The Doctor Who Refused to Comply

This M.D. Helped Patients Stay Alive, Now He’s Facing Prosecution

We humans are social creatures. We want people to like us. We tend to do better, both financially and emotionally, when we find our “right tribe.”

Like other mammals, we feel safer going along with the herd.

And we often are safer.

Think about it: Early humans ostracized from their kinship groups often didn’t survive. 

However, while cooperation is one of the reasons that human societies have flourished, there is a downside.

The cons of conformity

It’s often, perhaps always, easier to “go along to get along” than it is to stand up for what is right, just, and ethical.

But history has shown us time and again that “going along to get along” can push people to do things horrible things.

I often wonder how otherwise good people can get duped into acting in shockingly unethical ways.

The human need to be part of a group and the human tendency to comply explains some of history’s most unspeakable misdeeds: Nazi soldiers herding Jews and other “undesirables” to the gas chambers, German citizens snitching on families who were in the Resistance, American doctors leaving black men’s syphilis untreated in the name of “science,” are just a few examples.

Police your neighbors

The relentless fear messaging during COVID made otherwise good humans act in truly inhumane ways.

In November of 2021 the governor of Oregon, Kate Brown, told Oregonians to call the police if their neighbors had more than seven people in their homes for Thanksgiving.

The most unfortunate thing about Brown’s appeal to call the police, in my mind, was that many Oregonians complied.

Forcing moms to birth alone, adults to die alone

It wasn’t just Oregon, of course. This happened nationwide: We know that birthing moms have better outcomes with constant support during labor, but women in hospitals around the country were forced to labor alone.

Still, nurses, doctors, and other hospital staff enforced what they themselves knew were anti-health and anti-human policies

Older adults died alone, with no one to hold their hands, look into their eyes, or kiss their foreheads. And caregivers who knew better allowed this to happen, actively preventing families from being with their loved ones.

Any number of excuses have been used to justify these cruel behaviors:

“We had to.”

“We were trying to keep people safe.”

“We were just doing what we were told.”

During the early and mid-19^th century people who realized slavery was wrong established an underground network of safe houses to help enslaved people escape to free states.

While Adolph Hitler’s Nazi Party worked furiously to convince people that Jews were evil and hate was good, there were people who secretly worked against the rise of Naziism and resisted, risking their lives for the sake of human decency.

During COVID, too, there were the people who refused to comply. These were people who realized that wearing a mask while driving alone was akin to putting on a condom to walk to the store. They understood that closing public bathrooms, which lead to people defecating outside, was absurd. They argued that refusing to allow people who hadn’t been vaccinated to work, go grocery shopping, or be in public spaces did nothing to promote human health but everything to mint new billionaires and line the pockets of pharmaceutical executives.

Mark my words: The people who advocated against lockdowns, masking, and vaccines who are being treated as today’s criminals will be tomorrow’s heroes.

The doctor who refused to comply

At a medical conference last month, I had the honor of meeting one such person: Kirk Moore, M.D.

Moore, 58, is a plastic surgeon based in Sandy, Utah.

Moore has been outspoken about his belief that humans who are sick have the right to be treated.

He also believes that no one should be forced to get a vaccine they do not want or need, and that there are serious and well-documented safety concerns surrounding the mRNA vaccines.

Now he is under federal indictment.

“I started treating people for COVID in 2020,” Moore told me. “…It was the first time in the history of the medical paradigm that we turned people down for treatment.”

Moore said that he became a primary care doctor for his current patients and their friends and family in order to help them. He treated between 800 and a thousand patients, mostly via telemedicine and over the phone.

Forwarding fundamental American values

Moore grew up in Italy. His father was a pilot in the Air Force and was stationed there. When his dad retired, he got a job working for an Italian aircraft company. Moore went to high school in the United States, went to Bates College in Maine, where he was on the ski team for four years.

Moore told me he originally thought he would be a lawyer and practice international law but in his junior of high school he went to hear Linus Pauling, Ph.D., speak at Dartmouth College and was fascinated—not only by Pauling’s advocacy of high-dose vitamin C but also by the controversy surrounding Pauling’s ideas. Then, the summer before his senior year, Moore did an internship at a plastic surgeon’s office and knew he would become a doctor.

He studied medicine at the University of Miami in Florida, graduating in 1993. Then joined the Navy and worked as a flight surgeon for three years.

Though he grew up in Italy, Moore describes himself as patriotic. But he also believes that America’s core values have been compromised.

“Our values are under attack,” Moore said, “freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to congregate. I believe freedom of speech is an absolute right that cannot be trampled on in any way. There should never be restrictions on speech … we have to fight to protect those rights, but why is that even necessary?”

Moore also believes that patients have the right to medical freedom and that coercion has no place in the medical paradigm.

“All I did was what my patients asked me to do,” he says. “I took care of them to the best of my ability with the knowledge I had at hand and offered them a full understanding of what the treatment was, what the risks and benefits were, based upon my knowledge of the current medical situation.”

My body, my choice, except for vaccines

Moore has been accused of falsifying vaccination cards in order to help patients not lose their livelihoods. He spent two weeks in jail, was released on June 7^th, 2023 and then was required to wear an ankle monitor for more than two months.

Now he is facing the very real possibility that he will spend fifteen years behind bars.

Prosecutors allege that Moore’s office helped people by furnishing them with CDC vaccine cards. For adults, a real COVID vaccine dose was put in a syringe but squirted down the drain. Children needing the vaccine were given a saline shot instead, so they would not know they had not been vaccinated, according to the allegations.

Since his case is still active, he cannot comment on it. But he pointed out that the same people who forbade customers from entering their places of business and barred friends from their homes who could not prove they’d been vaccinated are those who insist that women must have the right to choose what happens to their bodies. “My body my choice” when it comes to abortion but not when it comes to vaccines?

“The hypocrisy is just astounding,” Moore said.

In January Moore and his co-defendants pleaded not guilty to all charges. They claim they have harmed no one. “There’s been no harm to any of our patients,” Moore told me.

Moore also said that he’s already spent over $300,000 on legal expenses and doesn’t even have a court date. Friends and family started a donation campaign to help him cover legal expenses.

So you tell me: Is Moore a criminal who sought to defraud the United States, as government prosecutors are alleging, or is he a non-conformist who put people before profits, refused to ignore the critical thinking skills he was taught in medical school, and channeled his love of our country into helping its citizens?

About the author: Jennifer Margulis, Ph.D., is an award-winning science and health journalist; and internationally known advocate for gentle parenting and medical choice; and a sought-after speaker. Find out more at her website, www.JenniferMargulis.net. Support her work by becoming a paid subscriber to Vibrant Life.