Follow your conscience or Sciensano’s recommendations?

Dr. Alain Colignon has been practicing vascular and thoracic surgery since 1980 (graduated from the Université Libre de Bruxelles with great distinction). In May 2020, he publicly and vigorously criticized the way the epidemic was handled by Sciensano («  Why has the once prestigious School of Public Health been replaced by an institution with a ridiculous name more suited to a game console dealer than a serious academic institute? Sciensano is obviously full of conflicts of interest  ») and the Wilmès government. He also advocated for the protocols championed by Dr. Raoult.

In a recent letter to the President of the Order of Physicians of the Province of Hainaut, he responds to the reproaches that this same Order has addressed to him. We reproduce, with his agreement, the arguments he develops.

Going back to your post, what is the crime that you are responsible for and what are the instructions from Sciensano that I did not follow? For me to be able to answer this question, you should have been clearer! However, out of respect for my Order, I will try to provide an embryonic answer to the question that has been put to me by trying to guess its scope and to face it with sincerity.

Sciensano ? I don’t know! So I can confirm that I certainly did not follow the instructions of an institution that did not make itself known to me and of which I was unaware 6 months ago. I have not received any instructions from this institution, which is in no way competent to give me doctrinal directives. At the same time, I confirm that I have no intention of inquiring in the future about the claims of this institution, which is headed by a veterinarian and is funded by so many labs that Sciensano’s feet are dipping in a pool of conflicts of interest.

The real ethical question is,  » What is the doctrinal principle that requires me to be concerned about Sciensano? The answer is obviously obvious: none!

I have no intention of inquiring in the future about the claims of this institution, which is headed by a veterinarian and is funded by so many labs that Sciensano’s feet are dipping in a pool of conflicts of interest

I have always treated my patients according to the most certain and serious data of science, not in the light of political dreams of obscure institutions with multiple political and financial connections! If your reproach, however, concerns hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, my answer is yes!

Yes, absolutely yes! I prescribe this association in my soul and conscience and aware of my responsibilities, despite all the recommendations that dissuade me! I prescribe it with the greatest respect for my art and I will prescribe it again when I deem it necessary, without worrying about the rooster crowing! None of the patients I have treated have required hospital assistance. None of them obviously made a tip twist. And none of them had eye problems with 5 days of 400mg of Plaquenil!

I have always treated my patients according to the most certain and serious data of science, not in the light of political dreams of obscure institutions with multiple political and financial connections!

I don’t care about the studies that the salesmen brandish and that demonstrate the toxicity of this combination when some of these studies that have not been discarded from the meta-analyses, prescribe 2.4g of hydroxychoroquine to terminally ill patients. We all know that the lethal dose of hydroxychloroquine is 25mg/kg or 1.5g for a person of normal build. We all know that the Raoult protocol reserved it strictly for the beginning of the disease at doses of 0.6g for a maximum of 10 days… Because finally, in the so-called serious studies on which the WHO and all those who follow it are based, not without interest, there is one in which doctors prescribed lethal doses of HCQ!

Who are the WHO and Sciensano kidding? Should I trust the WHO or Sciensano who blindly and ridiculously banned hydroxychloroquine by trusting, head over heels, a bogus meta-analysis published in the Lancet by a prostitute and a science fiction writer? My answer, Mr. President, is no! WHO and Sciensano are definitely not among my references.

You reminded me in a recent circular letter that therapeutic freedom was a pillar of our Art, but that by prescribing therapeutics that have not been scientifically proven, we were doing so under our responsibility! I think I know what this is about. I’m not going to learn what my responsibility is at age 67. However, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that those who do not prescribe this combination take on exactly the same responsibility as I do, and perhaps even a much greater responsibility. Indeed! The future will tell if Raoult is wrong or right! If he’s wrong, I won’t have a dead body on my conscience! But if he’s right, how many will those who don’t prescribe it get? Even if this treatment reduces mortality by only 5%, what self-examination will those who have decried it have to do? They will have the excuse, of course, to have followed the insolent advice of Sciensano… But what will their mirror say to them when they meet it in the morning?

Who are the WHO and Sciensano kidding? Should I trust the WHO or Sciensano who blindly and ridiculously banned hydroxychloroquine by trusting, head over heels, a bogus meta-analysis published in the Lancet by a prostitute and a science fiction writer?

If your complaint is about wearing a mask, which directive from Sciensano or WHO did you want me to follow? You’ll have to clarify whether it was the March 2020 one that claimed it was strictly unnecessary to wear it or the September ones that made mandatory what was strictly unnecessary 6 months earlier? I am not a weathervane. I don’t do politics. I have collected many serious articles on the protection offered by masks which I can share with you if you wish. It is on these articles and not on the 7:30 p.m. news that I base my choices to wear or not to wear it when I am in the singular colloquy that unites me with my patient and which is the most inaccessible place in the world to the mediocrities of politics! Finally, what guidelines are you talking about? Should I go and suck the news from Tyresias’ mammary or should I listen to RTBf to guess the fantasies of this institution that I do not respect?

