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A professor at Baylor College of Medicine wants criticisms of Dr. Anthony Fauci and other scientists in the U.S. to be prosecuted as hate crimes, Breitbart reports.
Peter Hotez, a professor of pediatrics and molecular virology, claimed on July 28 in a PLOS Biology paper that far-right members of Congress and conservative media “are waging organized and seemingly well-coordinated attacks against prominent US biological scientists.”
The professor, who often appears on MSNBC and CNN, points to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s “Fire Fauci Act” and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) for questioning Fauci on the gain-of-function research in Wuhan as “antiscience aggression.” Conservative news outlets, he says, “repeatedly and purposefully promote disinformation designed to portray key American scientists as enemies.”
He says it has led to scientists, including himself, receiving threats and being stalked in an “unprecedented culture of antiscience intimidation.” If it isn’t stopped, Hotez claims it will “promote illness and cause loss of life.”
Hotez calls on President Biden to issue a statement of support for scientists and for federal hate crime protections to be extended to scientists at private research universities and institutes.
He said neutrality and silence only favor the oppressor in this situation.
“We must take steps to protect our scientists and take swift and positive action to counter the growing wave of far-right antiscience aggression,” Hotez concluded. “Not taking action is a tacit endorsement, and a guarantee that the integrity and productivity of science in the United States will be eroded or lose ground.”
The liberal professor also compared the Trump administration to Nazism under Hitler, Fascism under Mussolini and Marxism. He accused former President Trump of “antiscience disinformation that dismissed the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic” and instead focused on “nativism, anti-immigration, and a foreign policy built around strong military build-up and deterrence, and confrontation with China.”