What would Hippocrates have done?

My keynote address to Citizens' Council for Health Freedom

I was honored to be the keynote speaker at Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom’s annual fundraiser in Minneapolis. CCHF, led by RN Twila Brase, has been fighting for medical freedom for twenty-seven years.

When I was a child, I revered my pediatrician. I was terrified of him but also in awe. He was larger than life, and I put him, and every other doctor, on a pedestal. When I was considering whether or not to go into medicine, I remember thinking I could never be worthy. On one hand, I was worried about whether I could acquire all the knowledge and skills needed to be a doctor, but I was most concerned about the tremendous responsibility doctors have. I knew a mistake could hurt someone or even worse cost them their life.

With my mother’s encouragement, I started the training and as with any big challenge, bit-by-bit, I got through it. By the end of four years of medical school and five years of residency, I had the knowledge, skills and confidence I needed to be a doctor. But most importantly, I had a strong sense of responsibility for my patients. Part of that is from having a moral compass, but much of it comes from the way we are trained. We are trained very well and very hard and trained with the expectation that there is no room for error. We know we cannot fix every problem, cure every disease, but first and foremost, we do no harm.

Despite our best efforts, patient outcomes are not always what we would hope for, but as long as doctors adhere to the standard of care, we are protected from blame. Standard of care is a consensus - it’s what a reasonable doctor would do under similar circumstances. Since it was a new disease, we had no standard of care for COVID - so the government created one. Standard of care typically sits in the shadows, only to surface when a doctor needs to defend oneself, but during the pandemic, standard of care was wielded as a weapon, used to take down any doctor who did not comply. For the first time in my career, I had to choose between standard of care and what I believed was in the best interest of my patients. Most doctors chose standard of care - I chose my patients.

Medicine has evolved over time, but the values set by the world’s oldest known physician Hippocrates are still recited by every graduating medical student to this today. The Hippocratic oath is the earliest manifestation of medical ethics, and although it has undergone many changes, the fundamental principles of first do no harm and respect for patient autonomy still hold true today - at least they should.

Hippocrates was described as a physician who used common sense and experience to guide him and was celebrated for his critical thinking and flexible mind, ever on the lookout for sources of error. The physicians of his era, 5th century B.C., did not have diagnostic tests available and had to rely on clinical experience. Hippocrates worried less about diagnosis and instead focused on treatment and prognosis.

What would Hippocrates have done during the pandemic? When COVID emerged, physicians had to improvise. Initially, we did not have tests, but even when we did, the tests were less accurate than a good history and physical exam. We did not have readily-available therapeutics, so we had to use common sense and critical thinking to find treatments. In many ways, COVID was a test - a test Hippocrates would have passed, but despite all our advances, most modern physicians failed.

Why did so many physicians fail us during the pandemic? I believe it’s a combination of the personalities drawn to medicine and the way we are trained. Most doctors are rule followers to a fault. It’s very difficult to get into medical school and even harder to survive the training. One must make straight A’s, be well-liked, and not buck authority. I imagine medical school is similar to the military in that strict compliance to rules is required. Unfortunately, that type of training is not conducive to critical thinking, so when a massive health crisis hit, fear and uncertainty led doctors to seek guidance from a higher government authority. These government doctors - Fauci, Jha, Collins, Walensky, Birx, Murthy - had zero first-hand experience treating COVID, calling the shots from the safety of their bedrooms over Zoom calls. Putting all our faith in these government doctors had dire consequences.

I didn’t truly realize what kind of doctor I was until the pandemic hit, and when it hit, I didn’t realize I would be put to the test. I had a quiet, solo practice in Houston, TX, and when news rolled in about a virus spreading from China, I had that feeling that most of us can relate to when you see something on the news and think it probably won’t affect me. But in March 2020, patients with stubborn colds lasting longer than a week that settled in the chest started trickling in. As a solo physician, I was an independent as one could be. I could have shut my doors, but I didn’t have the heart. I answered a need when other doctors - like firefighters fleeing from a fire - refused to see their patients, telling them to stay home until they couldn’t breathe, then go to the emergency room.

