The suspension of two Laval professors for questioning COVID-19 vaccines has prompted too little an outcry, according to a McGill ethics professor..Laval University suspended Patrick Provost for eight weeks without pay for participating in a December 7, 2021, panel hosted by Réinfo COVID, a group of citizens, nurses, physicians, and scientists trying to generate debate about how the pandemic has been handled by governments. The professor of microbiology, infectious diseases, and immunology said provincial data showed a greater risk for children being hospitalized due to the vaccines than COVID-19 itself..Similarly, Nicolas Derome, a professor of molecular biology was suspended for an online presentation for Réinfo COVID last November. He said there were “zero” serious cases for Quebecers under 17 and that children between one and 14 years old were 15 times more likely to die of a road accident than from COVID-19..The suspensions of the Quebec City professors were deeply concerning to McGill Theology and ethics Professor Douglas Farrow in Montreal. On his Substack, he called the move “A Repressive Political Act” and “violence to science.”.“The government's own statistics do not display a crisis, anything on the scale that would justify the collateral damage they are doing with their policies over the last two years, never mind the vaccination of children. You don't have to be a scientist to figure that out,” Farrow told the Western Standard..“I can't imagine the university is on very strong footing, but there's a lot about the actions that people in high places are taking which does not make very good sense.”.Quebec recently passed Bill 32 to ensure professors enjoy academic freedom. However, Higher Education Minister Danielle McCann gave universities and colleges a year to comply..Provost, who is vaccine-injured, wrote an article in French in Le Journal de Montreal on June 22 entitled The True Portrait of COVID-19 in Quebec. Provost said official statistics showed no excess all-cause mortality, except for those aged 70 and over during the first wave in April to June 2020. Another exception was January 2022, shortly after the imposition of the holiday lockdown and curfew and the deployment of the third dose of COVID-19 vaccines. .Provost demonstrated more than 90% of Quebecers who died with COVID were over 70 and had two or more pre-existing medical conditions. Nearly 70% were over the age of 80. Quebecor later yanked his article from its publications..“Why on earth are you doing that, like you're censoring a guy for making a perfectly reasonable argument that we shouldn't experiment on our children? Surely that's motherhood and apple pie stuff, right? Why would you discipline a guy from making that argument? But they're doing it and they're doing it because they've decided that they have to defend the narrative,” Farrow said..“I suspect that there are people with vested interests financially and politically who are not at all interested in what actually makes sense, and in public debate about what makes sense. They're interested in the agenda they are pushing, and they've become bold enough to use even this kind of censorship.”.Professor Farrow sees financial and personal incentives at play..“People with vested interests in the universities … are being given a lot of money to do research or to reach conclusions that support the government policies and these corporate policies — not just pharma, but especially pharma,” Farrow said..“Other people with vested interests … are probably embarrassed by the fact they went along with all this.”.Louis Lampron, head of the Laval teacher’s union, condemned the suspension in a tweet: “To make it short — the management of Université Laval made a mistake and its decision undermines the principles underlying the functioning of the University and academic freedom.”.The FQPPU, a labour union for Quebec professors, said in a statement, “conformity to the consensus” cannot justify Laval, and “teaching and research” are the only appropriate ways to refute them..Farrow believes Laval looks bad, as do professors who won’t defend their colleagues..“They look cowardly. They look foolish, they look hasty, they don't look professorial. So I keep pondering why so many professorial colleagues are so quiet about all of this,” Farrow said..“We're looking at a level of cowardice and frankly, stupidity that is pretty shocking — not because I have this ideal sense of the academic elite, I don't. But it's the degree to which people are prepared to be complicit with things that makes such little sense and do so much harm. That they're willing to be complicit with it rather than take the risk of being the one who speaks up, is very, very disheartening and it does not at all bode well for the future of these institutions.”
