Ethics Matter

Particularly For Doctors

What are we to make of a physician who knowingly disregards the approval status for the COVID inoculations and intentionally administers them to patients for whom the shots have not been approved?

What are we to make of a physician who intentionally inoculates children under the age of 5 against COVID, without regard to their likelihood of developing the disease?

In the case of Dr. Christopher Sun, of Toronto, these are not idle questions. Dr. Sun admits—one might almost say he brags—about doing exactly this.

In a conversation with the Star, Sun said he gave the COVID vaccine to about 500 kids between the ages of six months and five years during a three-month span, a decision he said he made “to protect children.”

Jessica Rose’ Reaction

Dr. Jessica Rose, PhD, author of “Unacceptable Jessica”, and one of the leading voices opposing the Pandemic Panic Narrative, summed her reaction up thus:

You can't spell hypocrisy without psycho!

This is probably the worst thing I have seen so far.

She elaborates on the ethical violation as she sees it:

Whenever I go into one of these Substacks, or anything really, I try to put myself in the shoes of all. In this case: the parents, the children, the Toronto Star writers and this doctor. This guy, Dr. Sun. Man, I can’t even do it. Even if he’s right, and these products in the experimental phase of their life-span turn out to be completely harmless, he still cannot inject infants prior to approval of these products. He cannot. This is beyond me. The parents were either completely mislead or simply decidedly uninformed due to lack of caring, and this is also horrific since it is the child that will suffer if an injury occurs. The children? Well, you know how I feel about that. You can’t make an informed decision if you are 2 or 3 or 4, can you?

Cavalier disregard for potential harms to a patient is undeniably as outrageous an ethical lapse as can be had in the medical profession.

Dr. Sun’s Rationale

Dr Sun, in his interview with the Toronto Star, summed his logic up thus:

“I put my neck on the line and did what I wanted to get done, which was to protect children,” he said in an interview. Health Canada has not approved any COVID vaccines for children under five.

Key to his ethical defense is his insistence that the parents “knew” what was at stake:

The parents who came to him “understood the benefits and risks,” Sun said, and he felt he “ethically had no reason to say no.” One shot quickly turned to more as word got around.

“These are worried parents in time of a health crisis and I think it’s wrong to turn away people who know what they are getting into,” he added.

His presumption here is clear: the parents knew what they were asking, understood the ramifications of what they were asking, felt it was worth asking anyway, and therefore he had little choice but to accede to their wishes.

But is that really true?

Canadian Medical Ethical Standards

As with all formal professions, medicine has formalized statements of professional ethics, to which doctors are required to adhere as a condition of their licensure. Within Canada, the primary relevant ethical statement is the Canadian Medical Association Code of Ethics and Professionalism.

According to the Code, doctors are expected to exemplify five core virtues: Compassion, Honesty, Humility, Integrity, and Prudence.

Taking Dr. Sun at his word, his actions might arguably demonstrate compassion, in that he was motivated by a desire to protect his patient. However, his actions cannot be said to be honest, and his own statement “I did what I wanted” fairly removes any pretense of humility—the assertion of the egoistic “I” is more in line with hubris than humility. Violating Canadian medical regulations by administering COVID inoculations in an unapproved manner is difficult to square with any notion of integrity, and the patent illegality of such an act is by its very nature the antithesis of prudence.

At the broadest level of ethical consideration, Dr. Sun has more than a few issues.

Yet if we drill further into the ethical expectations of Canadian Physicians, we find other questions regarding his conduct.

Canadian physicians are, per the CMA Code, expected to “Take all reasonable steps to prevent or minimize harm to the patient”. Did he hew to that guideline?

Per Public Health Ontario, children up to 4 years of age have had the fewest cases of COVID-19, and their rate of infection is the lowest of all age cohorts.

They have the third lowest hospitalizations and rate of hospitalization, with children 5 to 11 and 12 to 19 somewhat lower.

Deaths among children in Ontario from COVID-19: 0

The data does not support any claim of significant risk of harm to children under 5 from COVID. As the benefit of inoculation is the prevention or mitigation of this risk, it follows that the data also does not support any claim of benefit to children under 5 from COVID inoculation.

What about the risks of COVID inoculation? We must look at those as well, as few things in this world can ever be considered an un-alloyed good, and by any measure the COVID inoculations are no exception.

With inoculations for children of any age only approved rather recently, and no approvals at all exist for children under 5, it is challenging to assess the risk, yet the VAERS data does give us some data upon which certain inferences can be made. (I’m using VAERS as it is the adverse event data set with which I am most familiar, but it is not unreasonable to extend patterns from an American data set north to Canada).

While there are innumerable potential adverse events, one of the most frequently covered by the media has been incidence of myocarditis and pericarditis. When we look at cases of either in VAERS for patients 6 and up since the time the FDA approved inoculation for children age 5 and older—October 29, 2021—one disturbing fact quickly emerges: myocarditis and pericarditis most frequently occur in young people.

Nor is the weighting a small one: children and young adults are at greatest risk from these adverse events, as the graphical representation of the above data shows.

It is not unreasonable to infer from this data that children below the age of 5 are similarly at elevated risk of myocarditis and pericarditis, relative to older patients.

This is relevant because myocarditis and pericarditis are acknowledged risks of the inoculations. The CDC’s own deliberations have affirmed this. Moreover, Pfizer’s own internal documentation shows that company was aware of significant risk of myocarditis and pericarditis from its mRNA inoculation against COVID.

Pfizer Accidentally Validates VAERS Data

Thus we have a clear, demonstrable, and significant risk for young patients, validated repeatedly by multiple sources and acknowledged throughout the professional literature—with which we must presume Dr. Sun has at least some familiarity.

Did Dr. Sun therefore “Take all reasonable steps to prevent or minimize harm to the patient”? The relevant data which establishes the benefits (minimal to none) and risks (significant) to pediatric patients of COVID inoculation make it clear that he did not.

Did Dr. Sun Even Give A Damn?

While we can only infer Dr. Sun’s attitude from the write up of his interview with the Toronto Star, the language of that article strongly suggests that Dr. Sun is not overly concerned either with the ethics of his conduct or the professional ramifications of that conduct.

He said the CPSO interviewed him about his actions but dismissed the concern. Sun said he has since stopped giving any COVID vaccines off-label — for a purpose or patient group that it’s not approved for.

Again, a cavalier disregard for the situation is not in keeping with any semblance of a professional virtue of humility.

There are healthcare professionals who advocate for authorizing the inoculations for children under 5, but at this time that authorization has not been given. Yet even if the authorization should be given, the data demonstrating the risks and benefiits wll not change. The balance of harms does not tilt in favor of inoculation of children.

(The balance of harm does not tilt in favor of using the inoculations at all, as I and others have demonstrated many times over.)

How Many Red Flags Are Enough?

Ethics Matter

The fundamental ethical precept is simply this: no one can simply do as they wish, without regard to consequence. In any profession, be it medicine, or even my own professional background as both Accountant and Network Engineer, the basic ethical stance is that one must always act with regard for others.

We must weigh facts, and evidence, and all of us—not just doctors—have a moral obligation to above all else do no harm.

That we “want” to do something is never sufficient justification. We must be deliberate and thoughtful in all that we do. Doctors especially, as they hold in their hands both life and death on a daily basis, must take the greatest of care in all that they do.

Dr. Sun did not do that. Dr. Sun did not even come close to doing that. Dr. Sun set aside his ethics and superimposed his own ego. His own words and the data make that very plain.

That is unconscionable. That is evil.

That is wrong.