Lynora Saxinger

Dr. Lynora Saxinger, CTropMed, MD, FRCPC, is an academic infectious diseases specialist, whose professional career outside patient care is focused on antimicrobial stewardship and antimicrobial resistance, with involvement in hospital, health system and national collaborations to improve antibiotic stewardship practice, and resistance and utilization surveillance.¹⁾

Saxinger completed her Bachelor of Science at the University of Saskatachewan in 1992, then her MD in 1996. She became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada in 2000.

Saxinger is Co-Chair of COVID-19 Scientific Advisory Group under Alberta Health Services alongside Braden Manns, advising Alberta's COVID-19 public health response.²⁾ She is also tasked with “engagement in social media and media based scientific communication and knowledge translation for public education around COVID-19.”³⁾ She is Medical Lead of Antimicrobial Stewardship for Northern Alberta for AHS.⁴⁾

In this role, Saxinger co-authored an article insisting that Ivermectin not be used to treat COVID-19. She and her colleagues falsely claimed that “there is no evidence that ivermectin benefits COVID-19 patients, but there are known harms. Ivermectin use has been associated with rash, nausea, vomiting, low blood pressure, abdominal pain, tremors, seizures and severe hepatitis (liver disease) requiring hospitalization.” The conclusion they reach is “Vaccination remains our best means of preventing COVID-19. Our vaccines are safe, fully approved and have been studied in high quality trials of tens of thousands of people.”⁵⁾

The comments left by readers overwhelmingly objected to the authors' statements and accused them of negligence, supporting their criticism with references to the British Ivermectin Recommendation Development (BIRD) Group, Pierre Kory and Sanjay Gupta's heated exchange with Joe Rogan after CNN levelled the same propagandistic claims at him.^{6) 7)}

Members of the public have described Saxinger as “corrupt”. Dr. William Makis called for an investigation into why she and her colleagues blocked Ivermectin.⁸⁾

In disturbing irony, Saxinger opined that “more academics and people in medicine should consider what they can contribute to public discussions. If you can step in, it really is an asset to be able to do it. And it might take a bit of practice before you're comfortable, but it really demonstrates and applies our skills in a public way.”⁹⁾

This is perhaps an example of gaslighting, or an indication that she was ignorant to the widespread censorship of opposing medical voices taking place across Canada and the world during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Saxinger is a founding member and past chair of the Antimicrobial Resistance and Stewardship Committee of the Association of Medical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases Canada.¹⁰⁾ She was a speaker at AMMI's 2021 Annual Conference, for a presentation titled “Strategic Deployment of COVID-19 Treatment Options: Who, What, Where and How?”.¹¹⁾

AMMIDC is partnered with the Canadian College of Microbiologists (CCM), the Canadian Foundation for Infectious Diseases (CFID), the Canadian Medical Association, Choosing Wisely Canada, the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID), the International Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, and the Pan American Society for Clinical Virology (PASCV).¹²⁾

The organization receives sponsorship funds from Merck, Gilead Sciences, Seqirus, DiaSorin, Hologic, Roche, Pfizer, Avir Pharma, Moderna, and R-Biopharm AG.^{13) 14)}

Saxinger is a partner at the National Collaborating Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCCID) where she was a Principle Investigator of a commissioned 2012 report titled “Antimicrobial Resistance and Utilization Surveillance in Canada”.¹⁵⁾

Saxinger has worked as an advisor with the Canadian Hospital Epidemiology Committee/Canadian Nosocomial Infection Surveillance Program (CNISP) collaboration with the Public Health Agency of Canada, as well as with the Canadian Integrated Program for Antimicrobial Resistance in utilization reporting of human antimicrobial use data.¹⁶⁾

Saxinger is an Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Alberta.¹⁷⁾