UC Has Put Me on Leave After I Challenged Their Vaccine Mandate in Court
Instead of waiting for the Federal court to decide my case, the University of California has banned me from working on campus or working from home
Here is the latest move by the University of California in response to my lawsuit in Federal court challenging their vaccine mandate on behalf of Covid-recovered individuals with natural immunity. Last Thursday Sept 30th at 5:03 PM I received this letter from the University informing me that, as of the following morning, I was being placed on “Investigatory Leave” for my failure to comply with the vaccine mandate. I was given no opportunity to contact my patients, students, residents, or colleagues and let them know I would disappear for a month. Rather than waiting for the court to make a ruling on my case, the University has taken action:
You might be thinking, a month of paid leave doesn’t sound so bad. But the language is misleading here, since half of my income from the University comes from clinical revenues generated from seeing my patients, supervising resident clinics, and engaging in weekend and holiday on-call duties. So while on leave my salary is significantly cut. Furthermore, my contract stipulates that I am not able to conduct any patient care outside the University: to see my current patients, or to recoup my losses by moonlighting as a physician elsewhere, would violate the terms of my contract.
It came as no surprise that, since my request for a preliminary injunction was not granted by the court, the University would immediately begin procedures to dismiss me. However, in the complicated legal game of three-dimensional chess I did not anticipate this particular development: the current administrative designation, where I am neither able to work at the University nor permitted to pursue work elsewhere, was not a development I had anticipated. The University may be hoping this pressure will lead me to resign “voluntarily,” which would remove grounds for my lawsuit: if I resign prior to being terminated by the University, I have no legal claim of harm.
I have no intention at this time of resigning, withdrawing my lawsuit, or having an unnecessary medical intervention forced on me, in spite of these challenging circumstances. You may be wondering about the CA Department of Public Health vaccine mandate mentioned in the University’s letter above: yes, I am subject to two mandates, the UC mandate as a faculty member and the CA State mandate as a healthcare provider. Regarding the latter mandate, I filed a similar lawsuit in Federal court last Friday against the State Public Health Department. I will post more later on that case as it develops.
Although this is a challenging time for me and my family, at this time I remain convinced that this course of action is worthwhile. I am grateful for your ongoing encouragement, prayers, and support. I want my readers to know that am taking legal action not primarily for myself, but for all those who have no voice and whose Constitutional rights are being steamrolled by these mandates. As I wrote in my first post:
In my position, I came to see the importance of representing those whose voices were silenced, and to insist upon the right of informed consent and informed refusal. I have nothing personal to gain by this lawsuit and a lot to lose professionally. In the end, my decision to challenge these mandates came down to this question: How can I continue to call myself a medical ethicist if I fail to do what I am convinced is morally right under pressure?
Many of you have asked how you can support me and my efforts to challenge coercive mandates. My first answer is to consider becoming a paid subscriber to this newsletter if you are not already, and share this newsletter with others who are interested in following these issues. In the coming weeks I will be expanding my work on this Substack platform with live podcasts and audience Q&A for paid subscribers.
For those who may wish to contribute more: I serve as Senior Fellow and Director of the Program in Health & Human Flourishing at the Zephyr Institute in Palo Alto, California. For the foreseeable future, the Program I direct there will focus on gathering and supporting experts, scholars, and leaders who are questioning various aspects of our response to this pandemic, and who are offering more effective solutions to the challenges we are facing. You can contribute to my work at the Zephyr Institute by making a donation HERE and specifying that you want your gift to support “Dr. Kheriaty’s work in the Health and Human Flourishing Program.”
This legal fight is important not only to set appropriate limits to vaccine mandates. It is also important for the future that—now in this crucial moment—we refuse to allow our institutions to set dangerous and unjust precedents. Today’s precedents could later facilitate even more coercive mandates and infringements on civil liberties by unelected officials, done during a declared “state of exception” or emergency that has no defined terminus—a dangerous precedent for a democratic society.
I want to thank all of you for being a part of this movement and for engaging with and encouraging my work on this issue. I could not do this without you.
