The Mayo Clinic College of Medicine has disciplined Dr. Michael Joyner, in part for comments in a 2022 New York Times story in which Joyner noted the obvious physical and hormonal differences between males and females, differences that give men (and “transwomen,” who are really men) a substantial advantage over biological females in most competitive sports.
The Mayo-Clinic affiliated school found Joyner guilty of using “idiomatic language” in two interviews, one last year with the New York Times, and one last January with CNN. They have given him a formal letter of warning, suspended him for two weeks, and threatened to fire him unless he refrains from public comments in the future without pre-approval from the school.
Regarding differences between the sexes, Joyner told the Times that, “you see the divergence immediately as the testosterone surges into the boys” and that these biological realities can produce “dramatic differences in performance.” Joyner told the Times that “there are social aspects to sport, but physiology and biology underpin it. … testosterone is the 800-pound gorilla.”
As noted by Inside Higher Ed, the comments were picked up by various other media outlets as part of the controversy involving a “transwoman” swimmer, Lia Thomas, a man who has chosen to compete against women in NCAA swim meets.
According to a previous Mayo Clinic press release, Dr. Joyner is a first-rate scientist whose papers have frequently been cited in other publications. Although his first specialty is as an anesthesiologist, he has researched widely, including extensive work on exercise physiology:
Dr Joyner is a physician-researcher and one of the world’s leading experts on human performance and exercise physiology. Using humans as his model system, he has made major contributions to understanding muscle and skin blood flow, blood pressure regulation, and human athletic performance. His ideas about human performance are widely quoted in both the popular media and scientific publications. He has been a consultant to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and NASA, and has held leadership positions with prestigious scientific journals.
The Mayo Clinic College of Medicine sent Dr. Joyner a disciplinary letter that mandated that, in the future, he “vet each individual media request through Public Affairs including follow-up requests; allow them to do their job as they determine what topics are appropriate and are responsible for protecting Mayo Clinic’s brand and reputation… cease engagement in offline conversations with reporters,” and “discuss approved topics only and stick to prescribed messaging.”
Medical Research Institutions are Terrified of the NIH
Although the woke mob was after Joyner for pointing out obvious biological reality, the most recent incident for which Joyner was disciplined—the incident that directly led to his suspension and the formal letter of warning—had to do with comments Joyner made about a Covid treatment that the NIH was blocking:
In a CNN interview on January 12, 2023, Joyner said he was “frustrated” with the NIH’s “bureaucratic rope-a-dope,” calling the agency’s guidelines a “wet blanket” that “discourages doctors from trying convalescent plasma on these people.”
The terms “frustrated,” “wet blanket,” and “bureaucratic rope-a-dope” are indeed idioms* but hardly the type of harsh invective that would warrant the formal discipline of a highly qualified medical researcher.
What is going on? What is going on is that the Mayo Clinic is terrified of the consequences of criticizing the NIH (which until recently was run by Dr. Anthony Fauci). Why? Because the NIH controls almost $50 billion in medical research funding, “and that basically buys you the entire American health care space,” says Adam Andrzejewski of the watchdog group Open The Books.
If you’re a medical researcher and you get on the NIH’s bad side, you are out of business. It is as simple as that. The NIH controls the money and, hence, they control the research agenda, and ultimately the researchers.
The taxpayer money, “buys you a lot of friends, buys you a lot of allies, and there's great incentive to stay on the establishment narratives that NIH disseminates on public health policy,” says Adam Andrzejewski. In placing so much money in the hands of the NIH, previous congresses no doubt acted with the best of intentions, but that is what the road to hell is paved with.
As we emerge from the haze and hell of the Covid years, it is becoming clear that Fauci was able to shape and control the narrative to an astonishing degree. One example we recently discussed was that, although several of the nation’s top virology experts immediately recognized the fingerprints of genetic engineering on the Covid-19 virus, Fauci was able to steer them away from that conclusion and convince them they should try to disprove the lab leak theory of the virus’s origins.
Obviously, concentrating in one man’s hands that much power over that much money was a very, very bad idea. An extremely bad idea.
