Hey tele, you MIGHT want to read behind the lead/link in your bat shit, junk science, laden posts. Just sayin'. This one is truly embarrassing.
The Strange Case of Dr. Cahill and Ms. Hyde
Professor Dolores Cahill’s scientific résumé can legitimize her false claims about COVID-19. Her crusade of misinformation raises the question of how far academic freedom goes.
https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/covid-19-he...nd-ms-hyde
Cahill, who until recently was teaching a class for first-year medical students called “Science, Medicine and Society,” has been making a number of staggeringly erroneous claims about COVID-19 and its associated vaccines since the beginning of the pandemic, never correcting her mistakes and always doubling down.
She has said, falsely, that COVID-19 can be prevented by taking vitamin C, vitamin D and zinc, and that the most efficient treatment is in the form of hydroxychloroquine, a cheap medication against malaria and autoimmune diseases that turned into an object of worship for some individuals, even as the evidence clearly showed it did not work against COVID-19.
She has boldly stated that children wearing a mask—the kind that doctors, nurses and dentists have been wearing for decades—would be starved of oxygen and see their IQ lowered.
As for the RNA-based vaccines, she falsely claimed they did more harm than good. “If you paid me ten million,” she warned, “I wouldn’t take it. I would go to prison first. If someone vaccinated me [with an RNA vaccine], I would charge them with attempted murder.”
Bolstered by Cahill’s academic and scientific credentials, her misinformed and hazardous claims have grown to the point where students at her university wrote a 33-page scientific rebuttal of these claims, a document that was signed by 133 students from the university’s own School of Medicine and sent to its administrators.
One of the claims these students had to debunk: that once you get COVID-19, you are immune for life. This brazen assertion’s confidence is in contradiction with actual knowledge in the field, which is that we do not clearly know how long immunity does last. But this is the upside-down world at University College Dublin right now, where students are teaching their own professor basic facts about a topic she should be familiar with.
Because Dolores Cahill is not a naturopath, or a multilevel marketing supplement saleswoman, or a bestselling author claiming that a spirit whispers medical information from the future into her ear. She has a proper biomedical research background, working for many years at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Genetics and as an advisor and international expert on many boards and committees, including the Irish Government’s Advisory Science Council. Ironically, she has also been active in the field of scientific integrity.
To say that her credentials are at odds with her public campaign of COVID denialism is to put it mildly: her pre- and post-pandemic academic selves seem completely at odds with each other. When, arguing against physical distancing, she claimed that “only three organisms are transmitted in that way [via the air]: it’s tuberculosis and smallpox and Ebola,” I’m at a loss for words. Has she never heard of measles? Does she not know that hospitalized patients with the flu are isolated to prevent transmission? Does she understand respiratory infections?
While the School of Medicine eventually distanced itself from her views on COVID-19, the university cited strict guidelines on academic freedom as a reason for their inaction. Can university professors say whatever they want, no matter the harm they cause, and get away with it?
The Strange Case of Dr. Cahill and Ms. Hyde
Professor Dolores Cahill’s scientific résumé can legitimize her false claims about COVID-19. Her crusade of misinformation raises the question of how far academic freedom goes.
https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/covid-19-he...nd-ms-hyde
Cahill, who until recently was teaching a class for first-year medical students called “Science, Medicine and Society,” has been making a number of staggeringly erroneous claims about COVID-19 and its associated vaccines since the beginning of the pandemic, never correcting her mistakes and always doubling down.
She has said, falsely, that COVID-19 can be prevented by taking vitamin C, vitamin D and zinc, and that the most efficient treatment is in the form of hydroxychloroquine, a cheap medication against malaria and autoimmune diseases that turned into an object of worship for some individuals, even as the evidence clearly showed it did not work against COVID-19.
She has boldly stated that children wearing a mask—the kind that doctors, nurses and dentists have been wearing for decades—would be starved of oxygen and see their IQ lowered.
As for the RNA-based vaccines, she falsely claimed they did more harm than good. “If you paid me ten million,” she warned, “I wouldn’t take it. I would go to prison first. If someone vaccinated me [with an RNA vaccine], I would charge them with attempted murder.”
Bolstered by Cahill’s academic and scientific credentials, her misinformed and hazardous claims have grown to the point where students at her university wrote a 33-page scientific rebuttal of these claims, a document that was signed by 133 students from the university’s own School of Medicine and sent to its administrators.
One of the claims these students had to debunk: that once you get COVID-19, you are immune for life. This brazen assertion’s confidence is in contradiction with actual knowledge in the field, which is that we do not clearly know how long immunity does last. But this is the upside-down world at University College Dublin right now, where students are teaching their own professor basic facts about a topic she should be familiar with.
Because Dolores Cahill is not a naturopath, or a multilevel marketing supplement saleswoman, or a bestselling author claiming that a spirit whispers medical information from the future into her ear. She has a proper biomedical research background, working for many years at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Genetics and as an advisor and international expert on many boards and committees, including the Irish Government’s Advisory Science Council. Ironically, she has also been active in the field of scientific integrity.
To say that her credentials are at odds with her public campaign of COVID denialism is to put it mildly: her pre- and post-pandemic academic selves seem completely at odds with each other. When, arguing against physical distancing, she claimed that “only three organisms are transmitted in that way [via the air]: it’s tuberculosis and smallpox and Ebola,” I’m at a loss for words. Has she never heard of measles? Does she not know that hospitalized patients with the flu are isolated to prevent transmission? Does she understand respiratory infections?
While the School of Medicine eventually distanced itself from her views on COVID-19, the university cited strict guidelines on academic freedom as a reason for their inaction. Can university professors say whatever they want, no matter the harm they cause, and get away with it?
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