From the Shaun Newman Podcast

Dr. Gary Davidson is an Emergency Room physician who has spent 16 years at Red Deer Regional Hospital, where he also served as the head of Emergency Medicine for the central zone and Chief of the Emergency Department from 2016 to 2020. Additionally, Dr. Davidson holds the position of Associate Clinical Professor at the University of Alberta.

Dr. Davidson is the Author and Review Lead of Alberta’s Covid-19 Pandemic Response, providing critical analysis and recommendations on the province’s management of the health crisis.

Justice Centre President sends an open letter to Dr. Shelley Duggan, President of the Alberta Medical Association

Dear Dr. Duggan,

I write in response to the AMA’s Statement regarding the Final Report of the Alberta Covid Pandemic Data Review Task Force. Although you did not sign your name to the AMA Statement, I assume that you approved of it, and that you agree with its contents.

I hereby request your response to my questions about your AMA Statement.

You assert that this Final Report “advances misinformation.” Can you provide me with one or two examples of this “misinformation”?

Why, specifically, do you see this Final Report as “anti–science and anti–evidence”? Can you provide an example or two?

Considering that you denounced the entire 269-page report as “anti­–science and anti–evidence,” it should be very easy for you to choose from among dozens and dozens of examples.

You assert that the Final Report “speaks against the broadest, and most diligent, international scientific collaboration and consensus in history.”

As a medical doctor, you are no doubt aware of the “consensus” whereby medical authorities in Canada and around the world approved the use of thalidomide for pregnant women in the 1950s and 1960s, resulting in miscarriages and deformed babies. No doubt you are aware that for many centuries the “consensus” amongst scientists was that physicians need not wash their hands before delivering babies, resulting in high death rates among women after giving birth. This “international scientific consensus” was disrupted in the 1850s by a true scientist, Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis, who advocated for hand-washing.

As a medical doctor, you should know that science is not consensus, and that consensus is not science.

It is unfortunate that your AMA Statement appeals to consensus rather than to science. In fact, your AMA Statement is devoid of science, and appeals to nothing other than consensus. A scientific Statement from the AMA would challenge specific assertions in the Final Report, point to inadequate evidence, debunk flawed methodologies, and expose incorrect conclusions. Your Statement does none of the foregoing.

You assert that “science and evidence brought us through [Covid] and saved millions of lives.” Considering your use of the word “millions,” I assume this statement refers to the lockdowns and vaccine mandates imposed by governments and medical establishments around the world, and not the response of the Alberta government alone.

What evidence do you rely on for your assertion that lockdowns saved lives? You are no doubt aware that lockdowns did not stop Covid from spreading to every city, town, village and hamlet, and that lockdowns did not stop Covid from spreading into nursing homes (long-term care facilities) where Covid claimed about 80% of its victims. How, then, did lockdowns save lives? If your assertion about “saving millions of lives” is true, it should be very easy for you to explain how lockdowns saved lives, rather than merely asserting that they did.

Seeing as you are confident that the governments’ response to Covid saved “millions” of lives, have you balanced that vague number against the number of people who died as a result of lockdowns? Have you studied or even considered what harms lockdowns inflicted on people?

If you are confident that lockdowns did more good than harm, on what is your confidence based? Can you provide data to support your position?

As a medical doctor, you are no doubt aware that the mRNA vaccine, introduced and then made mandatory in 2021, did not stop the transmission of Covid. Nor did the mRNA vaccine prevent people from getting sick with Covid, or dying from Covid. Why would it not have sufficed in 2021 to let each individual make her or his own choice about getting injected with the mRNA vaccine? Do you still believe today that mandatory vaccination policies had an actual scientific basis? If yes, what was that basis?

You assert that the Final Report “sows distrust” and “criticizes proven preventive public health measures while advancing fringe approaches.”

When the AMA Statement mentions “proven preventive public health measures,” I assume you are referring to lockdowns. If my assumption is correct, can you explain when, where and how lockdowns were “proven” to be effective, prior to 2020? Or would you agree with me that locking down billions of healthy people across the globe in 2020 was a brand new experiment, never tried before in human history? If it was a brand new experiment, how could it have been previously “proven” effective prior to 2020? Alternatively, if you are asserting that lockdowns and vaccine passports were “proven” effective in the years 2020-2022, what is your evidentiary basis for that assertion?

Your reference to “fringe approaches” is particularly troubling, because it suggests that the majority must be right just because it’s the majority, which is the antithesis of science.

Remember that the first doctors to advocate against the use of thalidomide by pregnant women, along with Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis advocating for hand-washing, were also viewed as “advancing fringe approaches” by those in authority. It would not be difficult to provide dozens, and likely hundreds, of other examples showing that true science is a process of open-minded discovery and honest debate, not a process of dismissing as “fringe” the individuals who challenge the reigning “consensus.”

The AMA Statement asserts that the Final Report “makes recommendations for the future that have real potential to cause harm.” Specifically, which of the Final Report’s recommendations have a real potential to cause harm? Can you provide even one example of such a recommendation, and explain the nature of the harm you have in mind?

The AMA Statement asserts that “many colleagues and experts have commented eloquently on the deficiencies and biases [the Final Report] presents.” Could you provide some examples of these eloquent comments? Did any of your colleagues and “experts” point to specific deficiencies in the Final Report, or provide specific examples of bias? Or were these “eloquent” comments limited to innuendo and generalized assertions like those contained in the AMA Statement?

In closing, I invite you to a public, livestreamed debate on the merits of Alberta’s lockdowns and vaccine passports. I would argue for the following: “Be it resolved that lockdowns and vaccine passports imposed on Albertans from 2020 to 2022 did more harm than good,” and you would argue against this resolution.

Seeing as you are a medical doctor who has a much greater knowledge and a much deeper understanding of these issues than I do, I’m sure you will have an easy time defending the Alberta government’s response to Covid.

If you are not available, I would be happy to debate one of your colleagues, or any AMA member.

I request your answers to the questions I have asked of you in this letter.

Further, please let me know if you are willing to debate publicly the merits of lockdowns and vaccine passports, or if one of your colleagues is available to do so.

Yours sincerely,

John Carpay, B.A., LL.B.
President
Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms