Misinformation about COVID-19 | Award for controversial Iranian doctor postponed

(OTTAWA) The International Society of Urology (IUS) has backed away from its plans to reward an Iranian doctor who has been accused of spreading misinformation about COVID-19 and supporting the regime’s sexist policies.

The Montreal-based organization invited Dr.^r Nasser Simforoosh to come to the Quebec metropolis to receive an honorary prize for his entire career on Wednesday.

In a statement posted on its website, the SIU announced that it will not present this award until the end of its investigation into “significant but unsubstantiated allegations”.

A group of Canadian doctors with roots in Iran had condemned the decision to reward the Iranian doctor.

“He represents everything that Canada is not,” said Mahyar Etminan, an epidemiological ophthalmologist at the University of British Columbia.

The D^r Simforoosh, who studied in the United States, heads the urology department at Shahid Labbafinejad Medical Center in Tehran.

In early 2021, he signed an open letter urging the Iranian regime to ban the import of mRNA vaccines, such as Pfizer and Moderna. He argued that Western science was inferior. It decried American motives for providing these doses while pointing to false claims of genetic modification.

The regime banned these vaccines soon after. According to the group of doctors, this decision contributed to the high death rate attributable to COVID-19 in Iran.

The D^r Etminan says that the letter of the D^r Simforoosh amounted to “wanting to prevent life-saving treatment during a time of high mortality, especially among his own colleagues in Iran.”

Others who studied with Professor Simforoosh accuse him of having gone to great lengths to separate doctor-patient interactions according to gender criteria.

However, if the regime separates men from women in several situations, it leaves doctors to treat men and women, more particularly in isolated regions.

“It’s a double standard: if a doctor like Dr.^r Simforoosh was working in Canada, he would have been fired from any healthcare facility that employed him,” said Dr.^D Katayoun Rahnavardi, a general practitioner from Vancouver.

“And there, we give him a price. It doesn’t seem fair to us. »

The D^r Simforoosh did not respond to an interview request.

The International Society of Urology refuses to say whether the recipient had to travel to Montreal to receive the prize. She also won’t explain how she makes the selection.

“The International Society of Urology has received numerous emails and other communications making allegations against Dr.^r Simforoosh. Even if these allegations are unfounded, the SIU takes them seriously,” reads an anonymous email.

The organization acknowledges that it did not announce the recipient of its award in 2022 in advance, but says that it chose the D^r Simforoosh “for his medical achievements”. She cannot say if these allegations against him are true.

“Our organization is doing the appropriate checks,” the email adds.

Six doctors tried to convince the SIU to cancel the award. They launched an online petition and sent a letter to Federal Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly. We haven’t answered them yet.

“I feel like I’m not being taken seriously. No one took the time to consider what we were saying,” says the D^D Rahnavardi.

M’s office^me Joly and Global Affairs Canada did not comment. The Immigration Department refuses to say whether the D^r Simforoosh received a visa.

Hamidreza Abdi, a professor of urology at Western University, was trained by him. He remembers an excellent doctor whose opinions are retrograde.

“I escaped from Iran because of people like him,” he says. This is not the right time to present him with an award as Iranian women demonstrate in defense of the rights he opposes. »