When I finished my residency, I joined a small private practice with two other ENTs. The practice was wonderful, but I hated the stranglehold insurance companies had over my ability to practice medicine. Every test, prescription, surgery had to be approved by a nameless corporate entity who had no relationship with my patients.

I ended up giving birth to four boys in five years. I took time off from work and wasn’t sure I would go back. But as my boys got older, I decided to return, but I didn’t want to be beholden to insurance companies. Six months before the pandemic started, I opened a direct specialty ENT clinic, with the goal of eliminating all third-party interference between myself and my patients. I decided not to contract with insurance companies, hospitals or the government. I call myself “third party-free.” The only people I work for are my patients. This practice model proved to be invaluable during the pandemic.

I stumbled into becoming a COVID doctor due to a relationship I had with a lab called MicrogenDX that specializes in PCR testing. Prior to the pandemic, I used the lab to diagnose bacterial and fungal infections in my patients with chronic sinusitis. You might remember how difficult it was to get a COVID test early on. LabCorp was the first lab to offer it, but because it was the only one, results were taking two weeks to come back. The government started rationed who could get tested. MicrogenDX developed a PCR saliva test for COVID and provided results the next day. The test was contact-free, not requiring a jab up the nose. My office became known in town as the place to get a noninvasive COVID test with quick results, and my little office exploded.

When patients tested positive, I initially advised them to talk to their primary care doctors. But they turned right around and told me their primary care doctors advised them to do nothing. This didn’t sit well with me, so I started using hydroxychloroquine. Unfortunately, as soon as President Trump started talking about it, the government shut the medicine down. The Texas State Board of Pharmacy issued a decree prohibiting physicians from prescribing hydroxychloroquine for COVID - this restriction was eventually reversed, but not knowing this, I put hydroxychloroquine on the back shelf and instead used breathing treatments, steroids and antibiotics.

Initially I didn’t have much demand for treatment but that changed when I started offering monoclonal antibodies. Monoclonal antibodies worked very well, typically turning people around in twenty-four hours. I could order as many doses as I wanted directly from the manufacturer, and they’d be delivered to my office the next day. Unlike other places, I never rationed who could get them, so my office became known in town as the place to go to get monoclonal antibodies.

In the summer of 2021, the government took over distribution of monoclonal antibodies, and they became harder and harder to get. That’s when I turned to ivermectin. I was nervous about using it because of the media hype. But I did what any doctor could have done and went to the FDA’s website to find the original study Merck submitted to get the medication approved. That study has an abundant amount of toxicity data for ivermectin. LD50, “lethal dose 50,” is the amount of medication needed to kill 50% of lab animals and is a benchmark number used to gauge the toxicity of a drug. I discovered that the LD50 of ivermectin far, far exceeded the amount of ivermectin we were using to treat COVID patients. Then I did a literature search looking for reports of accidental or intentional overdoses from ivermectin. A similar search for Tylenol reveals thousands of reports - I could not find a single report for ivermectin.

Once I was assured ivermectin was safe, I cautiously started using it - I say ‘cautiously’ because I was worried it wouldn’t work as well as monoclonal antibodies. But I soon realized it did work, perhaps not as quickly as monoclonal antibodies, but over the course of the pandemic, I treated over 6000 COVID patients, and everyone who received early treatment survived.

I never had issues with safety or efficacy with ivermectin - the only issue I had was with access. In my twenty plus years medical career, I had never seen anything like the hurdles my patients faced in trying to obtain ivermectin.  These obstacles had nothing to do with safety and everything to do with a politicized agenda to get every American to get the shot.

