By Dr. Francis Christian FRCSEd, FRCSC

There is a medical and societal tyranny now afoot in Canada. It is based on a single-minded, totalitarian and anti-science opposition to anything other than what constitutes the “official narrative” with regard to the COVID-19 pandemic; and in turn, a well-coordinated campaign to smear, de-platform, persecute and attack anyone who questions the official propaganda that has been constantly emanating from government sanctioned sources over the last several months.

This Orwellian tyranny has now extended to include the persecution of Canadian scientists and physicians who speak up or speak out on purely scientific matters. If the utterance or statement from the scientist or physician is perceived by the authorities to stray from the official COVID-19 narrative, there are concerted, coordinated moves by health authorities, government public health agencies and licensing bodies, with a compliant media in tow, to persecute and “discipline” the scientist or physician for simply expressing a scientific opinion or pointing out ethical obligations for physicians, such as the obligation of informed consent.

This is all disturbingly similar to the suppression of scientists and academia in the Soviet Union. The totalitarian, communist regime under the Bolsheviks and Stalin, sought to control all scientific opinion and viciously opposed anything perceived to be associated with what were termed “dangerous” ideas from the “bourgeois” and “capitalist” West.

For example, the Soviet and Stalinist authorities allowed only a certain view of genetics perpetrated by Russian scientist TD Lysenko (1898-1976) to be discussed, taught or practiced in Soviet academies and societies. Anybody perceived to be straying from this official view would be singled out for sham investigations by official tribunals, followed by punishment and discipline; the latter would include deportation to the gulags, long imprisonment or worse — www.mun.ca/biology/scarr/Lysenkoism_abstract.html

Soon, all of Soviet science came under the weight of this scientific tyranny, including medicine (the only exception was nuclear physics and space). The systematic persecution of scientists and physicians under this warped and narrow view of science came to be known as “Lysenkosim,” with the term coming to mean a similar persecution and suppression of science and scientists occurring anywhere in the world.

Canada is now the grand and unfortunate stage upon which a new brand of medical and societal tyranny, a new “Lysenkoism,” is manifesting itself in multiple areas of daily life for ordinary citizens — and in the lives of its physicians and scientists.

Here is my story …

I am a surgeon who lives and practices in Saskatoon, in the province of Saskatchewan in Western Canada. I have been a surgeon for over twenty years and as Clinical Professor of Surgery and faculty member of the University of Saskatchewan, I started the Quality and Patient Safety unit in the department of surgery and co- founded the department’s surgical humanities program. Together with the computer science department, we designed the “Morbidity and Mortality App” (M&M App), which is now being used throughout Saskatchewan. I also founded the Journal of The Surgical Humanities, of which I was the Editor: medicine.usask.ca/department/clinical/surgery-pages/surgicalhumanities.php

I am a poet and a surgeon – and my book of poems was released to the world a few weeks ago: www.harppublishing.ca/product/to-a-nurse-friend-weeping/

On the June 23 of this year, I was called into a WebEx meeting with the Dean of our College of Medicine, the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) and the interim head, department of surgery.

I was fired from my roles as director of our surgical humanities program and my other role as director of quality and patient safety; and in addition, all my academic roles were suspended, including the teaching and training of residents and medical students.

Why did this happen? The firing and suspension were the result of my advocating for informed consent in the roll out of the m-RNA vaccine to our kids in Saskatchewan — and this was supposed to be my crime.

Canada, along with the United States and Israel, is one of the few countries which are aggressively pushing and propagating the COVID-19 m-RNA vaccines for our children.

In Saskatchewan, even our middle and high schools are being used to administer this vaccine — with several reports of teachers and other people of influence strenuously advertising the vaccine without any kind of informed consent and in some cases, coercing students to receive this new, experimental injection. All this whilst the risks of the vaccine, any benefits from the vaccine and any alternatives to the vaccine — i.e. the basics of informed consent — are not being explained in any meaningful way to parents or children. Children as young as 13 can even opt to receive the vaccine, without their parents’ consent or knowledge.

In a press conference on 17 June this year, I had called for full, informed consent to be put in place for our parents and children, before the m-RNA vaccine is administered to our kids. This should not be a controversial position for anyone — obtaining informed consent is a bedrock of medical ethics and has been a foundational requirement for physicians for several hundred years. It also forms the basis for several regulatory codes, including the Nuremberg Code. The latter was written as the result of the horrific medical experiments that were conducted by Nazi Germany on concentration camp prisoners without their consent. The civilized nations of the world came together after the second world war to say “never again.” Never again would any kind of medical intervention or treatment be administered to anybody, without full and voluntary informed consent.

