Dr. McCullough Fights to Keep his Board Certifications

A doctor who publicly questions COVID-19 vaccine orthodoxy is severely punished

Image Caption: Giordano Bruno is burned at the stake for heresy on the Campo de Fiori in Rome, February 17, 1600.

Imagine the history of medicine if—every time a new disease emerged or was described for the first time—an Official Cure was quickly imposed by government authorities, and any doctor who questioned this Official Cure was branded a dangerous spreader of misinformation.

To students of history, such a scenario is reminiscent of the Roman Catholic Church’s Holy Office of the Inquisition, founded to prosecute anyone in the church’s jurisdiction deemed to have publicly uttered or written statements that questioned Church orthodoxy on spiritual and temporal matters. In the scientific realm, the Inquisition’s most notorious prosecutions were of Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) and Galileo Galilei (1564-1642). Both were convicted of heresy for their heterodox views. The former was first publicly humiliated by being hanged upside down on Rome’s Campo de Fiori and then burned at the stake. His ashes were then thrown in the Tiber River. The latter spent the last nine years of his life under house arrest.

For a while I lived in Rome in the Via Tor di Nona, in an apartment on the site of the Tor di Nona prison in which Giordano Bruno was incarcerated for seven years before he was put to death, and I often walked past his stately monument on the Campo de Fiori—a monument to his life and death, and also to the inhumanity, illiberality, and shame of the Holy Office.

By all accounts, Bruno was an exceedingly adventurous and courageous man. At his trial, upon receiving his dreadful sentence, he reportedly gazed directly into the eyes of his judges and said, “Perhaps you pronounce this sentence against me with greater fear than I receive it.”

Because the US Constitution was so ingeniously framed, the American people lived in a free republic for over two centuries. Sometime during the last ten years or so, we lost sight of the fact that the great advances our people have made in science, technology, and medicine were entirely predicated on free speech and the free exchange of ideas. James Madison, the author of our constitution, understood that the danger of infringing free speech greatly exceeded the danger of people making erroneous utterances. The reason for his conclusion is simple: The only way to correct erroneous perceptions and beliefs is to discuss and debate them.

Six months ago, Dr. Peter McCullough received a letter, dated May 26, 2022, from Richard J. Baron, M.D., who is President and CEO of the American Board of Internal Medicine. The letter was a formal notice that the ABIM was considering potential disciplinary sanction of Dr. McCullough. As Dr. Baron stated:

ABIM has learned that you have made numerous, widely reported and disseminated public statements about the purported dangers or lack of justification for Covid-19 vaccines.

Because of Dr. McCullough’s statements—which the Board deemed to be misinformation—the Board was considering revoking Dr. McCullough’s ABIM certifications in Internal Medicine and Cardiovascular Disease. In other words, the ABIM has assumed the function of maintaining/defending the official orthodoxy of Covid-19 vaccines.

It doesn’t matter that these products are based on a novel gene transfer technology, developed at Warp Speed, and deployed on the public by means of an Emergency Use Authorization. Nor does it matter that the producers bear zero liability in the event their products cause injury or death. According to Dr. Baron, the ABIM’s understanding of these products and how the body reacts to them is a completely settled matter. Therefore, doctors who question the safety and efficacy of these products are, in effect, committing scientific heresy and subject to disciplinary action.

As Dr. McCullough and I document in our book, the COVID-19 vaccines—especially the mRNA products developed by Moderna and PfizerBioNTech—were (already in March of 2020) heralded as the solution to the pandemic, even before they were tested. As Bill Gates proclaimed in a press interview on April 6, 2020, he considered it imperative that mass manufacturing of these vaccines commence even before they were tested. This and countless other statements by Gates and his friends in public health agencies and the mainstream media indicated that the forthcoming vaccines and their mass deployment were a fait accompli.

As a medical scientist and treating physician, Dr. McCullough knew all too well the history of drugs that initially seemed safe and effective, but were later revealed to cause adverse reactions. OxyContin is a notorious recent example. Since SARS-CoV-2 arrived in the United States, Dr. McCullough has been at the forefront of researching the COVID-19 syndrome it causes and how to treat it. When the new vaccines were rolled out, he was at the forefront of investigating their safety and efficacy in the general public.

In the late spring of 2021, Dr. McCullough grew increasingly alarmed about the emerging vaccine safety data. According to the CDC, 6,207 deaths of people who’d received the COVID-19 vaccine were reported to the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) up to July 26, 2021. This was a staggering number. By comparison, the 1976 Swine Flu mass vaccination program was shut down after about 25 deaths and 550 cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome were reported.

McCullough pointed this out in his media interviews to the consternation of his hospital administrators who regarded his statements as grounds for termination. Since then, he has been systematically stripped of three professorships, multiple editorial positions at academic medical journals, and a host of other professional memberships and benefits. All that remains of his long and distinguished career are his Texas Medical License and his Board Certifications in Internal Medicine and Cardiovascular Disease. Now the ABIM wants to strip him of his certifications.

In a letter dated October 18, 2022, the ABIM gave Dr. McCullough notice that its Credentials and Certification Committee (CCC) had “determined to recommend that your board certifications be revoked.”

The ABIM’s CCC claimed that Dr. McCullough’s primary offenses were:

1). Understating the risk COVID-19 death for people under the age of 50.

2). Overstating the risk of death from COVID-19 vaccines.

In making this determination, the ABIM ignored the obvious fact that both of these risks are highly complex and multifactorial and are therefore matters of ongoing inquiry and debate. Again the ABIM made the erroneous assertion that its understanding of these complex phenomena is final, settled, and therefore codified in official orthodoxy.

By inflicting this grave punishment, the ABIM ignores the other salient fact that Dr. McCullough has, in the course of his career, achieved decades of perfect clinical performance, board scores, and hundreds of peer reviewed publications. His patients—including a growing body of vaccine injured patients—consistently give him glowing reviews as a healer.

Since I started working with him over two years ago, I have gotten to know him not only as a compassionate doctor (who frequently takes calls from sick patients in the evening and makes house calls) but also as a devoted family man and loyal friend. Beyond his boundless passion for medical scholarship, he is deeply interested in the entire human condition and the integrity of our Constitutional Republic. In the two years I've known him, I've never once heard him complain. He has borne his ongoing persecution with perfect stoicism and dignity.

He and his lawyer are doing everything they can to challenge the ABIM’s determination, but doing so is an extremely time-consuming and costly endeavor. If his stripping is finalized, it will impair his status with medical insurers and therefore his ability to be paid for his services as a physician. Welcome to the New American Inquisition.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: If you found this post interesting, please consider becoming a paid subscriber to Courageous Discourse with Dr. Peter McCullough and John Leake. For only $5.00 per month, you can really help to support us in our efforts to investigate and report what is going on in our increasingly strange and confusing world. As is evidenced by the ABIM’s action, every day is a costly battle against censorship and reprisal. Please also consider purchasing our book, The Courage to Face COVID-19: Preventing Hospitalization and Death While Battling the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex, which has received almost 800 Five-Star Reviews on Amazon.