Some ideas for you and your tormentors"
COVID-19, the Kidnappers, and the Stockholm Syndrome
I submitted a proposal to Sue Hoek and Public Health to end the pandemic. I don’t know if it will be implemented, seriously discussed, or even put on the docket. However, I do know some factors that will affect the vetting process.
In this country we are ignoring evidenced-based medicine and inalienable rights. Differing viewpoints are being suppressed.
I believe forces almost impossible to resist have kidnapped all of us. We have been kidnapped by COVID AND COMPANY with devastating results.
Here is one of the classic examples of Stockholm syndrome.
After the Symbionese Liberation Army kidnapped Patricia Hearst, she was locked in a room with blindfolds on for days at a time. Without any possibility of escape, she had only two choices, resist and face the consequences, or identify with, even love her captors. She chose the latter. Remember the photos of her robbing a bank holding a rifle?
Who kidnapped us and how did they do it? COVID-19 came from the Chinese communists, the Wuhan Lab, and US funded gain of function research. The company piece comes from the WHO, NIH, FDA, CDC, AMA, big Pharma, “trusted news initiative,” a man called Fauchi, Presidents Trump and Biden, public health, even our friends and family. COVID AND COMPANY kidnapped us.
“But that is impossible,” you say. “They didn’t lock us up and control every aspect of our lives.”
Really?
First they continuously injected fear into us with daily reporting of cases and deaths. We couldn’t turn on the TV without being warned about COVID-19, a disease with an overall mortality rate of approximately 1% increasing by age.
Our kidnappers forced us to stay in our homes, abandon our friends, stop work, school, vacation plans, social activities. They told us to wear masks, and now are telling us to get in line for the vaccine or lose our jobs. We have been canceled online for trying to share effective early interventions with each other. When we got symptoms they told us to stay at home, isolate and wait for more acute symptoms. There was no treatment. COVID-19 is bad enough, but COVID AND COMPANY made it worse. What are some of the consequences?
A security guard was escorting ethicist and psychiatry professor Aaron Kheriaty as he was being removed from his workplace at UC Irving for not getting his mandatory jab. On the way out he berated the doctor for threatening his own life because he refused to get the shot. But Kheriaty had natural immunity far superior to vaccines because he recovered from the infection. I saw a woman on TV right after she got the new COVID-19 jab. She was crying tears of joy and gratitude. “Now I am free,” she exclaimed. “I can go back to living the life I want to live.” But she had to go back to her cell with her blindfolds on. She remained kidnapped by COVID AND COMPANY.
Then there is the bizarre mantra for mandated shots: We have to protect the protected from the unprotected. Actually we all have to be protected from the vaccinated because they, thanks to the jabs, are unknowingly carrying, spreading and increasing illnesses in communities.
While at any point in time, higher vaccinated states have lower hospitalizations and deaths compared to lower vaccinated states, overall the cases keep increasing. Israel with its increasingly higher peaks is a good example of that.
We are collectively suffering from a mass psychosis based on irrational fear that is impairing our ability to think clearly. Anyone who challenges COVID AND COMPANY is risking social isolation, even death on a respirator. When my wife told a friend she and four other members of the family had COVID-19 and treated it successfully with ivermectin her friend said, “Well, you are one of the lucky ones.”
Try telling someone that the Pfizer jab was approved based on fraudulent data. Tell them the alleged vaccines are actually making the pandemic worse. See what your fellow kidnap victims say. Tell someone we can end the pandemic and they will say you are delusional. This “misinformation” will be quickly censored.
And finally, if anyone does challenge COVID AND COMPANY, this will threaten a highly profitable enterprise that is more interested in protecting itself and making money regardless of the human cost in disability and death.
COVID didn’t kill all 775,000 US citizens. COVID AND COMPANY killed and are still killing hundreds of thousands of them. No wonder we are still suffering from Stockholm syndrome.
I just subscribed and I was directed to Twitter to announce that in a post showing your link…and I was not able to post. Perhaps it’s just a case of operator error…but perhaps it isn’t. I just wanted to let you know. Thanks so much.