Real Courage

Real Courage

By

Leonard Zwelling

When this blog started, while I was still a faculty member and Dr. DePinho was president, people told me I was courageous for writing a critical column about the president and his nepotistic administration. I laughed. I had tenure when that meant something and “professionalism” or the lack thereof, let alone uttering a bad word about MD Anderson couldn’t get you fired.

Now that doesn’t mean that Dr. DePinho didn’t harangue me in his office about things I wrote. He did. But he was just a bully and that wasn’t going to stop me. Besides, I was on my way out anyway. I don’t think I did anything really courageous. I just believed in an MD Anderson that I saw slipping away and felt I had to say something. I guess I still do as the old MD Anderson slips further away.

Flash forward to the latest tyrannical administration. The current leadership has a host of rapier-like weapons to use against the faculty from bullying to retaliation to professionalism. All of these remain ill-defined and ripe for abuse. Now going up against the administration would take true courage.

In the last week, I’ve seen it.

In my last bog I outlined the case of the three faculty plaintiffs who sued UT MD Anderson and won, but that’s not the courage part. The courage part is why this had to transpire at all. You see these three (and many others) sincerely believed in two things in the depth of their hearts—that for religious reasons they could not get the Covid-19 vaccine and that as physicians they were deeply committed to providing the best possible care for their patients. In declaring that they would not take the vaccine in the face of President Pisters insisting they do and his creation of an ad hoc committee to determine whose request for an exemption was sincere, they risked everything they believed in. Their request was declined for reasons unknown to them and their clinical privileges were revoked.

In other words, for being true to their religious beliefs, their ability to provide first-rate patient care was taken away. This is nothing short of outrageous.

Now these privileges were reinstated a month later, but the damage had been done. From then on the plaintiffs have to declare that their privileges were suspended on all applications for licensure or privileges for the rest of their careers. Fortunately, the court and eventually the UT MD Anderson leadership saw the depth of this mistake.

Meanwhile, the lives of hundreds of believers at MD Anderson who wanted not to take the vaccine were upended for nothing and the blame falls right at the feet of President Pisters. I am sure there is all kinds of finger-pointing going on among the executive leadership team. Some are already gone. I suspect more will be. With judgment like they displayed, they all should be.

But let’s shine a light on some real courage, that of the three plaintiffs. Let this also be an example to the rest of the faculty. If you don’t like the ridiculous rules about professionalism, bullying, retaliation, and horrible examples of abuse of the research misconduct process, perhaps you should consider what these courageous faculty have done. And make no mistake, this current administration is far worse than the past one. These institutional leaders seem to be downright mean and exhibit little concern for the faculty and staff that make MD Anderson go.

President Kennedy wrote a book a long time ago called Profiles in Courage about eight examples of patriots who exhibited courage at times of crisis. Right here we have an example at MD Anderson.

Don’t let this be the last example.