A prominent scientist is calling for the United States government and global agencies to punish people he disagrees with, according to an interview with Scientific American published on Thursday.
The interview, which was with Dr. Peter Hotez, the dean of Baylor College of Medicine’s National School of Tropical Medicine, discussed tackling “antiscience attitudes” and his new book, according to Scientific American. The White House, multiple U.S. government agencies and the United Nations are necessary to assist with countering certain “attitudes,” Hotez told the outlet. (RELATED: Elon Musk Backs Joe Rogan’s Challenge For COVID-19 Scientist To Debate Vaccines With RFK Jr.)
“I don’t think the community of scientists by itself can solve this. We’re going to need help, both from the White House and the United Nations because this is now a politically motivated assault,” Hotez said when asked about tackling “antiscience attitudes.”
“So we need the White House, for instance, to treat this like any politically motivated attack on the country, whether it’s a cyberattack or global terrorism or nuclear proliferation,” he asserted. “The first step is bringing in people from the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Justice and the Department of State because of the role of Russia in amplifying the discord. I think we need an interagency task force [in the U.S.] and the same at the U.N. I don’t think the World Health Organization can solve this problem.”
With my amazing vaccine colleague and brilliant policy guru Rekha Lakshmanan at tonight’s @Immunize_USA book event pic.twitter.com/XvXUVVY97K
— Prof Peter Hotez MD PhD (@PeterHotez) October 6, 2023
“I think this needs to go to the attention of the U.N. General Assembly and maybe the Security Council and NATO, perhaps, because it is a security threat, and it undermines democracies and the security of countries,” Hotez added.
The interview was partly about Hotez’s new book titled, “The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science: A Scientist’s Warning,” which was published in September. The book discusses “how an antivaccine movement became a dangerous political campaign promoted by elected officials and amplified by news media, causing thousands of American deaths,” according to its description.
Hotez repeatedly discredited the theory that the COVID-19 pandemic could have originated in a lab, which is also known as the lab leak theory, according to his social media posts. Hotez also allegedly funded research at the Wuhan Institution of Virology in China, where the pandemic likely originated from.
Hotez did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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