Dr. Patrick Phillips and the medical empire: what happens when “disgraceful” feels like grace?

“Crucifying” doctors who assert foundational principles of medical ethics might in the long run intensify our longing for doctors who behave with compassion and humility.

According to a CBC article about Dr. Patrick Phillips as a spreader of COVID misinformation, “the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario says that Dr. Patrick Phillips—who is based in the rural community of Englehart, about 45 kilometres south of Kirkland Lake—is ‘incompetent’ and that he has engaged in ‘disgraceful, dishonourable’ conduct.”

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/patrick-phillips-covid-19-misinformation-college-1.6191906

But how do you feel when you listen to Dr. Philipps speak, for example in episode 60 of the Liberty Dispatch podcast?

For my part, I feel that I am in the presence of a gentle, strong and smart man who embodies what a doctor should be—calm, caring, focused on the wellbeing of his patients and committed to upholding ethical medical principles that are grounded in science as a process of open-ended inquiry. Dr. Philipps reassures me that I do not have to be disproportionately afraid of COVID-19 and that a vaccine that might perhaps cause harm, given safety signals, should be taken off the market pending further scientifically rigorous investigation.

When medical authorities attribute demonizing labels to a doctor who upholds basic ethical principles with dignity, courage and humility, they are committing a mistake that is in some ways similar to the mistake that religious authorities some two millennia ago made in relation to another small-town truth-teller, Jesus of Nazareth. 

From a sarcastic secular perspective, one might think of Christianity as the most successful Jewish start-up venture in history.  In many of his teachings, Jesus preached important ideas that were core to Judaism and should have been unproblematically accepted and practiced (focus on love and social justice, limitations of ritual, the fight against institutional corruption, etc.).  The spread of the more controversial aspects of his legacy, especially the idea that he was the son of God and that he rose from the dead, was greatly facilitated and shaped by the rejection and crucifixion of Jesus. 

What this might mean to a secular observer is that Christianity might have never come into being if the authorities in ancient Israel responded to Jesus with more moderation and more focus on diversity and inclusion.  With an accommodating and loving approach, Jesus might have been integrated into the fabric of his Jewish society without spreading Jewish ideas beyond a small circle of already Jewish followers. 

From the point of view of this secular business analogy, the rise of Christianity depended on the crucifixion not only theologically but also practically as a compelling “marketing device” that, to some people, made clear the need for a reformation.  To prevent the long-term, worldwide popular appeal of Jesus, his enemies should have let him live and preach in his own immediate society.

By rejecting, warning or punishing doctors who speak out against COVID authoritarianism, such as Phillips, Francis Christian and Kulvinder Kaur Gill, medical authorities are creating conditions of repression.  And as we know from history, conditions of repression give rise to messianic energy.  People who live under repressive regimes can develop a longing for voices that will speak to their hearts and remind them of how life should be—not just of what it must be under an unjust regime.

For many decades now, medicine has come to replace religion or complement religion in the hearts of many people.  Doctors are often implicitly or explicitly admired as superior beings, with their empathy and good intentions rarely questioned.  Many doctors are indeed good hearted and well-intentioned people—but the worship that they enjoy is excessive and might be counter-productive when it comes to attracting people to medicine for the right reasons. 

The Internet is rich in useful resources about narcissistic behaviour patterns and the harm that can be done when a human being falsely asserts superiority and control over others (see, for example, Dr. Ramani’s and Dr. Les Carter’s youtube channels).  And yet, despite the growing cultural awareness of how harmful false hierarchies can be, the assumption that doctors are superior to the rest of humanity is rarely challenged. Doctors often seem to enjoy a kind of “diplomatic immunity” when it comes to discussions of narcissistic behavior patterns and the harm that those patterns can inflict on others.     

However, the cognitive dissonance caused by the spectacle of doctors such as Philipps being mistreated highlights a need for a more nuanced understanding of the medical system that takes into account possible controlling behavior patterns.  The possibility that in some cases the medical field is used as an arena for the assertion of superiority and for the pursuit of power and control cannot be ignored—despite the fact that without a doubt many doctors are truly well intentioned and treat their patients with respect.

