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Pharma-driven investors with no medical background managed to force the retraction of four published studies that undermined the COVID-19 vaccine mainstream narrative, according to the studies’ lead author, Dr. Sabine Hazan, a gastroenterologist and CEO of the research genetic sequencing lab ProgenaBiome.
In an exclusive interview with The Defender, Hazan detailed her harrowing experiences of being attacked as a scientist.
Her research examined the effectiveness of early COVID-19 treatments, including ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamins C and D, and zinc. She also found COVID-19 vaccines killed a type of good gut bacteria needed for a healthy immune response.
Hazan said the retractions were driven by investors’ desire to promote the COVID-19 vaccine — not because the studies had major flaws.
According to Hazan, it’s a problem when U.S. Food and Drug Administration agents, pharma personnel and politicians are allowed to buy stock in a pharmaceutical company.
“There’s a natural instinct to promote a product because you’re being incentivized by the price of that stock,” Hazan said. “Everybody who bought stocks in Moderna and Pfizer was incentivized to see it grow, and therefore they were biased, and it biased the research, frankly.”
One person heavily involved in getting her papers retracted, Hazan said, is Kevin Patrick, an investor with no medical training.
Patrick posts on X under the alias Cheshire. He is also a commenter on PubPeer, a platform critics have nicknamed “PubSmear.”
PubPeer allows anonymous commenters — many of whom are single individuals with multiple usernames — to push for post-publication reviews of articles that have already passed peer review.
The anonymous critiques — which usually focus on minor graphic or typographic mistakes — are often combined with social media attacks to launch coordinated campaigns against individual researchers.
PubPeer recently attacked a peer-reviewed study by Children’s Health Defense Chief Scientific Officer Brian Hooker and vaccine researcher Neil Miller. The study compared health outcomes in vaccinated and unvaccinated children.
According to Hazan, Patrick and others on PubPeer are part of a “network of investors and scientists that basically play the stock market.”
After the anonymous commenters convince the journal to retract the study, the website Retraction Watch publishes an article that undermines the scientist’s reputation.
For instance, Retraction Watch last July ran an article about Hazan under the headline, “Microbiome company CEO who linked COVID vaccine to bacterial decline now has four retractions.”
In addition to Hazan, Patrick has attacked research by others — including Kevin McKernan and Jessica Rose, Ph.D. — who published findings that contradict the mainstream COVID-19 vaccine narrative.
Hazan, who largely funded her lab’s research with her own savings, called the retractions “really painful.”
“This was the work of my whole team that risked their lives during the pandemic,” she said.
Hazan discovered COVID vaccines kill important gut bacteria
Although Hazan has over three decades of experience running clinical trials for leading pharmaceutical companies, she does not adhere to the mainstream mantra that the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are safe and effective.
She and her colleagues discovered that the COVID-19 vaccines greatly reduced the levels of good gut bacteria. They published an October 2022 abstract with their findings in the American Journal of Gastroenterology. The abstract has not been retracted.
Good gut bacteria are important for cancer prevention, Hazan told federal lawmakers at a June 3 congressional hearing on the links between COVID-19 vaccines and cancer.
Bifidobacterium is a probiotic gut microbe “critical for immune regulation, metabolism, gut barrier integrity. and neurological health,” Hazan said in her written testimony.
Research shows that the bifidobacterium plays an important role in preventing and fighting cancer.
The hearing, which also focused on how platforms like PubPeer attack scientists such as Hazan, was the latest held by the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.).
‘Imagine the possibilities if scientists could publish without fear’
Hazan said her four papers were retracted “over minor, easily correctable issues.”
Her lab was the first to document whole genome sequencing of the virus that causes COVID-19 in patient feces — an important scientific step in understanding COVID-19. After six months of rigorous peer review, her team published its findings in Gut Pathogens in January 2021.
However, the journal retracted the paper in May 2025 “without valid scientific justification,” she said.
In February 2022, Hazan and co-authors, including Dr. Peter McCullough, published a paper in Future Microbiology showing that COVID-19 patients with low oxygen levels improved greatly when given a combination of ivermectin, an antibiotic called doxycycline, zinc, and vitamins D and C.
Although the paper had passed eight months of rigorous peer review, it was retracted in January 2025.
In July 2022, Hazan published an article in Frontiers in Microbiology showing how ivermectin could protect against COVID-19 by boosting bifidobacterium levels in the gut.
Less than a year later, the journal retracted the article.
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In December 2024, Hazan, McCullough and others published results in BMC Cardiovascular Disorders from a clinical trial of COVID-19 patients treated with hydroxychloroquine, the antibiotic azithromycin, zinc, and vitamins C and D.
They found that participants who received the drugs all reported normal heart function — contradicting the belief that it was dangerous to treat COVID-19 with hydroxychloroquine because it interfered with cardiac rhythms.
However, the journal in February 2025 retracted the paper.
Hazan told lawmakers:
“Imagine the possibilities if scientists could publish without fear of politically motivated retractions — if we could focus on advancing knowledge instead of defending it. The American people deserve transparent, rigorous science.”
Patrick did not immediately respond to our request for comment.
Related articles in The Defender
- ‘Vigilante Science’: How Anonymous Critics Are Trying to Silence Peer-Reviewed Vaccine Research
- Sen. Ron Johnson: There Used to Be ‘Serious Journalism’ on Vaccine Injuries — But COVID Vaccine Cancer Risks Still Being Suppressed
- ‘Uncharted Territories’: Biologist Warns of Unknown Risks of COVID Vaccine DNA Contamination
- Groundbreaking Study Shows Unvaccinated Children Are Healthier Than Vaccinated Children
