Houston Methodist suspends River Oaks doctor for spreading COVID misinformation

Houston Methodist Hospital on Friday temporarily suspended a doctor on its staff who is spreading false information about COVID-19 to her patients and on social media. Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, an ear, nose and throat specialist who runs a private practice in River Oaks, was granted provisional privileges to practice at the hospital within the last year, according to a Methodist spokesperson. Bowden had never admitted a patient before Friday, when the hospital pulled those privileges for further investigation, the spokesperson said. “Dr. Mary Bowden, who recently joined the medical staff at Houston Methodist Hospital, is using her social media accounts to express her personal and political opinions about the COVID-19 vaccine and treatments,” Houston Methodist said in a statement. “These opinions, which are harmful to the community, do not reflect reliable medical evidence or the values of Houston Methodist, where we have treated more than 25,000 COVID-19 inpatients, and where all our employees and physicians are vaccinated to protect our patients.”

The hospital cited “unprofessional behavior,” including vulgar language on social media, as the key reason for the suspension. Bowden last week sent her patients two emails, which were obtained by the Houston Chronicle. In the first, she said “all the data I have collected suggests that the vaccine is not working.” In the second, she urged against vaccinations for children and those with natural immunity — information she said she was relaying from a livestreamed COVID conference. On her Twitter account, she repeatedly decries vaccine mandates and touts the unproven benefits of ivermectin, the anti-parasitic drug that federal health officials advise against using to treat the virus. “All of my comments are backed by clinical experience,” Bowden told the Chronicle. “I have been open seven days a week since the pandemic began, performing over 80,000 COVID tests and treating over 2,000 patients with COVID.” There is no well-designed study that shows ivermectin benefits people with COVID. Additionally, vaccines have been highly effective at preventing severe illness and death from the virus. A report released Monday by the Texas Department of State Health Services says unvaccinated people were 13 times more likely to become infected and 20 times more likely to die compared with vaccinated people. Among the nearly 29,000 COVID deaths in the state, 85 percent were unvaccinated, the report said. In one of Bowden’s emails to patients, she suggested that Methodist is not treating unvaccinated patients — a claim she walked back in later messages.