Medical solidarity exists - Open letter

“OPEN LETTER

To the members of the Federal Supervisory Commission of the FPS Public Health

Concerning Doctor Michel PROCUREUR and his right to continue practising medicine in Belgium

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am a general practitioner and naturopath and have been practising medicine for more than thirty-five years.

It is in this capacity, but also as a colleague and friend of Doctor Michel PROCUREUR, that I wish today to testify on his behalf, at a time when you are called upon to examine his situation and the possibility for him to continue practising medicine in Belgium.

The Covid-19 health crisis will undoubtedly remain one of the most controversial periods in the recent history of medicine. In a state of emergency and under considerable political, media and social pressure, decisions of exceptional scope were taken. Some doctors approved them; others contested them, in particular regarding the place of early treatments, the individual assessment of the benefit-risk balance of vaccination, the restrictions imposed on unvaccinated people and, more fundamentally, the limits that the health emergency could legitimately place on free and informed consent.

The time of emergency, however, is not the time of History.

Scientific knowledge evolves. Certainties presented as established can be re-examined. Decisions taken in an emergency can be reassessed when more hindsight becomes available.

That is precisely what is happening today.

In the United States in particular, investigations and parliamentary hearings have led to the re-examination of many aspects of this crisis: the origin of SARS-CoV-2, the decisions of the health authorities, vaccination policies, the mandates that resulted from them, pharmacovigilance and the information given to the population.

The House of Representatives select subcommittee on the pandemic thus completed two years of investigations in 2024, after numerous hearings and the examination of a considerable body of documents. The conclusions of its majority are extremely critical of several aspects of the management of this crisis, even if some of these conclusions remain scientifically or politically contested.

The question of the origin of SARS-CoV-2 itself continues to be the subject of discussion and investigation. The hypothesis of a laboratory accident, long dismissed with great confidence in public debate, has since been officially examined and considered plausible by several American officials and bodies.2

The point here is not to claim that all the controversies relating to this crisis have now been definitively settled.

Quite the opposite.

Their existence and persistence should impose great humility on us when we judge in retrospect those who, at the heart of this period, refused to share some of the institutional certainties of the moment.

It is in the light of this context that I ask that Doctor PROCUREUR’s conduct be examined.

It seems essential to me not to make today the mistake of regarding him as a doctor who simply decided, for personal convenience, to free himself from rules that applied to everyone.

The question goes much deeper.

Doctor PROCUREUR found himself facing what he considered to be a conflict between, on the one hand, the obligations imposed during the health crisis and, on the other, some of the most fundamental principles of medical ethics: do no harm, assess the benefit-risk balance of a medical act individually, inform the patient honestly and respect their consent or refusal.

Can his analysis really be disputed today, in the light of the clarifications provided by these successive commissions of inquiry, in the United States and elsewhere? Can we really pretend that the questions he raised were necessarily absurd, irresponsible or unworthy of a doctor?

Well before the health crisis, French law had enshrined an essential principle. The law of 4 March 2002 on patients’ rights wrote into the Public Health Code the principle that no medical act or treatment may be carried out without the free and informed consent of the person, and that the person has the right to refuse treatment.

The Oviedo Convention, too, placed free and informed consent at the heart of the protection of the human person in the medical field.

Restrictions on certain rights may of course be provided for by law on public health grounds, and the French courts upheld some of the measures taken during the health crisis.

But this legal finding in no way makes it possible to assert that the scientific, medical and ethical conditions justifying each of these restrictions were beyond dispute, nor that the choices made by the public authorities were the only medically possible ones.

That, in my view, is precisely where an essential part of Doctor PROCUREUR’s case lies.

From the very beginning of this crisis, doctors and scientists contested certain choices made by the health authorities: the proportionality and consequences of lockdowns, the place given to early treatments, the evaluation of various molecules or therapeutic strategies, the benefit-risk balance of vaccination according to age and individual level of risk, and the relevance of imposing the same vaccination policy on populations facing very different risks from the disease.

The question of early treatments deserves to be recalled in this respect.

Doctors, in France and abroad, defended various therapeutic strategies based in particular on repurposed drugs or complementary measures — hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, vitamin C, D, zinc and others — while the health authorities and other scientists disputed their effectiveness or considered the available evidence insufficient.