The process of purifying the “temple” of medicine and restoring medicine to the noble status of a service, not a tool for power, should be guided by both reason and feeling.  As the case of Jesus demonstrates, labelling courageous and ethical behavior as disgraceful is a very risky business in the long run. Maya Angelou has observed that “people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”  Once people feel the truth, once they enjoy kindness, they cannot “unfeel” it.  In his memoir of AIDS Borrowed Time, Paul Monette compares a smug doctor whom he calls “The Ferrari doctor” (he owned a Ferrari and had a behaviour to match the vehicle) to another doctor who “spoke simply and feelingly of looking down at a stricken man in bed and thinking, ‘this is me’” (p. 159).

Similarly, some social-media readers might compare in their hearts the doctors who humbly and compassionately uphold medical ethics to some of the doctors who have been scolding us and sometimes even mocking us on social media—insinuating in some cases that their empathy for COVID-culture critics is running low or taunting us with the idea that one day we might need their services and come to them metaphorically on our knees with some infection or cancer to repent our criticism and beg for their help.  What have the Romans ever done for us?, they seem to ask us mockingly, as if antibiotics or other medical treatments were the personal property or original invention of these privileged professionals rather than a cultural treasure and achievement which they are trained and (very well) paid to administer ethically.  

Medicine, it seems, is currently more than a service; it is an empire that rules over us.  Under COVID culture, medicine has behaved like a regime that manufactures conformity, expecting us to behave like obedient “pharmahumans” who put into our bodies whatever we are ordered to and who are willing to gratefully accept our inferiority and subjugation.

But does this empire pay sufficient attention to cultural forces that might in the long run undermine its power?  One of those forces is the basic human need for truth and for kindness that might draw people toward doctors who seem to uphold those principles instead of just performing them superficially.

Another force is technology.  Currently, many people who go to doctors to report adverse effects that they suspect might be associated with the COVID vaccines are turned away.  Getting an exemption from the COVID vaccine due to medical or ethical concerns seems to be nearly impossible.  Could a computer not be programmed to simply reject any expression of doubt about the vaccine or any request for exemption?  Why is a highly paid human being needed for what is essentially a preprogrammed task that feels like gaslighting to many patients?   Why should patients waste time and develop false hope around medical appointments with a presumably empathic human being when a simple online computer algorithm could have told them essentially the same thing— “No”? And in a world with more free thinking, would an expertly programed computer not do a better job than the current medical system when it comes to collecting and analyzing reports about possible vaccine side effects?

With technology becoming increasingly more capable to assist or even in some cases replace experts, it is precisely the very human skills and virtues that doctors such as Dr. Philipps, Dr. Christian or Dr. Kaur exhibit—qualities that cannot be replaced by computers—that the medical system should be cherishing, cultivating and rewarding.  The fact that the empire seems to be doing the opposite might be an indication of one of two possibilities. The first possibility is that the medical authorities have good reason to be so confident in their status that they feel that they are above accountability: since human beings will forever need prescriptions and treatments, since any human being, however critical or independent, can become ill overnight and be in need of the medical system, the status of the medical system will never be challenged or undermined.  Health authorities will forever rule as gods, even if in some cases a computer could have done a better and less biased job than some of them.

But another possibility is that we are experiencing a medical empire in a process of decline—decline brought about by its own excesses and misuses of power, as well as by the rise of “intelligent” technology.  Could it be that in the future, medicine will transform and reform into a less hierarchical space and function as a true service assisted by technology programmed for compassion and critical “thinking” and staffed by truly compassionate and humble human beings, with lower acceptance of controlling patterns of behavior? Such a reformation would benefit not only patients but also the many ethical and well-intentioned doctors who are currently working in the system (and who hopefully constitute a silent majority within the system).

Without a doubt, technology will continue to bring about many changes to all aspects of life in the coming years and decades.  If the medical system does not want a decline in its status to be one of those changes, they would do well to reward instead of punish doctors who think and act ethically and compassionately. We need doctors who warm our hearts instead of cool them. I certainly know some doctors with wonderful personalities who are doing a great deal of good every day in their work—and we need to encourage and support them while discouraging excessively controlling and hierarchical patterns of behavior.