It said:
The Washington Post first reported in early April that the production of specialized immune-cell therapies for metastatic cancer patients was delayed. Two highly skilled technicians who prepared cells for treatments were fired in the probationary purge in February, according to Steven Rosenberg, an NIH immunotherapy pioneer who leads multiple trials. He declined to say how many patients were affected, but his team now treats one patient per week, down from two or three before the cuts.
“There are some patients who might have to wait until September,” Rosenberg said. “These are all patients with metastatic cancer that is progressive. You can imagine the difficulty as we have to tell them these things.”
An official with the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees NIH, said the agency had ways of addressing the delays. Rosenberg has been granted permission to hire contractors or to request help from other scientists from across NIH, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to criticize an employee.
Rosenberg said he has been working urgently to try to rehire a scientist who was fired since he was given permission to do so last week, but the federal contracting process is slow and the scientist has been interviewing for other jobs. He noted that to prepare the cells for patients requires special training that takes four to six months.
I find it deeply disappointing of Dr. Rosenberg to claim staffing issues are delaying his research, especially in light of the funding alternatives that were presented to him, which he has been slow in pursuing.
So how did Dr. Bhattacharya respond? Did he thank Dr. Rosenberg for bringing the problem to his attention? Did he offer to help fix it? Did he meet with Dr. Rosenberg privately?
No. Dr. Bhattacharya responded in a very familiar way. He said:
@NIH remains absolutely committed to the health and welfare of our clinical trial participants, so many of whom over the years have been successfully treated and helped advance medical knowledge by orders of magnitude. I find it deeply disappointing of Dr. Rosenberg to claim staffing issues are delaying his research, especially in light of the funding alternatives that were presented to him, which he has been slow in pursuing.
As to the current re-organization, no clinical trial has been delayed, nor has any participant been dropped from any clinical trial. These are the facts. NIH clinical trial participants and the American people need to know them.
Of course this is false. Journalist Max Kozlov linked to his article NIH Grant Cuts Will Axe Clinical Trials Abroad — And Could Leave Thousands Without Care and said:
Here is some of the other feedback Dr. Bhattacharya received.
Even Dr. Monica Gandhi said:
Indeed beyond the predicable dishonesty, Dr. Bhattacharya is repeating the same manipulative techniques he used with me. In Dr. Bhattacharya’s telling, I was to blame for school closures and Dr. Rosenberg for problems in his labs. It was Dr. Rosenberg’s fault that he was having trouble rehiring a scientist he never wanted to fire in the first place. Apparently, the head of the NIH has no role in helping NIH scientists, beyond vague allusions to “funding alternatives” that Dr. Rosenberg was too slow to grasp. No wonder Dr. Bhattacharya had to be reminded that he was the NIH director and the buck stopped with him during his recent Senate testimony.
However, Dr. Bhattacharya didn’t criticize Dr. Rosenberg in an email intended for a couple other people. Dr. Bhattacharya took his grievances public. By trying to summon the mob on X, he was trying to bully and intimate Dr. Rosenberg. He was also sending a message that any other NIH employee who complained could expect to be similarly called out on social media. This all seems a lot worse than being called “fringe” in an email, especially since it comes from from a man who testified that he would “establish a culture of respect for free speech in science and scientific dissent at the NIH.” Had Dr. Bhattacharya been treated this way by the previous medical establishment, it would have spawned 1,000 Tweets, dozens of YouTube videos, 10 podcasts with Bari Weiss and Reason, and 2 documentaries.
Other dissident scientists should take note, however. The mob arrived, but unlike in the past, they were not upset with Dr. Bhattacharya’s chosen villain. While Dr. Bhattacharya previously had the power to unleash a hateful horde, no one had anything unkind to say about Dr. Rosenberg. The mob had other targets in mind. The techniques that catapulted Dr. Bhattacharya to power are backfiring now that he is in power. After years of being told not to trust the medical establishment, the mob no longer trusts the medical establishment. Today, Dr. Bhattacharya is the epitome of the medical establishment, and so the mob directed their rage at him. Dr. Bhattacharya chose this for himself, and he only has 3.5 more years to go. Perhaps being called “fringe” wasn’t so bad after all.