A news release by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF.ca) explains my firing and suspension in more detail. There is also a recording of my firing available through a link in this press release: www.jccf.ca/surgeon-fired-by-college-of-medicine-for-voicing-safety-concerns-about-covid-shots- for-children/

I am not alone in this persecution. Several physicians and scientists have been de-platformed, smeared and harassed in Canada, simply for expressing a scientific opinion or pointing out the need for full, informed consent — this includes world-renowned, Canadian virologist and vaccinologist, Byram Bridle. In the U.K. Dr. Sam White is facing a similar hounding by the authorities because of his expressed desire to practice evidence—based and scientific medicine. There have been several other all too familiar cases, all over the Western world, of attempts at authoritarian suppression of free speech, the free debate of scientific ideas and the scientific method itself.

The same totalitarian darkness which descended upon the Soviet Union is now rapidly descending upon Canada — and alas, upon many countries, rich and poor all over the world. In its global scale, this new tyranny is unprecedented and seeks to control every aspect of every human being’s life.

One of the methods by which this new dictatorship seeks to exert and consolidate control is by co-opting the press and media to be arms of government. This is also a well known, Soviet tactic — and bears a close, disturbing resemblance to the total control of propaganda and the press by the Soviet authorities.

In November 1917, Vladimir Lenin gave a speech, promulgating what was called, the “Council of People’s Commissar’s Decree on The Press.” According to this decree, the “Council of People’s Commissars” could proscribe temporarily or permanently any publication or news item. In the years 2020-21, a similar “council” has emerged only too plainly in sight — it consists of big pharma, big tech (YouTube, Twitter, Facebook …), big government and public health officials working in concert to suppress, divert and censor free speech, destroy the free flow of information and de-platform the free debate of scientific ideas so germane to the progress of science.

Clause (3) of Lenin’s 1917 ordinance on the press stated that, “The present ordinance is of a temporary nature and will be repealed by a special decree as soon as normal conditions of social life set in.” But as we all now know, the control of the press was maintained with an iron grip by the authorities behind the iron curtain until the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s — i.e. for a period of more than 70 years.

In the present era, governments and authorities keep telling us that draconian and soul-sapping measures of control including lockdowns and control of the press would last only for a few weeks; then a few months …

…and now we are several months into this charade, with governments in most countries continuing various measures to keep emergency powers in place. The Canadian provinces for example, have continued to renew their declarations of emergency rule, from early 2020 onwards.

But totalitarian regimes have a defined life-span and the human quest for freedom and liberty can never be suppressed forever. Even in the darkest days of the Soviet tyranny, small and makeshift, secret publications sprang up in multiple, major cities. Under great peril to themselves and working feverishly to deadlines, in small, poorly lit and heated rooms and most often with no more than a few, manual typewriters for equipment, this alternate press was printing booklets and pamphlets, even small books. Excerpts from the Bible, the great works of Russian literature — including Boris Pasternak’s immortal and lyrical novel, “Dr. Zhivago” — and other banned material were typed/ printed, then smuggled into the street and alleyways of Russian towns and cities. This alternate, underground press has since received the now celebrated name, “samizdat” (Russian for clandestine press).

The newspaper/s carrying this article are the new “samizdat,” — and I salute their heroic stand against tyranny.

When the cruel, totalitarian Soviet empire collapsed in the 1990s, the Bible, the great works of literature, all that the Soviet dictatorship tried to suppress, de-platform and destroy emerged intact and victorious from the dust of the empire’s demise.

And when the people wake up from the present COVID-19 tyranny and science and truth are restored once more to their rightful places in our academies, I would wish for my physician and scientist colleagues to be able to say that they were on the right side of history even during these present, dark times — and that through all the persecution and against all odds, they continued to defend freedom and liberty, individual rights, evidence based medicine, free scientific debate and all that free societies or societies yearning to be free have valued and cherished.

The approaching totalitarian and dystopian tyranny and darkness has almost completely enveloped us. The window of opportunity continues to narrow — and I appeal to all physicians and scientists of conscience to join us in this consequential fight against tyranny.