Fauci’s NIH Kills Another Covid Cure
What was Dr. Joyner complaining about in the January 12 CNN interview? Dr. Joyner was trying to convince the NIH to recommend a treatment for immune-compromised Covid patients: infusing them with blood plasma from recovered patients, but Fauci’s NIH is trying to shut down that treatment.
A report analyzing the results of nine studies found that immune-compromised Covid-19 patients were 37% less likely to die if they got convalescent plasma, an antibody-rich blood product from people who had recovered from the virus.
Here is an excerpt from CNN’s written story, showing the Joyner comments in context:
There are about 7 million immune-compromised people in the US, and treating them if they contract Covid-19 has proved challenging.
Monoclonal antibodies once popular for prevention and treatment for this group, aren’t used anymore because coronavirus variants have changed over time. One of the advantages of convalescent plasma is that as long as it’s been donated recently, there’s a high likelihood it will have antibodies to currently circulating variants, according to advocates for the treatment.
But the National Institutes of Health’s Covid-19 treatment guidelines say there’s not enough evidence to recommend either for or against the use of convalescent plasma in people with compromised immune systems.
Three times last year – in May, August and December – Casadevall, Joyner and dozens of other doctors from Harvard, Stanford, Mayo, Columbia and other academic medical centers wrote emails to scientists at the National Institutes of Health, sending them research materials and urging them to revise the guidelines. They say they have not received a response.
Joyner said he’s “frustrated” with the NIH’s “bureaucratic rope-a-dope,” calling the agency’s guidelines a “wet blanket” that discourages doctors from trying convalescent plasma on these people. Some patient advocates say they’re angry.
“This lack of response to the researchers is infuriating,” said Janet Handal, co-founder of the Transplant Recipient and Immunocompromised Patient Advocacy Group.
Obviously, Dr. Joyner is righteously indignant. He is both an excellent doctor and a good advocate for his patients. The Mayo Clinic should be backing him up, not disciplining him. But, again, research institutions are terrified of alienating the NIH, which controls the purse-strings on almost $50 billion in research money.
It does not require a genius to see what the NIH is doing here. This is a replay of Fauci’s attack on Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. Anthony Fauci, the beagle-torturing Jesuit, is killing every possible cure for Covid in order to channel people into the vaccine, which is extremely dangerous, having already killed hundreds of thousands and injured millions.
Just How Corrupt is Anthony Fauci?
Why won’t NIH recognize a promising Covid treatment? That’s a good question. I’m pretty certain it is because Dr. Anthony Fauci is financially interested in the widespread use of vaccines.
Can I prove that? No, because the law excuses people in Fauci’s position from having to disclose their patent royalty income. Anthony Fauci could have an enormous conflict of interest, he could be receiving tens or hundreds of thousands in royalties from Pfizer, and we might never know about it.
Under a 1984 law known as Bayh-Dole, government scientists have a unique arrangement. They can collect royalties from pharmaceutical companies for discoveries they make while working for us, the taxpayer.
A basic rule of intellectual property is that if you invent or create something while working for an employer, that property is a “work for hire” and belongs to your employer, not you. But many large research institutions have created their own exceptions to this rule, luring top names with the promise that not only will they be well paid, but they can keep their inventions and any royalties accruing thereto.
Birch Bayh (D—Ind.) and Bob Dole (R—Kan.) created the same sort of exception for government scientists working at the NIH. When those scientists patent an invention, and the NIH is able to license that patent to a drug company, the royalties from the patent license are paid to NIH, and NIH distributes them to its scientists. But the details of those royalty payments are kept strictly confidential.
Republican Senator Rand Paul tried to pry loose some of the details of the system in questioning Anthony Fauci:
Sen. Rand Paul: Can you tell me that you have not received a royalty from any entity that you ever oversaw the distribution of money and research grants?
Anthony Fauci: Um, well first of all, let’s talk about royalties
Paul: That's the question. No, that’s the question (Crosstalk) Have you ever received a royalty payment from a company that you later oversaw money going to that company?
Fauci: You know, I don’t know as a fact, but I doubt it.