As for mass immunity, what authorizes you as a doctrinal jurisdiction to substitute yourself for science in order to claim that one cannot be a supporter of mass immunity? It seems to me, even if comparison is not reason, that Sweden is doing much better than us! The only guidelines I know are the most probable certainties, that is, those based on non-randomized publications!

In spite of the barrage against the Raoult protocol, the multiple obstructions to the establishment of the truth, the repeated and crude scientific frauds which we will be able to talk about again (you can imagine that I am not scandalized at my age without reason and without relevant evidence), what physician respecting his commitments could propose an RDB study? Who would dare, in a crisis such as the one we are experiencing, to propose Russian roulette to his patient? Who would dare to make him sign an informed consent that proposes to draw his treatment at random to determine whether he will receive a supposedly active molecule or sugar? Consent perhaps, informed, I doubt it.

If your question is whether I believe in Raoult? My answer is still a thousand times yes! I fundamentally believe in it more than in Martin Blachier, that psychopath who calls him a charlatan and who is not even a doctor. I don’t believe in Véran, Van Ranst, Van Laethem or Van Gucht, a veterinarian who has never seen a dog or a cow in his life. All of them may be honest and in good faith, but they are riddled with conflicts of interest that make them questionable. Yes, I believe in observational studies a thousand times more than in studies conducted by two blind people paid by Big Pharma.

I don’t believe in Véran, Van Ranst, Van Laethem or Van Gucht, a veterinarian who has never seen a dog or a cow in his life. All of them may be honest and in good faith, but they are riddled with conflicts of interest that make them questionable.

Yes, I believe in Raoult and his department which had the lowest mortality in the world by treating patients with humanity and without preventing families from assisting their dying, an odious attitude followed in our hospitals respecting the criminal directives of Sciensano! What’s with these crazy rules where a husband after 50 years of living together can’t hold the hand of his dying wife in the dark room of a hospital or nursing home? It’s just obnoxious!

That’s when I would have liked to hear my order cry out! But my Order kept silent about this scandal! The silence! Would he agree with that? I don’t!

What do you consider Hippocratic medicine to be? To let positive SARS decompensate, prescribing them paracetamol for 20€, by phone, while waiting patiently for the saturation level to drop to 80, to send them to die intubated on the stomach?

So I answer, without hypocrisy to your question: I don’t care (to be polite) about Sciensano’s guidelines. I am a doctor and a physician first and foremost, and to serve my patients, I did not wait for the advice of a small, hidden veterinarian! I have never treated a patient via Whatsapp! I exposed myself. I have taken risks to remain available to anyone who wanted to listen and I am sure, dear colleague, that you have assisted your patients with the same courage and determination.

And you know what? I didn’t catch Covid 19, despite the fact that I continued to serve my patients as Hippocrates taught, even when forbidden by the grey eminences of Sciensano, without worrying about the gesticulating fools. It was my patients, not Sciensano, who decided in good conscience if they needed me and if so I was always there — physically — for them and not through the binary voice! I am aware that I could have died… But here it is. I was not afraid of the Covid-19! I have a mission!

I do not accept that my Order has a scientific opinion based on the Gospel of Sciensano

If a disciplinary procedure were launched against me, I would refuse to submit to it until the science has been fully investigated and the scientific truth about the management of this crisis is known. I do not accept that my Order has a scientific opinion based on the gospel of Sciensano. My Order will have to be based on a scientific truth accepted by our entire community, which is in no way the case today when the head of Pfizer announces a vaccine and sells 50 million shares two days later! I am ashamed of this medicine. It’s not mine! Nor yours!

To judge me, science and not money must have spoken. You’ll have to wait before putting me on trial until the parliamentary commissions have shed light on the multiple facets of this dizzying socio-political-health imbroglio that scandalizes the simple surgeon that I am! I do not have the soul of a Galileo and I will not be a Galileo. (…)

To judge me, science and not money must have spoken

I will not conclude by reporting the words of Richard Horton (editor of the Lancet, which recently wrote that science was taking the turn of the darkness, but by a joint editorial of the largest and most prestigious medical journals which stated, already in 2007, that most of the so-called serious studies had only the appearance of it⁽¹⁾. This time, it is not me who says it, Mr. President, but the editors of the most important magazines, to whom we are supposed to have confidence and who have just, once again, with Covid, demonstrated their most nauseating mediocrity.