Only Antisemites Disagree with Peter Hotez

... and if you disagree with Hotez, organize to reform the vaccine program, or work to end mandates, you hate your children.

On Tuesday, February 20th, 2018, the Duke Chronicle reported that vaccine researcher, Dr. Peter Hotez spoke at the Duke Global Health Institute in the first lecture of the Victor J. Dzau Global Health Lecture Fund Series, established by Dzau in 2017, as part of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Global Health Matching Grant.

Hotez reported remarks includes the claim that, there is no link between autism and vaccines, a statement that is disproved here. He also said that that vaccine safety and choice advocacy groups, including Texans for Vaccine Choice and NVIC, are “[Anti-vaccine organizations] camouflage themselves as a political group, but I call them for what they really are: a hate group,” Hotez said. “They are a hate group that hates their family and hates their children.”

At the time, Professor Mary Holland, then head graduate legal studies at NYU Law School, penned a letter to Dr. Hotez on behalf of vaccine safety advocates to demand an apology from Dr. Hotez for his smear of vaccine injury families and the organizations who represent them in their fight for full informed consent in vaccination.

Mary S. Holland
22 Washington Square North,
B-16 New York, NY 10011
(212) 998-6212

February 20, 2018

Dr. Peter Hotez, M.D.
Dean, National School of Tropical Medicine
Baylor College of Medicine
Houston, TX

Dear Dr. Hotez:
It is with sadness and distress that I read of your inaugural Victor J. Dzau Global Health Lecture Series at Duke University. Based on reporting in the February 20, 2018 Duke Chronicle, I understand that you accused those whom you brand “anti-vaccine” as “a hate group that hates their family and hates their children.” Let me explain why I find your remarks both offensive and off-the-mark.

Like you, I am the parent of a young adult with autism. Unlike you, I believe that vaccine injury is by far the most plausible explanation for my son’s onset of autism in his second year of life. Through extensive education and work with groups that you dub “anti-vaccine,” I came to understand that vaccine-induced encephalopathy, which can manifest with “features of autism,” is a well-known phenomenon. Indeed, colleagues and I revealed that the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has been compensating such cases of brain injury, with concomitant autism, since the program’s inception in 1988.

My mother, the late Dr. Jimmie C. Holland, a psychiatrist, was an early female graduate of Baylor College of Medicine in 1952; she was one of three women in her class. In 1992, the College honored her with its Distinguished Alumni Award. I regret that she died at the end of 2017, but until that time, she loved her grandson with autism with all her heart. She actively supported my advocacy to look more deeply into questions of vaccine-induced autism, making invaluable contributions to the Elizabeth Birt Center for Autism Law and Advocacy, the Autism Action Network, the Center for Personal Rights, and Health Choice, all organizations focused on the links between the autism epidemic and the sharp rise in infant vaccines since the late 1980’s. Was my mother, a distinguished alumna of Baylor College of Medicine an “anti-vaxxer who hated her family”? Really?

The powerful #MeToo movement has made the country understand that for too long, girls’ and womens’ assertions of sexual violence and abuse have been marginalized, disparaged and rejected. Doctors, like Dr. Larry Nasser, and prestigious universities, like Michigan State University, have played shameful roles in these crimes against children and women. The parallel to the female-dominated vaccine choice and vaccine safety movement is all too obvious. Ad hominem (or more accurately ad hominae) arguments, like labeling those who disagree with you as “hate groups,” does your viewpoint no favors.

The appropriate role for vaccines in national public health deserves serious discussion among all stakeholders, including those who advocate for vaccines, those who oppose them, and every stripe in between. This is a serious, contentious debate, implicating fundamental questions of prior, free and informed consent; the medical principle of ‘first do no harm;’ public health; science; and even the role of government itself. Academic institutions and leaders should be embracing this conversation, not seeking to squelch it.