Paul: It’s not just about you. Everyone on the vaccine committee — have any of them ever received money from the people who make vaccines? Can you tell me that? Can you tell me if anybody on the vaccine approval committees ever received any money from (Crosstalk)... people who make the vaccines?
Fauci: Sound bite number one, are you gonna let me answer a question? Ok. So let me give you some information. First of all, according to the regulations, people who receive royalties are not required to divulge them even on their financial statement, according to the Bayh-Dole Act.
So the highest paid employee in the federal government (his annual salary in 2022 was $480,000) effectively told a U.S. senator: “It's none of your business whether I have a gigantic conflict of interest because I receive royalty payments from the drug companies, and by law I don’t have to tell you.”
Andrzejewski’s organization, “Open The Books,” sued NIH to learn the truth. Their lawsuit unearthed 3,000 pages of royalty payments to NIH scientists from 2010 to 2021. During that time, 2,407 government scientists received $325 million, averaging more than $135,000 for each scientist.
But the NIH redacted (blacked out) key details, including which drug products generated which royalties to which NIH scientists.
We don't know who paid it. We don't know how much each individual scientist received. We can only see their names and count the number of times that each scientist received a payment. And they also redacted the invention, the license number or the patent number. So every single one of those individual, third-party royalty payments has the appearance of a conflict of interest.
Or, rather, each one of those redactions has the appearance of covering up a conflict of interest. Meanwhile, we know that Anthony Fauci is a very affluent man. Following a heated exchange between Fauci and Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) which concluded with Fauci calling the senator a “moron,” Marshall obtained Fauci’s unredacted FY2020 financial disclosures.
The Fauci household’s net worth exceeds $10.4 million. During the pandemic year of 2020, their household income, perks and benefits, and unrealized gains totaled $1,776,479 — including federal income and benefits of $868,812; outside royalties and travel perks totaling $113,298; and investment accounts increasing by $794,369.
Royalties of $113,000 does not seem like a lot, but recall that those are 2020 numbers, and the mass vaccination campaign did get underway until 2021. Pfizer made around $76 billion from the vaccine in 2021 and 2022. I wonder what the NIH’s, and Fauci’s, royalties were for those two years?
We know that the first Covid vaccine to get government approval was Pfizer’s, and Pfizer’s vaccine is participating in the NIH royalty-sharing agreement. Thus, it is entirely plausible that the NIH helped invent the vaccine, licensed at least some of the technology to Pfizer, and is even now receiving millions in royalties from Pfizer.
Congress ought to be holding a hearing to find out why Bayh-Dole shrouds royalty payments in secrecy and whether it is a good idea to continue with such a policy given the potential for such titanic conflicts of interest.
One would think there should be bi-partisan support for finding out if payments from Pfizer and other drug and vaccine manufacturers to government agencies creates a conflict of interest. But it now seems obvious that it does. Nothing else can explain Fauci’s bizarre actions surround Covid and the vaccine—nothing, that is, other than conspiracy theories about Bill Gates and drastic population reduction.
Says Andrzejewski
We need to be able to follow the money. Unelected bureaucrats are running the entire American health care complex without any scrutiny. They're basically telling the American people, “Sit down, shut up, pay up. We'll run things.” And that's not how the federal government is supposed to operate.
I saw this story in Jonathan Turley’s blog, res ipsa loquitur. Turley’s story was about Dr. Joyner being disciplined for telling obvious truths about the sexes, and that was the story I intended to write. But as I researched it I realized that the real story was the NIH’s power over medical research in the United States, and how corrupt individuals at the top of the NIH are able to profit from a patent royalty payments system that presents an astonishingly corrupt conflict of interest, and how that conflict of interest has contributed to the derangement of our medical system for three years and counting. The story I found is at least as important and revealing as the story Professor Turley found.
*The expression “rope-a-dope” is more of a cultural reference than a true idiom; it refers to Muhammad Ali’s boxing strategy, used in several fights over the course of his career, of leaning on the ropes and absorbing his opponent’s blows, then when the opponent was tired and Ali was still fresh, countering with a flurry.
“Forsaking the right way, they have gone astray. They have followed the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved gain from wrongdoing.” 2 Peter 2:15