Ivermectin is probably one of the most emblematic examples of this controversy.

Doctors, including Dr Pierre KORY and other members of the FLCCC in the United States, vigorously defended its early use and contested the way in which the scientific data on this drug had been evaluated and presented. Dr KORY devoted an entire book to this controversy, The War on Ivermectin.

Some frontline doctors may have been deeply surprised when they were told that there was no relevant therapeutic option and that they essentially had to wait for the disease to run its course.

Evidence-based medicine requires rigorous studies. But medicine is also made of clinical observation, the practitioner’s experience, the individual assessment of the patient and the constant testing of hypotheses against facts.

In a situation as new as that of 2020 and 2021, the debate on these different approaches should therefore, in my view, have belonged fully to scientific discussion.

There were considerable uncertainties, competing therapeutic hypotheses, divergent results and controversies over how the available data should be interpreted.

But it would also be incomplete to discuss the scientific controversies of this period without recalling an old and thoroughly documented problem in medicine: conflicts of interest.

Financial ties between the pharmaceutical industry and certain actors in research, expertise, medical training and the drafting of guidelines are neither an invention nor a conspiracy theory. For decades they have been the subject of scientific work, disclosure rules and mechanisms designed precisely to limit their effects.

The medical literature has shown that industry funding can be associated with conclusions more favourable to the funder’s products, and that financial conflicts of interest are associated, in some studies, with more favourable recommendations for the drugs and medical devices concerned.

Noting the existence of a conflict of interest obviously does not mean demonstrating that a scientist is corrupt, that a study is false or that a decision was necessarily bought.

But the opposite would be just as unreasonable: pretending that the considerable financial interests at stake during this crisis could have had no influence on the production, selection, interpretation or communication of scientific information.

When major economic interests, exceptional political decisions and considerable health stakes come together, the demand for transparency, independence and scientific pluralism should be greater still.

And when there is specific evidence that could give rise to suspicion not merely of a conflict of interest but of irregular conduct, it must of course be investigated and established on the facts, rather than presumed.

This question is directly relevant to the case before us.

For if we want today to reproach certain doctors for not having placed sufficient trust in the institutional recommendations of the time, we must also be willing to examine the reasons why some of them considered that particular caution was called for.

A critical attitude towards a medical recommendation is not in itself a breach of professional ethics. It is even an indispensable component of scientific medicine. Scientific discussion was therefore not only legitimate: it was indispensable.

The same was true of vaccination.

The first Covid-19 vaccines were developed and deployed within exceptionally short timeframes. In the European Union, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine initially received a conditional marketing authorisation, a regulatory mechanism that notably requires additional data to continue to be provided after authorisation.

This does not mean that no safety or efficacy data existed at the time these vaccines were authorised.

It does mean, however, that at a time when far-reaching decisions were being taken concerning millions of people, the hindsight available to us was necessarily limited, and that pharmacovigilance and fully transparent information were, in these circumstances, of major ethical importance.

Yet the question of what was known, what was communicated and when is itself now the subject of controversy and legal proceedings in the United States.

The State of Kansas has thus brought legal action against Pfizer, accusing it in particular of having presented its vaccine as safe while having, according to the allegations made by the attorney general in the complaint, information on certain potential adverse effects, notably myocarditis and pericarditis.

A fundamental distinction must of course be respected here: these are accusations made in the context of legal proceedings, not facts definitively established by a judgment.

But the very existence of such proceedings deserves to be taken into account when one claims today to pass definitive judgment on the doctors who expressed concerns about these products very early on.

Myocarditis and pericarditis have indeed been recognised by the health authorities as rare adverse effects associated with mRNA vaccines, with a risk observed particularly in certain age and sex groups. Thus, some of the safety questions that doctors raised during this period cannot be brushed aside in retrospect simply because they contradicted the dominant discourse at the time.

Even more troubling for any doctor committed to informed consent, Dr Robert Redfield, former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), stated at his public hearing on 11 July 2024 before the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs that there had not been, from the outset, appropriate transparency about the potential side effects of these vaccines.

