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Dr. Pierre Kory got canceled, had his research dismissed and even lost several jobs after he promoted ivermectin to treat COVID-19.
All that took a personal toll on the doctor and author. Kory shared his professional struggles on the latest episode of the new podcast “Erased!”
The podcast, hosted by David and Leila Centner, launched last week as a platform for people who were publicly canceled for contradicting official narratives.
Kory said he blamed himself when he first started getting canceled for his stance on ivermectin as an effective treatment for COVID-19. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other federal agencies opposed the use of the drug, derisively dismissing it as a “horse dewormer.”
“I thought I played a personal role,” Kory told the Centners. “My behavior somehow brought about what happened, and it devastated me.”
At first, Kory was thrilled when videos of him discussing the treatment went viral. Major news organizations, including The Associated Press, contacted him, and major medical journals invited research articles on his work. Kory thought he would be able to help save lives.
Instead, he and his opinions were attacked, news stories discredited his research and he lost a series of jobs.
That led to some self-reflection on his part. Yet when a colleague sent him an email describing the “Disinformation Playbook,” Kory said things began to make sense.
The playbook outlines tactics industries deploy when emerging science threatens their bottom line. Kory noted similar tactics were developed by the tobacco industry in the 1950s when emerging evidence pointed to the dangers of smoking.
This “Disinformation Playbook” was used against Kory, Dr. Paul Marik, Dr. Peter McCullough and countless others who proposed alternative therapies for COVID-19.
After Kory understood the disinformation campaign used to silence his findings, he said he “almost got used to the media hit jobs. Those almost became funny.”
“Light bulbs are exploding, and I could suddenly see the world more clearly,” Kory said.
Disinformation tactics include things such as “the fake,” which involves developing randomized controlled trials, which are manipulated to show results that favor industry. Kory said they did this with ivermectin.
Tactics also include “the blitz,” where media and the establishment harass scientists conducting dissenting research, effectively cancelling them. Kory outlined his fight against those tactics in his book, “The War on Ivermectin: The Medicine that Saved Millions and Could Have Ended the Pandemic.”
Leila Centner stressed the importance of fighting these tactics.
“We love people who fight the system and don’t sit back and just get beaten into submission,” she said.
Kory hopes people like him are setting an example for others in similar positions because he was struck by how few whistleblowers emerged during COVID-19. He said a study on whistleblowers described by Dr. Peter Gøtzsche showed that despite the suffering such people typically experience, “When asked whether they would do it again, they almost all said yes.”
Leila said she wasn’t surprised by the study’s finding because, as a whistleblower, “You feel happier that you lived in integrity and you weren’t silenced.”
The Centners started their podcast in part because they were victims of cancel culture on three occasions. Leila’s cancellation went global after a video leaked showing her raising concerns about the COVID-19 vaccine to teachers at Centner Academy, a school she and David run in Miami.
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“When Leila and I went through our own cancellation journeys, we realized we don’t have a mouthpiece. Nobody wants to report our side of the story,” David told The Defender.
“I felt it was very lonely, shameful, embarrassing. And we felt there’s got to be some way for people to get their word out. And podcasts are obviously a way to cut through the noise.”
The Centners decided to use one of their platforms, Erase.com, a reputation management company that helps people remove negative content from their online profiles, to launch their podcast.
Weekly episodes of “Erased!” will highlight whistleblowers, investigative journalists, political dissenters, social media outcasts and everyday victims of cancel culture.
David Centner noted that cancel culture is bipartisan and poses a threat to democracy for everyone.
“If people don’t speak up for fear they are going to be canceled, then what happens to the rights of free speech? The First Amendment?” he said. “This is not the America that they promised us when we were growing up. Things have changed.”
Watch the latest episode of ‘Erased!’ here:
