Lest we forget just how nasty some people are, a nastiness that many freely exposed and even flaunted during the covid days, here's someone trying to backpedal from their libels, character assassinations and hoped-for personal and professional destruction.
From MisinformationKills Newsletter, March 29, 2024
Correction, Clarification, and Update
I am the founder and executive director of Misinformation Kills. As part of my work investigating medical and political misinformation and advocating for health equity, I have published articles on the MisinformationKills Substack newsletter and posted reports on Twitter/X. Because I am committed to providing accurate information about public health issues, the purpose of this post is to correct, clarify, and update certain statements I made in the newsletter or on Twitter/X in 2022 about the Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), Dr. Paul Marik, or Dr. Pierre Kory.
1. A September 2, 2022 MisinformationKills newsletter about federal agents in Brazil investigating FLCCC member and adviser Flaio Cadegiani as titled “FLCCC fraud investigation begins.” I intended that headline to refer only to a federal Brazilian investigation of an FLCCC member, Dr. Cadegiani. I did not intend the headline to state or imply that FLCCC itself as an organization was under investigation by Brazilian authorities or that the investigation involved FLCCC the organization in any fashion. In other posts discussing the accusations of “Crimes Against Humanity” leveled against Dr. Cadegiani by others, I used the term in connection with FLCCC. I want to clarify now that FLCCC was never under investigation by Brazilian authorities for “Crimes Against Humanity” or for any reason, and I regret making the unclear statements.
2. The September 2, 2022 newsletter also contained a factual error. It reported that the Brazilian investigation concerned an ivermectin study that Dr. Cadegiani co-authored. In fact, the investigation concerned a different study by Dr. Cadegiani, involving the drug proxalutamide. I regret making this factual error. Also, I have subsequently been made aware of an update: It was reported in April 2023 that the Regional Council of Medicine of the State of Amazonas cleared Dr. Cadegiani following this investigation.
3. The September 2, 2022 newsletter also contained the statement that “AAPS [the Association of American Physicians], AFLDS [Americas Frontline Doctors] and the FLCCC are one in he same.” In saying this, and in making other statements online discussing AFLDS and FLCCC together, I intended only to criticize their goals and policy positions as having some similarities. I did not intend to suggest that they were part of the same organization, but I now understand that readers could have understood my statements to say this. I understand that AAPS, AFLDS, and FLCCC are independent organizations that have different views, methods, and programs, and that any legal difficulties encountered by AFLDS and its principals are unrelated to FLCCC. In addition, I have no information suggesting that FLCCC has engaged in the practice of selling ivermectin or offering telehealth services.
4. A number of times in 2022 in the MisinformationKills newsletter and on Twitter, I used terms like fraud and fraudulent to criticize certain positions of and statements by the FLCCC, Dr. Marik and Dr. Kory, and to criticize certain studies by Dr. Marik or Dr. Kory. My posts have also characterized the use of ivermectin in treatment with words like “grift.” I take this opportunity to clarify that I did not mean my statements to be understood as conveying anything more than intense criticism, and I regret if anyone understood the statements as accusations that any of them had engaged in fraudulent professional or business practices. This includes my criticism of a study by Dr. Marik and others investigating the effect of vitamin C on sepsis published in the journal CHEST in 2017. I also note that CHEST later reported to readers that it was “unable to confirm” the concerns raised by the individual who initially alleged that the data underlying the CHEST study was flawed, and it declined to retract the study. The individual has since retracted that claim. Regarding my criticism of a meta-analysis by Dr. Kory and others discussing the use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19 published in the American Journal of Therapeutics in 2021, I note that the Expression of Concern related to one of 30 underlying studies. I regret my use of words like fraudulent and grift, which I should not have used.
I apologize to the FLCCC, Dr. Marik, and Dr. Kory for the statements that are the subject of this update.
*Calumny
- A false statement maliciously made to injure another's reputation.
- The utterance of maliciously false statements; slander.
- False accusation of a crime or offense, maliciously made or reported, to the injury of another; malicious misrepresentation; slander; detraction.
—from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition via Wordnik
And from from May 2018's "One day in late April or early May, Google removed the phrase 'don't be evil' from its code of conduct." (GOOG)":
....Re: calumny, I learned the word from Machiavelli. And as noted in a 2016 post where the Financial Times' Izabella Kaminska somehow got me riffing on reputation as an outro from her piece on algorithmic discrimination:
...Well, what she's pointing out is such a threat to representative government that Machiavelli in his discourses on the first ten books of Livy's history of the Roman Republic mentions calumny (The making of false and defamatory statements about someone in order to damage their reputation; slander...O.E.D.) at least a hundred times and in fact dedicates a chapter (XIII of book I) to making the distinction between accusation as a tool for finding the truth and calumny as a method of destruction:Regarding evil we'll leave that for the ethicists and theologians to figure out.
XIII In proportion as accusations are useful in a republic, so are calumnies pernicious
Or Saints. Cage Match!