He also stated that some people had made, in his own words, inappropriate decisions to under-report these side effects, on the grounds that full information would have made the public less likely to get vaccinated.

That such a practice could have been implemented as part of the health authorities’ action is deeply shocking. This is not a mere communication blunder: withholding, minimising or under-reporting information likely to influence the patient’s decision undermines the very principle of free and informed consent.

A health authority cannot legitimately select the information it communicates in order to obtain the population’s acceptance of a medical act. Such a practice reverses the purpose of medical information: instead of allowing everyone to decide freely and with full knowledge of the facts, it tends to steer their decision by depriving them of elements that might change their choice.

A fundamental medical and ethical question therefore arises: how can consent be truly free and informed when information likely to change the patient’s decision is deliberately set aside for fear that it might lead them to refuse the proposed medical act?

Free and informed consent only makes sense if the information is complete, honest and understandable, and if refusal is genuinely possible. That is precisely why the questions raised at the time by some doctors about safety, pharmacovigilance and the individual benefit-risk balance should not, as a matter of principle, be equated in retrospect with irrationality or a failure in their duty as doctors.

The ethical problem becomes even more acute when we move from medical recommendation to coercion.

When refusing a medical act makes it impossible to work in certain professions, entails major restrictions on daily life or considerable social pressure, it is at the very least legitimate to wonder what remains, in practice, of the truly free nature of that consent.

That is precisely the conflict Doctor PROCUREUR believed he was facing.

He did not think he could simply tell his patients: “rules are rules”.

He considered that he remained a doctor above all else.

He believed his duty required him to assess personally the benefit-risk balance of a medical act, to take account of the existing scientific uncertainties, to respect his patients’ wishes and, in accordance with the age-old principle of primum non nocere, not to expose them to a risk he judged insufficiently evaluated or unjustified in their particular situation.

He therefore found himself facing what he considered to be an exceptional conflict between an obligation imposed by the public authorities and medical and ethical principles he considered higher.

• One may consider that he was wrong.
• One may dispute his scientific assessment.
• One may condemn the means he ultimately resorted to.

But one cannot honestly judge his conduct as if the questions that led him to act had never existed, as if no serious scientific controversy had marked this period, and as if the health policy followed at the time were a definitively established medical truth.

That is precisely what historical hindsight must forbid us. Doctor PROCUREUR considered that he could not abandon people who refused this vaccination and who, because of that refusal, suffered major personal, social or professional consequences.

He then made a serious choice: to circumvent the mechanisms put in place by the public authorities so as to allow these people to preserve their choice. I am not trying to hide this fact.

But precisely because this choice was serious, it must be examined in all its complexity.

Doctor PROCUREUR issued these certificates free of charge. He derived no personal gain from them.

An act performed for the purpose of enrichment, personal interest or harm does not have the same moral meaning as an act performed free of charge by a doctor convinced that he is thereby protecting patients and safeguarding their freedom of consent.

He disobeyed because he considered, in conscience, that obeying would have meant abandoning patients to whom he believed he owed protection.

This does not automatically make each of his acts right. But it profoundly changes their moral meaning.

And it is this essential distinction that I ask you not to evade.

Can a doctor be condemned permanently without seriously examining the possibility that what was regarded, in the urgency of the moment, as insubordination may also have stemmed from medical caution and an ethical standard that this doctor considered higher than the injunctions of the moment?

The history of medicine should teach us a certain humility.

Medical progress has never rested on the infallibility of institutions. It has also been built thanks to doctors and scientists who sometimes refused the certainties of their time, asked for more evidence and accepted the consequences of their dissent.

This obviously does not mean that whoever opposes the majority is necessarily right.

But it means just as much that the majority, authority or the institution are not necessarily right merely because they are the majority, authority or the institution.

That is why your responsibility today is considerable.

You do not only have to examine the past conformity of a doctor’s conduct with rules adopted in the exceptional circumstances of the health crisis.

You must also assess his motivations, his career, the absence of personal gain, the scientific and human context in which he acted, and the reality of the danger he would represent

today for his patients, as well as the proportionality of continuing to exclude him from medical practice.

