'I’m not an Anti-Pharma Guy, I Just Like Transparency and Honesty'

Independent Medical Alliance President Dr. Joseph Varon shares his passion for conflict-of-interest free research and scholarship as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Independent Medicine.

This article was authored by Rebecca Sugar and published by the New York Sun as A Pharma-Free Medical Journal Is Launched To Pierce Institutional Orthodoxy.

Dr. Joseph Varon at a briefing session at the United Memorial Medical Center on December 22, 2020, Houston, Texas. Go Nakamura/Getty Images

News about the Journal of Independent Medicine’s launch in February may have bypassed social media feeds, but it should be of interest to the growing number of those who are, in a post-Covid world, more skeptical of the scientific and medical communities and seeking new voices.

Publications like the New England Journal of Medicine, the Lancet, and the Journal of the American Medical Association are among a few dozen medical journals that have helped to guide the priorities of the American health system for decades and have served as the scientific bibles of most physicians around the world. The papers they do, and do not, choose to publish traditionally define the perimeter of “mainstream” and “fringe” science in American healthcare.

Few questioned this system of information flow, or ever thought about it, until the Covid era when debates about “settled science,” government censorship, and public health decision-making found large audiences on new media platforms. Everyone from Joe Rogan to Dr. Bret Weinstein was suddenly raising questions about “Big Pharma’s” influence over the gatekeepers of science and medicine.

Millions tuned in. Peak skepticism occurred and then organized around Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as he launched his presidential bid and subsequently announced his partnership with the Trump campaign under the MAHA banner.

Dr. Joseph Varon, president and chief medical officer at IMA, the Independent Medical Alliance, a not-for-profit network of international physicians and scholars who coalesced around the mission of breaking through institutional orthodoxy during the Covid era, felt the time was right to launch a new journal to “shed light on critical, often-overlooked issues affecting the medical community” and, by extension, every American.

Critically, the Journal of Independent Medicine would take no funding or advertising revenue from the pharmaceutical industry. JIM would publish any scientific research that meets its standards without regard for “big pharma” sensitivities, according to Dr. Varon, who serves as JIM’s editor-in-chief.

The websites of the traditional medical journals do include statements about policies regarding conflicts of interest. The New England Journal of Medicine declares that its policy “requires that none of its editors have any financial relationships with any biomedical companies.”

Dr. Varon, however, says the “elite journals” either ignore or create loopholes around their own stated guidelines because they must consider their relationships with corporate interests, both financial and otherwise.

According to Dr. Varon, not only do medical journals refuse to publish work that runs afoul of the pharmaceutical industry’s agenda, they are also erasing pre-existing work that conflicts with the accepted narrative.

Dr. Sabine Hazan, a gastroenterologist, microbiome researcher, and founder of ProgenaBiome, a genetic sequencing laboratory, has had several peer-reviewed papers related to Covid-19 treatments retracted recently, years after initial publication, by what she calls, “high-impact journals.”

She isn’t alone. Since 2020 the numbers of papers retracted globally have skyrocketed. Many of them focus on issues such as the efficacy of repurposed drugs or vaccine harm.

Dr. Varon is personally sensitive to the impact he says corporate interests have on science. He had been celebrated as a national hero during the height of the Covid outbreak, when he worked for more than 700 days straight to save his patients and promoted the Covid vaccines.

His views on the safety of the shots later changed and the press coverage did as well. Allegations of improperly supervising medical students and reports of a case involving Medicare fraud from which Dr. Varon’s name was dropped as a defendant were published and his overall credibility was questioned. He tells the Sun that the story was “based on false reporting and is also inaccurate.”

Dr. Varon was twice disciplined by the Texas Medical Board more than 20 years ago and points out that he completely denied all allegations at the time. His advocacy of an anti-parasite medicine, ivermectin, as a treatment for Covid, too, emerged at odds with the FDA’s position on the drug. Yet at the urging of advocates of the drug, two states have already made ivermectin legal for over-the-counter use and twelve others have introduced or drawn up legislation to do the same.

The Journal of Independent Medicine naturally attracts submissions by scientists and physicians whose work isn’t considered by other publications, but Dr. Varon insists that JIM is not simply a Covid journal. “We are not just advocates. We are also scientists,” he says.

The second issue of JIM due out in May will include a study from Paraguay about increased death rates post Covid shots but will also feature a history of intravenous infusions and a paper Dr. Varon co-authored with IMA’s chief scientific officer, Dr. Paul E. Marik, on the dangers of Chat GPT in medical schools.

Dr. Varon himself has had hundreds of papers published in the very journals he now challenges. “I started medical school in 1980 — I have seen it all,” he says. “Everyone’s goal is to publish in Lancet, in all these journals. It was my goal, and now my goal has changed. My goal is to publish data in a journal that is clean of any bias.”

“I’m not an anti-pharma guy,” Dr. Varon says. “I just like transparency and honesty.”