Of the hundreds of blogs I’ve published on this site, the four I’m most proud of have focused on one person: Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, a Stanford-trained ENT physician.
When I first wrote about Bowden in February 2022, the corporate media was having a field day maligning her as a quack—simply because she expressed early skepticism about the Covid vaccine and was treating patients—by all appearances successfully—with monoclonal antibodies and, later, the blasphemous drug ivermectin. As Bowden’s resistance to vaccine mandates and standardized treatment protocols grew, so did the smear campaign. I continued chronicling her plight (see here, here, and here) because I saw in her not a reckless renegade, but a potential medical hero.
History is filled with examples of medical dissenters who were smeared as dangerous outliers—until time proved them right. Frances Oldham Kelsey, the Canadian-born FDA scientist who blocked thalidomide in the U.S., was dismissed as obstinate pest before being hailed a hero. Her refusal to approve the drug spared thousands of American children from devastating birth defects and earned her the Distinguished Federal Civilian Service Medal.
Then there’s Ignaz Semmelweis, the 19th-century Hungarian physician who was ridiculed for advocating handwashing before treating patients. He was ultimately committed to an asylum and died after being beaten by guards. He, too, was vindicated by history.
I’m old school in my view that the role of journalists is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
Imagine my satisfaction when someone sent me a clip of Bowden’s recent appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast—one of the most influential media platforms in the country, with 19.4 million YouTube subscribers, 19.7 million Instagram followers, and 15 million on X.
To put that in perspective: Rogan’s reach rivals or surpasses CNN’s digital footprint and dwarfs MSNBC’s. His engagement blows cable news out of the water. While CNN fights over a shrinking primetime audience—often under 600,000 viewers—Rogan commands tens of millions of weekly downloads and a fiercely loyal, demographically prized base.
Perhaps Starkman Approved should be considered a farm team for future Rogan guests.
Watching Bowden on the podcast, I was struck by how much she’s grown since I first interviewed her more than three years ago. Naturally shy and intolerant of BS, she looked overwhelmed at a 2021 news conference where she faced a barrage of loaded, ill-informed questions from reporters who behaved more like PR flacks for Biden’s Covid czar Jeffrey Zients than journalists. Bowden looked like a deer in headlights.
On Rogan’s show, Bowden looked transformed—confident, composed, engaged. The furrowed brow was gone. She looked younger than in footage years prior. Rogan asked incisive questions. Bowden, now in her element, delivered thoughtful, grounded responses.
Rogan Drops a Bombshell
Bowden even managed to extract real news from Rogan himself.
Rogan—who became a lightning rod during the pandemic for saying he recovered from COVID using a protocol that included ivermectin—was relentlessly attacked by the corporate media. Spotify faced boycotts from Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, Canadian-born musicians who, true to their birthplace roots, preferred to support government orthodoxy and deference than advocate for artistic freedom.
During his conversation with Bowden, Rogan dropped a bombshell: he said two former U.S. presidents personally called Spotify urging them to remove his podcast. While he didn’t name names, only a few former presidents were alive at the time—Trump, Bush, Clinton, Obama, and the ailing Jimmy Carter. One doesn’t need a Ph.D. in political science to guess who likely made those calls. Rogan added that censorship efforts backfired, netting him two million new subscribers.
A Memoir in the Making
I had already reached out to Bowden for an interview prior to her Rogan appearance, frustrated that she hadn’t received the recognition she deserves. Others who spoke out about the potential dangers of the COVID vaccines or questioned lockdown mandates have since been rewarded with administrative and advisory roles in the Trump administration.
Of course, there are still those who deny vaccine-related injuries. Notably, one of them is not Janet Woodcock, the acting FDA commissioner under Biden, who told The New York Times last year that she regretted not doing more to respond to people who believe they were harmed by the vaccines.
“I’m disappointed in myself,” she said. “I did a lot of things I feel very good about, but this is one of the few things I feel I just didn’t bring it home.”
Bowden is now finalizing a memoir, Dangerous Misinformation: The Virus, the Treatments, and the Lies, scheduled for publication early next year by Post Hill Press. She is wisely avoiding the corporate media, heeding the adage once bitten, twice shy.
A Doctor Unbowed
Rogan’s choice to platform Bowden speaks volumes about his commitment to accountability and free speech. He acknowledged many of his viewers are fatigued by Covid debates—but said he felt morally obligated to give space to those who risked their reputations and livelihoods to challenge groupthink in real time.