On December 11, 2020, Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 shot became available under EUA in individuals 16 years of age and older.  Americans were rightly hesitant to step up and take this new type of vaccine lacking long-term safety data.  Three months after the rollout, only 20% had received one dose.

The government was upset by this and knew ivermectin was part of the problem. As long as people had the option to get safe, effective treatment, they would be less willing to get the shots. On March 5, 2021, the FDA launched an attack on ivermectin, adding a page on its website stating ivermectin should not be used for the treatment or prevention of COVID-19.  The FDA also published an ivermectin FAQ, entitled “COVID-19 and Ivermectin Intended for Animals.”

Days later, Biden announced the deployment of a $11.5 billion COVID shot PR campaign. Biden’s new propaganda machine, COVID-19 Community Corps, partnered with 275 other groups in all different sectors - not only healthcare groups, but faith leaders, business leaders, veterans, minority leaders, unions… all of their efforts were financially backed by FEMA, the CDC and HHS.  The web of influencers and the funds they received was so vast and complicated that they have become virtually untraceable. 

On the same day the COVID-19 Community Corps launched, Houston Methodist hospital - where I had privileges - announced it would become the first major employer and hospital in the country to mandate the COVID shots. This was five months before Biden mandated the shots, and I believe was purposeful. I believe they knew if they could get away with mandates in Texas, they could get away with them anywhere.

Later that summer, the FDA continued its attack on ivermectin with a new social media campaign. The post showed an attractive healthcare worker nuzzling a horse with the caption, “You’re not a horse. You’re not a cow. Seriously, y’all, stop it.” The tweet went viral, and ivermectin became instantly branded as a horse dewormer.

Thanks to the FDA’s social media campaign, ivermectin became very difficult for my patients to get. Pharmacies wouldn’t fill my prescriptions, citing the FDA as the reason. Medical boards went after me and other doctors prescribing it, and even the courts used the FDA’s tweet as a reason not to allow patients suing hospitals to get ivermectin.

In September, the wife of one such patient reached out to me asking if I could serve as an expert witness in her lawsuit against Texas Huguley hospital. Her husband had been on a ventilator for a month, and his doctors were discussing hospice. She asked to try ivermectin, and when they refused, she sued them.

I testified, and we won the case. The hospital was ordered to grant me temporary privileges so I could administer the ivermectin. At the time, hospitals were expediting applications for privileges in the face of staffing needs, but in my case, they dragged their feet and created roadblocks. Despite the fact that the only privilege I was requesting was administering ivermectin, they made me submit a surgical case log, letters of recommendation and fill out a thirty page application. While his life was hanging on the line, they delayed for days then concluded they weren’t going to grant me privileges. At the time, I had a spotless record and still had a good reputation. The patient’s lawyer interceded and eventually I did get them, but not without the hospital putting up a big fight.

The hospital also wouldn’t allow one of their nurses to administer the ivermectin, and since I was in Houston and not local, I had to find an outside nurse willing to do it. We managed to find one, but when we finally sent her to the hospital to give him the medicine, she was greeted by the hospital administrator and the police. The hospital had appealed and claimed to have a stay on the judge’s order; our nurse was forced to leave. The hospital won the appeal, and the patient was never allowed to get the ivermectin. His wife however, secretly applied ivermectin to his skin everyday, and he eventually made it out of the hospital. Unfortunately he lost half his body weight and never made a full recovery. He passed away on April 11, 2023.

Two days after the FDA’s horse tweet, the COVID shots received full FDA approval and two weeks later, on September 9, 2021, Biden issued the mandate for all employers with 100 or more employees. 

In the wake of these mandates, I had many distraught patients coming to me for help.  Because I was doing so much testing, I was seeing that the shots were not stopping transmission nor lowering severity - the vaccinated outnumbered the unvaccinated and were just as sick if not sicker. 

At the time, I was actually collaborating with Methodist on research, sharing with them my COVID test data. I reached out to my research colleagues asking if they were seeing what I was seeing, that the vaccine wasn’t working. They barely answered, only commenting that the shots were lowering the severity of infection. That was the last I heard from them.

