London medical school prof called out for invoking the Holocaust in COVID tweets – London Free Press (Blogs)

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The tweets compared the COVID-19 advice given to Ontario by its scientific advisers to something out of the Holocaust, calling those experts public health extremists.

They came from a professor at Western Universitys medical school, Donald Welsh, its chair of molecular neuroscience and vascular biology, who later posted that he wanted to pump the brakes on a public health approach that deeply troubles me as a scientist.

In the fallout Friday, Welsh was rebuked by both Canadas oldest Jewish human rights organization and Premier Doug Fords office and his comments called offensive by the dean of his school.

These inflammatory comments are totally unacceptable. Nothing should ever be compared to the Holocaust, Ivana Yelich, a spokesperson for Ford, wrote in an emailed statement, adding the provinces science advisers have provided critical data that has been instrumental in supporting our fight against COVID-19.

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Bnai Brith Canada called the comparison vile and false.

Its an absurd and beyond the pale reference to the Nazi mass murder of six million Jews in Europe, one nobody with this sort of impressive background should be making,Michael Mostyn, the organizations chief executive, said in the aftermath of the tweets.

Whereas the relative merits of lockdowns and the federal and provincialresponseto the pandemic in general are all legitimate matters of debate to be had in the public square,such gross and inflammatory comparisons have absolutely no place in these discussions, Mostyn said.

Thereisabsolutely no historical parallel to be had, and people should be ashamed of themselvesformakingthose sorts of comparisons, he said.

The provocative tweets taking shots at Ontarios handling of the virus crisis went out Friday, but after The London Free Press reached Welsh, they were taken down and a new thread posted.

Welsh would not speak to a reporter about his Holocaust comparison.

We are moving down a very dangerous path that deeply troubles me as a scientist, Welsh posted Friday afternoon after deleting his original tweets.

I appreciate that some felt this parallel is too strong and I do apologize for that, particularly given the abbreviated format of Twitter.

His original posts referred to Ontarios COVID-19 advisers, a panel of dozens of doctors and public health professionals that advises the province on issues and responses in the pandemic.

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For 14 months, we have all been part of a highly dangerous experiment. It was foisted upon us, without consent, by a radical group of public health fundamentalists. These extremists have terrorized civil society and attempted to shut down and destroy free thought, Welsh tweeted in the thread later deleted.

Welsh has a history of criticizing COVID-19 public health measures, including lockdowns, tweeting frequently about the need for a different approach and railing against many of the conclusions of Ontarios advisory panel.

Welsh has been at the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry since 2015, when he became a professor in the department of physiology and pharmacology, according to a public notice about his re-appointment as a chair. He has a PhD in biophysics from the University of Guelph and a masters degree in physical education from the University of British Columbia.

The views expressed in the Twitter post are offensive and do not align with the views of Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry or Western University, the medical schools dean, Dr. John Yoo, wrote in an emailed statement.

Universities are places where controversial and sometimes unsettling ideas are presented and challenged, Yoo added. While faculty members are free to express their opinions, those views are their own and dont represent those of the medical school or Western, which is committed to following public health advice, he said.

mstacey@postmedia.com

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London medical school prof called out for invoking the Holocaust in COVID tweets - London Free Press (Blogs)