Neil W. McCabe, the national political editor of The Star News Network, interviewed Army doctor Maj. Samuel Sigoloff, who was dismissed from his position as the medical director at the Bliss Army Health Center after he gave soldier patients medical exemptions from the Pentagon’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
Sigoloff said the exemptions were based on individual consultations with his soldier patients, but now all of those exemptions have been rescinded.
TRANSCRIPT
McCabe: One critical part of the Pentagon’s enforcement of its COVID-19 vaccine mandate is the role of military doctors subject to orders but sworn to care for their patients.
One army doctor, Major Samuel Sigoloff, told The Star News Network that he was dismissed from his position as the medical director at the Bliss Army Health Center after his supervisors learned that he had granted medical exemptions to the COVID-19 vaccine to soldiers. Then those exemptions were rescinded.
Sigoloff: I made a medical exemption that was tailored to each patient. I never told them they should or shouldn’t. I said, it’s your decision.
McCabe: The board-certified family physician, who spoke in his personal capacity and not for the defense department, said he felt like Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who passed out visas to Jews escaping the Germans in World War II.
Sigoloff: Here is a document to help you protect yourself. I almost felt like Raoul Wallenberg and how he was handing out these documents to help protect people, because shortly after handing them out, I was called into my boss’s office. He told me, you must retract all these.
McCabe: Although the Pentagon policy allowed for military personnel to request medical exemptions from the COVID-19 vaccine, Sigoloff said his boss told him he crossed the line.
Sigoloff: He told me, you must retract all these. I look back at that now as an illegal order, because how can someone else tell me how to practice medicine?
McCabe: Then the doctor was fired as medical director.
Sigoloff: The next business day, I was suspended because I wasn’t following the secretary of defense guidance. But he doesn’t give medical guidance. And even if he did, guidance is nonbinding. It has no force of law behind it. It is not policy.
McCabe: The host of the After Hours podcast said he did nothing wrong.
Sigoloff: If you look at what I did and the actual policy that the secretary of defense put out, there was no difference. Everything I did was legal. Still suspended to this day.
McCabe: Sigoloff said each exemption was based on individual consultation with the soldier patient.
Sigoloff: I was actually asked to give a list of all of the patients that I supplied these to by my hospital commander. So I never provided that information, nor did I provide a specific number of patients, but all of them were rescinded.
McCabe: Reporting for The Star News Network, Neil W McCabe, Washington.
