Mayo Clinic accused of ‘placing academic freedom in jeopardy’ after suspending physician who criticized US agency during pandemic

By Elizabeth Cohen, CNN Senior Medical Correspondent

(CNN) — Dozens of professors from Harvard, Yale, Columbia and other universities wrote a letter to the Mayo Clinic on Thursday protesting the suspension of a physician after he publicly criticized a federal agency.

“Placing academic freedom in jeopardy is certain to tarnish Mayo’s reputation among the many who have always thought of Mayo as a beacon of scientific integrity,” the professors wrote.

In a January CNN story, Dr. Michael Joyner, who is principal investigator on a government-funded study on convalescent plasma, said he was “frustrated” with the National Institutes of Health’s “bureaucratic rope-a-dope,” calling the agency’s Covid-19 treatment guidelines a “wet blanket” that discouraged doctors from giving what he considered a promising treatment to their patients.

Two months later, Mayo suspended Joyner for a week without pay, instructing him, in part, to “discuss approved topics only” with reporters and to “stick to prescribed messaging.” The letter warned him that a prescribed set of “behavior changes must be immediate and sustained” and that failure to comply would result in termination of his employment – as would any additional “validated complaints” from the staff, even if unrelated to the issues outlined in the letter.

This week’s letter from the 29 professors said that “in persecuting one of its most senior and valuable professors, Mayo is sending a terrible message not only to its other faculty, but also to other institutions in academic medicine.” Joyner, a professor of anesthesiology, has been with Mayo for nearly 36 years.

“Mayo should be ashamed,” tweeted Dr. Nicholas Christakis, a physician and professor at Yale University who signed the letter, describing Mayo’s letter to Joyner as “1984-level doublespeak.”

Last week, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression wrote about Joyner’s suspension.

The Academic Freedom Alliance wrote a letter to Mayo on June 7 in which it called the disciplinary action against Joyner “a direct attack on his academic freedom.”

Andrea Kalmanovitz, a Mayo spokesperson, said in a statement to CNN that “Mayo disciplined Dr. Joyner for treating coworkers disrespectfully and for making unprofessional comments about the NIH’s regulation of convalescent plasma” and that the “Mayo Clinic supports academic freedom, as evidenced by the hundreds of interviews Mayo physicians, including Dr. Joyner, give each year.”

‘Idiomatic language’

In November, CNN contacted Joyner for a story about the use of convalescent plasma – an antibody-rich blood product from people who’ve recovered from Covid-19 – to treat immune-compromised patients infected with the virus.

Emails obtained by CNN indicate that Joyner received permission from a Mayo communications official before doing the interview.

In January, Joyner and his colleagues published a study showing that transfusions of convalescent plasma might help people with Covid who had weakened immune systems.

However, other studies have shown that convalescent plasma is not effective, and the NIH’s Covid-19 treatment guidelines say there’s not enough evidence to recommend either for or against the use of convalescent plasma in people with compromised immune systems.

Three times last year, Joyner and dozens of other doctors from Harvard, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Columbia and other academic medical centers wrote emails to scientists at the NIH, sending them research materials and asking them to revise the guidelines.

In his March letter to Joyner, Dr. Carlos Mantilla, chair of Mayo’s Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine, referenced this part of the CNN story: “Joyner said he’s ‘frustrated’ with the NIH’s ‘bureaucratic rope-a-dope,’ calling the agency’s guidelines a ‘wet blanket’ that discourages doctors from trying convalescent plasma on these people.”

Mantilla wrote that Mayo’s public affairs team raised concerns about his comments in the CNN story and that “this most recent situation sheds light on a negative and unprofessional pattern of behavior exhibited by you for some time. Your use of idiomatic language has been problematic and reflects poorly on Mayo Clinic’s brand and reputation.”

Joyner’s attorney, Kellie Miller, told CNN that “it’s pretty clear that use of idiomatic language would be a form of creative expression when discussing his own scholarship and research.”

Suzanne Nossel, the CEO of PEN America, a human rights and free expression organization, said Mayo’s objection to Joyner’s “idiomatic language” seemed like an “idiosyncratic complaint.”

She said she wondered what might be next – whether Mayo might tell its scientists that they couldn’t use metaphors or similes or analogies in their discussions with journalists.

“To object to the mode of expression, or what phraseology is used, runs counter to the spirit of policy that purports to protect academic freedom and freedom of expression,” Nossel said. “[Joyner] should be able to communicate using the language and the phrasing of his choice.”

The Mayo spokesperson, Kalmanovitz, said in her statement that “Dr. Joyner’s comments about the NIH did not reflect the expression of a scientific or academic opinion, but instead were an expression of his personal frustration with the NIH’s regulation of a therapy he had championed.”

Criticism over story on transgender athletes

The disciplinary letter to Joyner also mentioned comments he made in a June 2022 New York Times article.

On June 19, the newspaper published an article about transgender female swimmers being banned from competing in high-level international competitions, which quoted Joyner as saying, “There are social aspects to sport, but physiology and biology underpin it.”

In his disciplinary letter to Joyner, the Mayo official wrote that “your June 2022 comments in a NY Times article were problematic in the media and LGBTQI+ community at Mayo Clinic” and that Mayo executives had met with Joyner and discussed “your use of language viewed as inflammatory in this context.”

On May 29, 2022, a few weeks before that article, the New York Times published a story about Lia Thomas, a transgender woman swimmer at the University of Pennsylvania. According to Joyner’s attorney, both the June article and the May article used quotes from a single interview he gave the newspaper in March 2022.

The first article discussed the debate over the role of testosterone in physiological development.

“Testosterone is the 800-pound gorilla,” Joyner said in that story.

On Twitter a few days later, Jennifer Winter, an LGBTQ advocate in Rochester, New York, asked Joyner whether he was “intentionally trying to be transphobic by invoking imagery of a giant gorilla when talking about trans women in sports?”

Joyner was “speaking about testosterone. He’s not speaking about people,” said Miller, his attorney. “He was not speaking about any individuals or groups.”

Mayo’s disciplinary letter to Joyner did not mention this May New York Times story.

Claims of behavior issues

The disciplinary letter stated that Joyner had “failed to work consistently within Mayo Clinic guidelines related to media interactions” and that colleagues had described “your tone as unpleasant and having a ‘bullying’ quality to it. One individual has asked to not work with you anymore because of your behavior.”

Joyner’s attorney told CNN that Mayo has not given any examples of such behavior and that no examples are in his personnel file.

“We have repeatedly requested examples of these allegations, and Mayo has not responded to our requests,” Miller said.

“Mike’s personnel file has years of excellent evaluations and compliments to his collegiality and contributions at Mayo.”

Mayo’s letter to Joyner also mentioned a 2020 disciplinary issue that involved compensation, according to both the Mayo spokesperson and Joyner’s lawyer.

Nossel, the PEN America CEO, said that when universities want to control a researcher’s speech, they will sometimes “pile on” with other unrelated complaints in what she described as a “proxy reprisal.”

She said that could serve to “chill” other researchers from speaking about their areas of expertise out of fear of being called out for “anybody they’ve ever offended or bothered.”

CNN’s Amanda Musa and John Bonifield contributed to this report.

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