Frustrated by what was happening, I started to tell others what I was seeing, sending emails to my patients and posting on social media. On Nov 7, 2021, I tweeted the same message - “Vaccine mandates are wrong” - twenty-five times.  Each of the twenty-five tweets included a different patient testimonial on how the mandates had affected them.  At the time, I had very few followers, and I didn’t expect much of a response. 

Five days later, on Nov 12, 2021, a reporter from the Houston Chronicle texted me asking if I would confirm Houston Methodist was suspending my privileges based on comments I had made on social media. I was blindsided and asked the reporter to check his sources because I had no knowledge of that. Then I went to Twitter and was shocked to see the hospital had tweeted I was spreading dangerous misinformation that was harmful to the community.  

My world was upended at that moment, never to be the same. Houston is home to the largest medical center in the world - the Texas Medical Center - and with over $13 billion in assets, Methodist Hospital is King.  The kingdom rejoiced at what their sovereign had done to me, and the story went global - I had people from Australia reaching out to me. Swarmed by the media, I was in un-chartered territory and didn’t know what to do. This bomb dropped on a Friday afternoon, and I basically spent the weekend in a fetal position. But by Monday, I got myself together and came up with a plan. I hired a lawyer and someone to help me handle the media, turned in my resignation to Houston Methodist and held a press conference.

I decided to fight back, go on offense and get my side of the story out there. They intended to silence me, but I refused to retreat, facing the media attacks head-on and suing Methodist twice. Nonprofits are required to disclose their financials, and I was certain the hospital was rewarded for being the first to mandate the shots. Despite multiple requests, Methodist refused to give me the information I wanted, so I sued them, and I also sued them for defamation. Despite my best efforts to to take down Goliath, Methodist turned out to be bigger and stronger than Goliath; I lost both suits, appealed and lost again. Nevertheless, the citizens of Texas ultimately won. Exactly two years - to the day - that Methodist went after me, Governor Abbott signed a law prohibiting COVID vaccine mandates in Texas.

I expanded my fight to the federal government and along with Drs. Paul Marik and Robert Apter, sued the FDA over invading our exam rooms by telling patients not to take ivermectin. Initially our case was dismissed but was revived by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, after which the FDA asked to settle. They agreed to remove the disinformation from their website and social media, which was the objective we were hoping for. A lot of work for a seemingly small action, but the case set a precedent, preventing the agency from interfering with the doctor-patient relationship going forward and permanently staining their credibility.

The win felt great, but my fight is not over as I am still up against the Texas Medical Board. When I resigned from Houston Methodist, the hospital turned me in for resigning while ‘under investigation.’ Then Texas Huguley hospital, the hospital caring for the patient I was fighting for to get ivermectin, turned me in. Every action I took in that situation was guided by the patient’s attorneys, but the hospital claimed I tried to give my patient medicine without having privileges. TMB offered to make the accusations disappear if I paid them $5000, took eight hours of continuing medical education and re-took the juris prudence exam (a legal exam all doctors in Texas have to take), but I refused. The case started almost three years ago, and over that time, eighteen pretrial orders, two settlement offers, one amended complaint, mediation, three continuances and the addition of a second judge have occurred. The hearing is now scheduled for the week of April 28, 2025.

The medical mafia - I call them the mafia because they don’t care about patients or about health but only about control - intended to silence me, to make an example of me, and indeed, I know their actions dissuaded other physicians from speaking up as I have heard from many of them.  But not me.  As my dad likes to say, they stepped on the wrong hornet.  I am thankful to be surrounded by other hornets today…. People who have done the hard thing, at great personal sacrifice, to speak up and fight back.  I am grateful to all of you who have supported me and other physicians who have paid the price for speaking the truth.  We need our voices now more than ever.  With your help, we will prevail. 

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