September 14, 2021
College of Physicians & Surgeons of Alberta (CPSA) Council
2700 – 10020 100 Street NW
Edmonton, AB Canada T5J 0N3
Dear CPSA council members,
RE: Mandatory mRNA vaccine mandate for Alberta physicians
Thank you for allowing me to listen Friday morning during council’s discussion on a vaccine mandate for Alberta physicians. Let me please provide the perspective of a physician who loves his job, cares deeply about his patients, and continues to avoid the mRNA vaccines.
I am a pediatric neurologist and researcher specializing in epilepsy and neurocritical care at Alberta Children’s Hospital (ACH). I have a Master of Public Health from Harvard University and before returning to ACH in February 2020, I spent 6 years on staff at Mayo Clinic where I developed expertise in neuroinflammation. Both medical school and pediatric neurology residency were completed here in Calgary. I am also a father of 3 young children and remain very much pro-vaccine.
While I refuse to take this novel experimental mRNA therapy, my wife, children, and I are completely vaccinated, including yearly flu shots. This is not a contradictory stance as these current mRNA vaccines represent a dramatic departure from using, for instance, live attenuated viruses. Rather, they represent a completely novel and experimental therapy with no long-term data. Consider that the CDC just updated the definitions of immunity and vaccine on September 1, 2021 – 13 days ago -swapping out the prior “produce immunity” to “provide protection” (1).
On August 31, 2021, AHS President and CEO Dr. Verna Yiu, issued a vaccine mandate to all staff, physicians and volunteers stating, “workers are required to be fully vaccinated for COVID-19, by October 31, 2021”. I am now faced with the impending possibility of “an unpaid Leave of Absence to allow for compliance”. I am so disappointed by this extreme AHS coercion, and truly hope that the CPSA will steer clear of mandating this as a condition of my license. You briefly covered the legal aspects during your meeting and a vaccine mandate would certainly appear to violate individual rights as protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (2), but under the auspice of a pandemic, the Alberta provincial government is presently circumventing these rights with Bill 10 – the public health emergency powers amendment act (3).
Of course, these forced experimental mRNA vaccine mandates also directly violate the internationally accepted Nuremberg code, which was developed in 1947 to protect patients from medical experimentation stating as its first declaration that “the voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential” (4). It is because I am informed, that I do not voluntarily consent to these injections.
Despite only 3.6% of Alberta physicians continuing to avoid these shots, I appreciate that council remains concerned that an “unvaccinated” physician might spread SARS-CoV-2, resulting in possible patient harm and lawsuits to the CPSA. However, by forcing compliance based on the current data, you would be stepping on the bedrock principles of medical ethics – especially patient autonomy. The willingness to trample individual legal and moral rights in the name of perceived communal benefits, is not justified by the current medical science and will cause predictable and unpredictable harms.
The medical evidence demonstrates that the effectiveness of the mRNA vaccines has decreased significantly, they do not prevent SARS-CoV-2 transmission or symptomatic disease, and while evidence for protection against serious illness continues to exist in Calgary, that too is dissipating globally.
I will discuss that it is the vaccinated driving mutations, not the unvaccinated. I will show evidence that those who have been fully vaccinated generate similar or higher viral loads than the unvaccinated when challenged with Delta, and further clinical data suggesting that this widespread use of a “leaky” vaccine during a pandemic is leading to antibody-dependent enhancement, including evidence that this is already occurring with Delta. I will highlight some of the long-term safety concerns with these mRNA vaccines in the context of available biodistribution data. Finally, I will speak directly to the extremely low possibility of causing harm to my pediatric patients by transmitting SARS-CoV-2.
peckford42 