Western University prof says colleague spreading vaccine misinformation is hiding behind academic freedom

A professor at Western University in London, Ont., is accusing a colleague of hiding behind the protections of academic freedom to spread misinformation about the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines and other public health measures.

"Academic freedom comes with academic responsibilities," said Jacob Shelley, who holds a joint appointment with Western's faculty of law and the school of health studies, and directs the school's Health Ethics, Law & Policy lab. "That means having integrity in our research, not just to say whatever the hell we want." 

Shelley's scorn is directed at Donald Welsh, a professor of physiology at Western's Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry.

Welsh has a specialization in cardiovascular biology, and regularly tweets and retweets information that challenges the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.

For his part, Welsh, in an email to CBC News, stands by his right to state his own opinions, spelling that out on his Twitter profile page.

Some of Welsh's tweets include one on Jan. 7 that said, "I suspect our health minister is smart enough to understand that C19 vaccines are ineffective at mitigating infection, transmission and death. Seems more like a political rather than a scientific stance." 

In a Jan. 13 tweet, he said "every aspect of Canada's public response to C19 was devoid of sound scientific reasoning."

On Jan. 23, Welsh responded to a tweet by Dr. Nathan Stall, a former member of Ontario's COVID-19 Science Advisory Table who left that position last summer to run for the provincial Liberals in this spring's provincial election. 

Stall took the Ontario PC government to task for what he saw as a low vaccination rate among kids. 

Welsh responded: "There is no need to vaccinate those who aren't susceptible. This is the standard practice in most of the world." 

Welsh's Tweet drew a response from Dr. Genevieve Eastabrook, an associate professor in maternal-fetal medicine who also works at Schulich. 

"This individual knows nothing about preventative medicine, vaccination or public health," Eastabrook wrote. "Yet again, I am embarrassed to work at the same institution as this person."

CBC News reached out to Western University for a response to Welsh's Twitter comments. 

In a statement, the university said Welsh's views "do not align with the views of the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry or Western University," and they're "disappointed that Don Welsh has decided to take the position that he has."