Knowing the personal and professional toll Bowden has endured, I wondered if she had any regrets. She is divorced and raising four teenage sons alone. Were it not for the pandemic, she’d likely be living quietly, running her Houston ENT clinic, BreatheMD, and enjoying professional success on her own terms.
Bowden told me she has no regrets—only gratitude for how the experience has shaped her.
“It’s been a very difficult five years, but difficult experiences are the most impactful, and I feel like I’ve grown a lot,” she said. “I’ve always been on the shy side, and now I’ve been forced to do a lot of public speaking. Many more people are aware of the truth about what happened during the pandemic, and that’s very gratifying. I’m hoping public policy will reflect that shift in public opinion shortly.”
Rather than feel defeated, Bowden feels empowered.
“I just feel free—like what else can they do to me?”
From Physician to Pariah
Bowden didn’t seek the spotlight. The pandemic hit just months after she opened her practice, and patients with Covid-like symptoms began showing up. While most Houston labs took 14 days to return results, her ENT lab had a 24-hour saliva test. She began administering monoclonal antibodies in early stages of infection—based on real-time input from a national physician group sharing protocols. Word spread. Her clinic became a hub.
Bowden initially tried to work within the system, even sharing findings with colleagues at Houston Methodist. But she grew alarmed that many of her sickest Covid patients were vaccinated. She became furious at efforts by the government and corporate media to discredit monoclonal antibodies and ivermectin.
Ivermectin, a low-cost antiparasitic on the WHO’s essential medicines list, has saved millions of lives. Its developers were awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize. Though later reformulated for veterinary use, it remains a mainstay in human medicine.
Yet the FDA mocked it as “horse paste,” tweeting: “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.”
The media parroted the insult. Medical groups issued blanket condemnations of ivermectin use outside clinical trials. Bowden, disturbed by what she was witnessing in her own patients, spoke out on social media. Houston Methodist—where she held privileges but had never used them—quickly severed ties. She learned of her termination from a reporter before receiving official notice.
The Texas Medical Board accused her of various infractions. Bowden says none of her COVID patients died unless they were already in late-stage illness.
The public backlash was brutal. Bowden feared for her family’s safety. One of her sons was rejected from all four private schools he applied to, with a board member candidly attributing it to her Houston Methodist controversy. Her practice lost patients as her legal bills mounted.
Still, Bowden refused to back down. The law firm Boyden Gray & Associates took her case against the FDA pro bono. A judge ruled the agency had exceeded its authority with its ivermectin messaging, even in “tweet-sized doses.” The FDA ultimately settled and removed its anti-ivermectin tweets.
Houston attorneys Steven Mitby and Michael Barnhart of Mitby Pacholder Johnson are representing Bowden pro bono before the Texas Medical Board. Most of the board’s original charges have been dropped. The remaining allegation involves her treatment of a patient at a hospital where she lacked admitting privileges—despite the family specifically requesting her care.
Bowden biggest legal defeat was a dismissed defamation suit against Houston Methodist. Bowden attributed the loss to a legal error by her former attorney, who later suffered a stroke. She was ordered to pay the hospital $166,000 in legal fees.
Houston Methodist—a nonprofit with more than $3 billion in revenue—is now demanding an additional $25,000 in interest. Bowden said she offered to donate the amount to a charity of the hospital’s choosing. The hospital declined.
For all Houston Methodist’s piety—and its well publicized finger-wagging over Bowden’s “dangerous misinformation”—it was, alongside Cleveland Clinic, among the top hospitals performing high volumes of lucrative and, according to a watchdog group, questionable stent surgeries during the height of the pandemic.
Vindication Still Unfolding
Despite all she’s endured, Bowden remains undeterred. For those who admire her courage—and want to help her recover the $260,000 she’s spent defending her license and reputation—I encourage you to preorder her memoir on Amazon. If it becomes a bestseller, it may inspire other physicians to stand up to a medical establishment that too often punishes dissent while hiding behind corporate media shields.
Even with the FDA’s removal of its misleading ivermectin messaging, the media remains stuck. Vanity Fair recently reported Bowden was suspended for “promoting the horse dewormer ivermectin,” then quietly corrected the language after she protested.
The Atlantic—a left-leaning outlet whose covid coverage was so flawed one of its writers pleaded for “pandemic amnesty”—recently opened a piece with: “Remember ivermectin? The animal-deworming medication…”
The author, Benjamin Mazer, blocked Bowden from following him on X—apparently looking to ensure that knowledgeable sources can’t publicly challenge his publication’s preferred narrative.