Doctor PROCUREUR has already suffered very heavy professional consequences because of his choices. The question put to you today is therefore not only whether you approve or condemn the decisions he took during the health crisis.

It is also to determine whether these facts should now prevent him from continuing to practise medicine, and whether an entire medical career should be reduced to acts committed in the extraordinary circumstances we went through.

To my knowledge, Doctor PROCUREUR has devoted his career to treating and helping his patients with dedication and kindness. A medical institution also shows its strength when it knows how to distinguish the sanction of an act from the definitive condemnation of a man.

But there is another responsibility, even harder to bear.

The doctors who contested certain decisions during this crisis were judged by the institutions of their time.

The decisions of these institutions, too, will one day be examined with the hindsight of time.

When the scientific and medical history of this period is better established, when the political and health decisions can be assessed with more distance and when the available documents and data have undergone thorough historical examination, it will be legitimate to ask not only how those who contested the dominant choices behaved, but also how the medical institutions treated their dissenting colleagues.

• Did they accept doubt?
• Did they respect scientific controversy?
• Did they leave doctors the possibility of questioning the authorities’ choices without being
• immediately considered unworthy of their profession?
• Did they demand sufficient transparency on conflicts of interest?
• Did they distinguish the doctor driven by personal interest from the one who sincerely believed he was protecting his patients?
• Were they able to re-examine their positions as knowledge evolved?
• And above all: did they retain enough humility to consider that some of those they had sanctioned may have perceived certain risks, uncertainties or contradictions earlier than others?

These too are questions History will answer.

This perspective is neither a threat nor an indictment.

It is a reminder of the obvious: whoever judges today must accept that their own judgment may, tomorrow, be examined in turn in the light of new knowledge, or of knowledge already available at the time but neglected, dismissed or denied.

This is one more reason for the exercise of disciplinary power to remain guided by restraint, proportionality, independence, humanity and humility.

I therefore respectfully ask you not to judge Doctor Michel PROCUREUR solely through the prism of his disobedience.

I ask you to examine what led him to disobey, the medical principles he sought to defend, the people he believed he was protecting, the absence of financial interest that characterised his actions and his career as a doctor as a whole.

For while our profession requires its members to respect the rules, it also requires something even more difficult of them: that they remain doctors capable of thinking, doubting, examining scientific data independently, personally assessing the balance between benefit and risk and acting in conscience in the interest of their patients.

It is my deep wish that Doctor Michel PROCUREUR be able to continue his work as a doctor in Belgium and to keep putting his experience, his skills and his dedication at the service of patients.

You will have to take this decision in all conscience.

As for each of us who had to decide, advise, treat, obey or disobey during this exceptional period, time will allow a better understanding of what really happened.

And History will judge not only the choices of those who disobeyed, but also those of the institutions that judged them.

It is in this spirit, and with the deep respect I have for our profession and for the responsibilities that are yours, that I give this public testimony today.

Dr Jean-Philippe Labreze - General practitioner - Sénas, 19 September 2026”

Main documentary references

• United States Senate, Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Risky Research: Oversight of U.S. Taxpayer Funded High-Risk Virus Research, public hearing of 11 July 2024, testimony of Dr Robert R. Redfield. Official archive of the hearing
• United States House of Representatives, Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, After Action Review of the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Lessons Learned and a Path Forward, final report, December 2024. Official report
• Attorney General of the State of Kansas, action brought by the State of Kansas against Pfizer Inc. in June 2024, concerning in particular the information communicated on the safety and efficacy of the vaccine against Covid-19. Official presentation of the proceedings
• European Medicines Agency, Pharmacovigilance Risk Assessment Committee, Comirnaty and Spikevax: possible link to very rare cases of myocarditis and pericarditis, 9 July 2021. Official EMA communication

See or see again our interviews and reports with Dr Michel Procureur (in French):

- https://bam.news/fr/interviews/pr-michel-procureur-resister-c-est-oser-desobeir

- https://bam.news/fr/actions-citoyennes/aujourd-hui-une-foule-demain-un-peuple-soutenir-le-dr-michel-procureur-avant-le-verdict-du-11-mai

- https://bam.news/fr/reportages/dr-michel-procureur-combien-de-vies-sauvees