A long time, well-respected Cochrane doctor who is now the vice-chair of the health foundation formed to support public health has added his voice to the growing chorus of Alberta public health and medical professionals challenging the validity of the findings of a provincial government task force that has been called “biased, anti-science, and anti-evidence.”
The $2 million task force’s report was released without notice or accompanying news release on January 24.
Dr. Dennis Fundytus is the vice-chair of the Cochrane and Area Health Foundation (CAHF), a not-for-profit charitable foundation created to improve the quality, provision, and access to health care for the people of Cochrane and surrounding area.
Their Mission statement reads, in part: “CAHF is committed to work with the public, AHS, and community partners to promote, evaluate, fundraise, educate and advocate for the improvement of healthcare and urgent care services.”
Fundytus called the government’s report “very biased.”
“It has very little scientific backing to it. Its proposals are outlandish, and we have a public out there that’s potentially at risk,” he said.
“It’s very sad that this is being presented as fact to our citizens,” Fundytus said. "I feel sorry for parents with young kids, I feel really taken aback.”
Fundytus said he was in lockstep with the reaction from the Alberta Medical Association, including the complaint that people who were deeply involved in leadership positions in the actual management of the response to the pandemic (like the Chief Medical Officer of Health), were excluded from the task force.
“It questions the credibility of the politicians who, in my opinion, are supporting the document," he stated. "If you’re going to take an unbiased look at what happened, governments should do that. But this is not an unbiased look."
Fundytus said one of the unfortunate side effects of the report is some media are characterizing it as simply “anti-vaccine” in general when it is in fact focused on COVID-19.
The real risk of this type of report, he said, is the general public may be interpreting the media coverage as a reason to be skeptical about the efficacy and safety of all vaccines in general, absent of any scientific evidence.
“We’re turning people off on immunization, period, and that’s not healthy,” he said.
Fundytus said diseases like measles are seeing an increase lately, an unfortunate side effect of the public debate over other vaccines.
“My understanding is (the incidence of) those diseases are creeping up in our society, because of the disservice that’s being done by the anti-vaxxers.”
The 269-page document contains a number of statements criticizing the use of vaccines to fight COVID-19 and a range of other pandemic protections.
Jeffrey Johnson, health services researcher and professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Alberta, Lynora Saxinger, an infectious diseases specialist, physician and professor of medicine at the University of Alberta, and co-chair of the Alberta COVID-19 Scientific Advisory Group, and Dean Eurich, a pharmacist, clinical epidemiologist and professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Alberta, jointly wrote a letter calling on the province to retract the report due to its anti-science bias and factual errors. Their critique reads, in part:
"Selectively referring to single studies, social media-based data misinterpretations and blog posts on a topic is not the accepted approach in science, and will not 'take us one step closer to the truth.'"
The province's report calls for the immediate halt of the use of all COVID-19 vaccines without "full disclosure" of potential risks and to bar healthy children and teenagers from getting COVID shots.
It also points to drugs like the anti-parasitic ivermectin and anti-malarial hydroxychloroquine, which are not approved for the treatment or prevention of COVID-19 by Health Canada. A former Alberta Chief Medical Officer of Health who was critical of the entire report, said the reason those two drugs aren't used is because they don't work.
The report’s lead, Dr. Gary Davidson, had previously criticized the province for exaggerating COVID’s impact on hospitals.
Fundytus said he echoes the response from Alberta Medical Association president Dr. Shelley Duggan, who released a statement Jan. 28:
“This report is anti-science and anti-evidence. It advances misinformation. It speaks against the broadest, and most diligent, international scientific collaboration and consensus in history. Through science and evidence, we were able to learn together while observing and adjusting to the twists and turns of COVID’s destructive evolution. Science and evidence brought us through and saved millions of lives. This report sows distrust. It criticizes proven preventive public health measures while advancing fringe approaches. It makes recommendations for the future that have real potential to cause harm,” Duggan said.
The Canadian Medical Association followed suit immediately, echoing Duggan’s remarks.
University of Calgary law professor Shaun Fluker said the report has all the markings of an “authoritarian” document, as it is designed to be passed off as unbiased.
“This is the sort of thing that authoritarian governments do – they push out reports they label as public investigations, or that they suggest are based on independent analysis, when there’s nothing in the process to suggest that’s the case,” he said.
“That’s right out of the ‘Authoritarian Playbook.’”
Other panel members have well-known political ties, including panelist Jay Bhattacharya, who was nominated by U.S. President Donald Trump to run the National Institute of Health.
“It’s purporting to be some sort of an inquiry document but the process bears no resemblance to a proper inquiry at all,” Fluker said.
“They’re still operating under this COVID grievance mandate that leads to these ridiculous conclusions, and there’s a lot of that in this report, too,” he added.
Fluker ran under the NDP banner in Airdrie-Cochrane in the last provincial election. NDP leader Naheed Nenshi accused Premier Danielle Smith of “pandering to her extremist base” with the report.
The Eagle reached out to Airdrie-Cochrane UCP MLA Peter Guthrie for comment on the criticism of the report, but did not receive a response prior to press time.
