UNDER THE MICROSCOPE

Maria Ressa, the first and only Nobel Peace Prize winner from the Philippines, delivered a powerful message in her acceptance speech in Oslo. It resonated with me on professional and deeply personal levels. I saw the parallelism between journalism and medicine. We physicians diagnose and treat our patients based on facts, not speculation and certainly not lies.

She singled out Facebook but also said other American social media companies were controlling the global information ecosystem and are biased against facts. That much is true with medical disinformation (the WHO calls it an Infodemic). What gets more traction on social media are posts by supposed cancer patients who were miraculously cured by some concoction and saying the medical profession is withholding crucial information about cancer cures. These are recirculated and amplified millions of times until people start believing them. So, they buy this or that product or start eating certain “miracle foods” expecting a cure, only to have to go to a doctor when the cancer has spread beyond help.

“Without facts, you can’t have truth. Without truth, you can’t have trust. Without trust, we have no shared reality, no democracy,...”. It is not that far from the reality that we in the medical profession are facing now. We rely on information given by patients on their condition (facts) to arrive at a diagnosis (truth) which is based on mutual trust that the patient is telling us the correct signs and symptoms so that we can formulate an accurate diagnosis; and that the doctor will do his/her best to cure the illness. Now, it is more difficult for patients to put their trust in us because of what they read on social media about “Big Pharma” or the medical establishment withholding vital information from the public.

There is widespread distrust of the medical system due to sectors pushing for “alternative” medicine that are behind these social media posts for the purpose of profiting from products they peddle online. Unfortunately, even some in the medical profession lend their names to these “miracle” therapies, again for profit or fame.

We’ve seen this happen during this pandemic when people were pushing ivermectin as a cure or prophylaxis against COVID-19. Locally, it was “tuob.” Only when the patient can no longer breath without oxygen will he/she go to the emergency room.

We need to push back against this narrative on social media for the sake of our patients who will ultimately end up suffering more or dying needlessly. Unfortunately, doctors may not be that savvy or have the time to do social media information drives, but national medical organizations should be able to muster the resources to combat medical disinformation.

Maria Ressa also asked: “What are you willing to sacrifice for the truth?” That really hit me like a ton of bricks. I know of what she is asking for I have made my sacrifice to tell the truth in the Dengvaxia controversy. As a pathologist, I was asked my opinion of the autopsy results of several cases that were being filed as being due to the Dengvaxia vaccine. When I examined these cases, they all had obvious causes of death not attributable to vaccination.

Very few in the medical establishment came forward to dispute these charges (save the Doctors for Truth and Public Welfare). The controversy dragged on even in Senate and Congress hearings. When I was called to a Congress committee hearing regarding my role in the procurement of the Dengvaxia vaccine ( I was then Deputy Director for Professional Services), I categorically stated I had not nothing to do with it since I was on leave from the Philippine Childrens Medical Center and did not sign any papers related to it. Nor was I involved in the planning for that purpose.

Nonetheless, I was impleaded in the following cases filed by the Public Attorney’s Office. Why? Because I also stated in the hearing that I had examined the autopsy findings and found the conclusions by the non-pathologist who performed the autopsies to be wholly inaccurate and misleading since these children died of other diseases not connected to the Dengvaxia vaccine, which essentially demolishes their accusations.

Now, I am facing multiple charges of homicide for telling the truth. Like Maria Ressa, I could be sentenced to a hundred or more years in jail if falsely convicted. Do I regret what I did? No. It was my duty as a pathologist to shine the light as one who is capable of discerning the truth in the matter at hand. I regard this as a badge of honor that I had upheld the noble principles of my specialty in telling the truth. I will continue to fight for the truth no matter how it ends. I will hold the line.

Now, I will ask you too: What are you willing to sacrifice for the truth?