The new Academy of Science and Freedom seeks to restore public trust in medical practice after the fallout of COVID-19 public policies.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a leading professor of medicine and vocal critic of harsh COVID-19 lockdown measures, is launching a new medical academy to “restore the norm of free discussion within science” and so counter the “COVID industrial complex.”
Partnering with his fellow Great Barrington Declaration co-author, Dr. Martin Kulldorff, Dr. Bhattacharya’s new academy is being formed as a direct response to the widespread censorship seen during the height of the COVID lockdowns.
“We have basically created an interest group to keep this pandemic going: the testing, the passports, the scanning… all of this has created a huge industry that keeps anxiety going,” Dr. Battacharya observed in a new interview, explaining the need for the academy.
Dr. Bhattacharya’s fight against lockdown flaws
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Professor of Medicine at Stanford University and co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, has been censored and repudiated by prominent scientific establishments for having published medical research in 2020 that destabilized the widespread consensus that mass-lockdown and mass-vaccination policies would mitigate the spread of COVID-19.
These policies were almost universally adopted by every Western nation.
But by publishing his now famous Great Barrington Declaration, exposing the flaws of these nationwide policies, Dr. Bhattacharya exposed a powerful group of “central funders of science.”
Speaking at length with Sunday Express Health and Social Affairs Editor, Lucy Johnston, in an extensive video interview, Dr. Bhattacharya explained that these central funders are “working very hard to take their ideas and exclude any scientists who disagree,” from what they need science to conclude.
Thus, a small group of people are forever changing the practice of Western medicine.
The fallout that ensued from publishing the Great Barrington Declaration showed Dr. Bhattacharya that science had shifted from research, dissent, and inquiry for the sake of truth, to uniformity and enforcement for control of the general public.
‘Central control of science is bad for science’
“The place of science is never to dictate policy; it’s to inform policy,” Dr. Bhattacharya remarked in his interview with Johnston. The “old plan” of doing science “trusts the public,” Dr. Bhattacharya continued, in contrast to the new plan that succumbs to pressure from central funders.
“We have a public health that distrusts the public. And now the public distrusts public health,” he said. As a result, Dr. Bhattacharya suspects that people will think twice about getting vaccinated, given their new distrust for public health experts.
“The voices at the table during the lockdowns were so limited,” Dr. Bhattacharya opined about the early reactions to the spread of COVID-19.
He noted that only epidemiologists, immunologists, and virologists were consulted, proving “too narrow a basis for which to design policy to affect billions of people.” According to Dr. Bhattacharya, political leaders needed input from economists, artists, philosophers, and “a vast array of expertise” to properly understand how to navigate a society’s response to an unknown disease.
“Central control of science is bad for science,” asserted Dr. Bhattacharya. “You have to allow for dissent, even if it’s uncomfortable.”
Purpose of the new Academy
In order to allow for healthy scientific inquiry and an accepted diversity of opinion once again, Dr. Bhattacharya has launched the new Academy of Science and Freedom.
Founded alongside Scott W. Atlas, M.D of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and Martin Kulldorff, Ph.D., of the Brownstone Institute, the Academy of Science and Freedom is aimed at promoting the “old plan” of science, working to inform – not impose – public policy with sound scientific research.
“The moral basis for unanimity in messaging is solid science” Dr. Bhattacharya explained. “If public health is not built on solid science, it has no moral basis for unanimity in messaging. On the other hand, the norms in science itself involve dissent. If you remove all dissent, you’ll never get to good science.”
Dr. Bhattacharya pointed to the tragic improper analysis of ideological science in New York’s “scarce resources,” as seen in the fatal decision to place COVID patients in nursing homes. Dr. Bhattacharya said that “the scarce resource was not hospital beds; it was the elderly.”
But leadership had opted for unanimous assent to an expedient solution rather than thorough scientific inquiry, and very few scientists dared challenge New York’s leaders’ unfounded fixation on pairing COVID patients with the elderly, he added. The impact was catastrophic.
“Fear blocked our ability to have a public discussion about what to do” Dr. Bhattacharya concluded, reflecting upon the nursing home deaths seen throughout the pandemic lockdowns. Instead, scientists should have been “very honest about what’s known and not known” even when answers were being demanded.
In short, Dr. Bhattacharya said that experts “came to this response that it was a moral imperative to suppress dissent” for the sake of action.
This same moral imperative was again imposed with school lockdowns. However, in this case, COVID testing had transformed into something new, becoming “essentially a way to implement lockdown by stealth,” said Dr. Bhattacharya.
However, he again noted that school lockdowns were not grounded in good science. “By October 2020, we knew that school lockdowns were not working, thanks to papers published by the Swedish Public Health Agency.” Leaders had demanded action, prompting scientific experts to eschew critical peer reviews in place for firm conclusions – even if those conclusions were vacuous or wrong.
Dr. Bhattacharya surmised the total percentage efficacy of the school lockdowns with a sobering admission. “If I had to put a number, I’d say zero [percent].”
COVID has created an ‘interest group’ intent on keeping the ‘pandemic going’
Consolidating all expert opinion to a limited group of scientists who were catering to political leaders with other agendas had, in short, created a “COVID industrial complex,” Bhattacharya said.
“We have basically created an interest group to keep this pandemic going: the testing, the passports, the scanning… all of this has created a huge industry that keeps anxiety going,” Dr. Bhattacharya concluded.
In other words, a new leadership class had been created, complete with financial backing and political power; there was no reason for this group to cede their newfound authority quickly, nor to keep it within the bounds of scientific inquiry.
Dr. Bhattacharya hopes to begin to begin thoroughly addressing these issues that have greatly impacted trust, prestige, and fundamental honesty within medical research through the Academy of Science and Freedom.
While a tremendous order to fill, Dr. Bhattacharya feels morally compelled to begin healing medical practice itself with his new Academy of Science and Freedom, dedicated to decentralized research free of powerful interest groups.
The work will be slow moving, but Dr. Bhattacharya argued that everyone will be better for it. “When you’ve harmed the lives of a billion people or more it’s very difficult to say, ‘Oops, I’m sorry.’”