I would welcome the opportunity to debate these questions with you in an open, respectful, academic setting. I would be pleased to invite you to come to the NYU School of Law, where I am on the faculty, or I would be pleased to come to Baylor or Duke or any place else to engage in such discourse.

I believe we would make far more progress in this thorny area by openly discussing the issues together than by making inflammatory, hurtful and simply false attributions to those with whom we disagree.

Sincerely yours,
Mary S. Holland, Esq.

Cc: Dr. Linda A. Livingstone, President, Baylor University

If you know anything about Professor Mary Holland, she is one of the most upright, dignified, circumspect women that you are ever likely to come across. One of my proudest accomplishments in my strange “career” is working so closely with Mary. And one of my true blessings has been that she is my friend.

I can attest to bearing witness to her enduring respectability and responsibility over the last 15 years as she worked on behalf of children and families in very difficult academic terrain, where she retained respect in a very hostile environment.

So I was decidedly shocked at Hotez’s truly bizarre response to her.

From: "Hotez, Peter Jay" <hotez@bcm.edu>
Date: February 20, 2018 at 8:33:33 PM EST
To: "hollandm@mercury.law.nyu.edu" <hollandm@mercury.law.nyu.edu>
Cc: "linda_livingstone@baylor.edu" <linda_livingstone@baylor.edu>, "Corrigan Jr, Robert" <corrigan@bcm.edu>, "Hotez, Peter Jay" <hotez@bcm.edu>

Subject: Your email and letter

Dear Ms. Holland: I was profoundly disappointed (and disgusted) to receive your letter of intimidation.  It's hard to believe that in this day and age a member of the NYU faculty can be so filled with misinformation, sanctimony, and profound disregard for science and the welfare of children.  Your threats remind me of why my family fled fascism and antisemitism in 20th century Europe. I've referred your letter to Baylor legal counsel.  Sincerely, Peter

Peter Hotez, MD, PhD, FASTMH, FAAP
Dean, National School of Tropical Medicine
Professor, Pediatrics and Molecular & Virology and Microbiology
Head, Section of Pediatric Tropical Medicine
Baylor College of Medicine

Texas Children’s Hospital Endowed Chair of Tropical Pediatrics
Director, Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development

University Professor

Department of Biology, Baylor University

Baker Institute Fellow in Disease and Poverty, Rice University

Co-Editor-in-Chief, PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases
E-mail: hotez@bcm.ed
Twitter: @peterhotez

Dang that is a LOT of titles you got there Pete!

Mary and I were gobsmacked!

“Peter Hotez is Jewish?!” I exclaimed.

This is “disgusting, sanctimonious, antisemitic, fascist misinformation that rises to the level of legal action?” Mary reacted.

“Seriously, How is Hotez a Jewish name?” I perseverated.

Did I mention that Professor Holland was a Human Rights Advocate and cut her teeth on defending dissident Russians in the Soviet Union?

It was a clear case of academic bullying, and he was beginning to master his skill at being the bully and the victim at the same time.

I could only conclude he had some - troubles - and that he didn’t really belong at a university. Or if so, he belonged in a lab, not interacting with members of the public.

Mary contacted the President of Baylor, who responded that she had no control over the medical school.

Because he was just kind of a pest, and because Professor Holland was the dignified woman that she is, we published her letter, left his out, and went on with our work. We honestly thought that with his immaturity, childish tempter tantrum, and social awkwardness, he would just slip into the background.

Mary has retired from NYU and is now the President and General Council of Children’s Health Defense.

But Covid has given Hotez his big break. As he seems to be angling to replace Fauci as the Don of Medical Corruption, I thought we should point out that Hotez is even less suited to work in government medicine than Fauci was.

Enter Dr. Simon Goddek, .PhD in Biotechnology.

Scrolling through Twitter last week I saw this:

Dr. Goddek was labeled, for his challenge to Pete’s “science” and “ethics", you guessed it, antisemitic.

But I will let you read his twitter thread for the whole story.