The Highwire with Del Bigtree - THE COST OF CARING: DR BOWDEN’S MEDICAL FREEDOM FIGHT

Episode Date: November 5, 2025

Dr. Mary Talley Bowden recounts her battle with Houston Methodist, Texas’s largest hospital, after being punished for treating COVID patients with ivermectin. From losing hospital privileges to facing a reprimand from the Texas Medical Board, Bowden exposes corruption within modern medicine and reveals why she now questions everything she once believed.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

Hello, I'm Mary Talley Bowden. Believe or not, this is my first press conference. I'm a solo physician. I've been here for two years. I started off with the attention of just doing earness and throat and sleep medicine and somehow stumbled into COVID. Over the span of the pandemic, I've been open seven days a week. I've tested over 80,000 people. and I have treated about 2,000 people. I'm a good doctor. I fight for my patients. I treat my patients the way I would want myself treated. So it was quite a surprise to me last Friday

when I got a text message from the Houston Chronicle telling me that my hospital privileges have been suspended. A local doctor's privileges pulled after a series of tweets about COVID-19 vaccines and treatments. Ear, nose and throat specialists, Dr. Mary Bodin resigned from Houston Methodist after having her privileges revoked. Houston Methodist says Bowden tweeted about the drug Ivermectin, which the CDC advises against, along with non-factual tweets about vaccines and the hospital's practices.

I have gone above and beyond. I have helped people when their primary care doctors are telling them there's nothing you can do. All I've tried to do is help people. As an ear and throat doctor, I'm very used to and very comfortable seeing patients with respiratory tract infections. So people started coming to see me, and I basically just did what I thought I needed to do. So I've become the emergency room. I'm giving high-dose IV steroids.

I'm giving, you know, 25 grams of IV vitamin C. But I am keeping people out of the hospital. And so I started using ivermectin. And I found that ivermectin work. And, you know, I started speaking out, and of course I got ridiculed, smeared, canceled. I'm still fighting for my medical license. So I put everything on the line to tell the truth. I think they're trying to make an example out of me.

I think they're trying to show people if you speak your mind. If you dare, challenge the vaccine agenda, then this is what happened to you. I mean, any other product would have been pulled a long time ago. There's no other explanation than there's just... There's fraud, there's corruption, there's ego, there's money. But it's not science. Well, she's certainly one of the bold voices that came out of the COVID pandemic. If you had any issues there, then you probably know who Dr. Mary Talley Bowden is. And it's my honor and pleasure to be joined by her now. Mary, thanks for joining us today. Thanks for having me, Del.

Take you, we haven't had you on the high wire to discuss. So just briefly, what's the moment you're a practicing physician? I'm assuming you sort of, I've had a record of getting along with hospitals and boards and everything else prior to COVID. What's the moment, what's that light bulb moment when you say something is wrong here? Well, the turning point for me, it came on the single day where three things happened. I had a surgery center reach out to me and say, you can no longer operate here if you don't get the COVID shot. I had a hospital in Fort Worth Texas Texas hospital deny me privileges after a court ordered them to give them to me. And this was involving a patient who was dying in the hospital.

The wife was suing to get an Ivermectin. Me as an expert witness, she recruited me as a doctor that would prescribe the Ivermectin. And the court ordered Texas Hugley Hospital to grant me emergency temporary privileges. The clean record, I've never been sued for malpractice. At that point, I still had a good reputation. And so they just denied my privileges. And then, you know, I had a patient come to me and say that her oncologist at Houston Methodist Hospital was going to stop seeing her if she didn't get the COVID shot. She had history bladder cancer and needed to be seen.

And he called her and said, well, their department was discussing not letting, the unvaccinated come in their clinic. So I sent out an email to my patients and I said, you know, this is my turning point as a physician. And going forward, I will only be treating the unvaccinated. And that caused a lot of waves. And I never upheld the policy. But that email went viral. And I also at the same time, you know, in response to that, I got a lot of feedback, both good and bad. but most of it was good. And so I posted it on Twitter. And at the time, I really didn't have much of a following.

I mean, I'd get like one like on a post. But I tweeted out the same message 25 times. And I just said vaccine mandates are wrong. And then I screenshoted testimonials from the feedback I got from that email. And that's where it all came to a head. A few days later, I got a text message from a reporter at the Houston Chronicle asking me to confirm, it true that your privileges have been suspended at Houston Methodist Hospital? And I did a double take. I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about. And that's how I found out that they were,

you know, suspending my privileges and they tweeted it about it. And then, you know, next thing I know, I've got like CNN and Washington Post and all these people coming after me. It was, it was crazy. But, you know, and then they turned me in the medical board. And it's just been, you know, a big fight since then. Was that, I mean, just your perspective on vaccines, since that's a big part of it, you know, ivermectin vaccines, prior to the COVID vaccine, had you pretty much, you know, gotten all the vaccines necessary to be a medical professional? Oh, yeah. I was, I was, I was, I fell in line.

I have four kids. I was, you know, even upset if they couldn't get in in time for their three, six, you know, nine month checkup because the doctor was backed up. I was, you know, full on, very compliant, got my flu shot every year. I offered flu shots to my patients. I did not offer the COVID shots, and I did not get the COVID shot. And so that was a change. What was it about that shot that sort of changed your perspective?

Well, I looked at the study and the design of the study, and I didn't like that. So people would get the shot or the placebo. And instead of systematically testing everybody, you know, periodically, it was left up to the physician to decide whether or not to test the people. And that raised red flags for me. So that was my initial. And then, you know, I'm low risk. I just didn't have risk factors. I got COVID very early on and I responded very well to hydroxychloroquine.

So I had no fear of the disease. And I was just, you know, it was rushed. And that just, I had seen other medications come and go. I'd seen antibiotics that were touted as safety and effective and then were pulled off the market. Biox. That was during my time as a resident, biox we were prescribing left and right. And next thing you know, it's been shown to cause major cardiac issues. So I was naturally suspicious just because it was so fresh and then just looking at the study.

It's interesting because you said something that I almost hear, I almost never hear a doctor say, which is I looked at the study. You looked at the study design, obviously, I'm assuming of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines and the trials, which we were doing here on the high wire. But so many doctors never took that step, which I think puts you automatically in my mind in a different category. I've interviewed hundreds of doctors, if not more,

the ones that went along with it. I mean, there's just this sort of culture of, I'm not an investigative scientist. I'm a doctor. I don't bother with looking at studies. Was that normal for you? Because that's out of character from what I've seen in a lot of medicine. Yeah, I don't know what came over me.

But I did the same thing for ivermectin. I went to the FDA's website. I looked at the original study that Merck submitted to the FDA. And in that is all sorts of toxicity data. And people don't talk about this either. but there's something called the lethal dose 50, which is a benchmark number to indicate how toxic a medication is. So if the LD50 is low, then it's pretty toxic.

And LD50 is high, then it's less toxic. And, you know, the LD 50 of Ivermectin is about 100 times higher than what we use to prescribe for COVID. And people were upset about Ivermectin because, you know, for parasites, you use three milligram dosage. And it's like a one and done thing. but for ivermectin, we use a lot higher doses. So that's where all the, I think people got nervous and excited about it.

So I just, you know, before using it, I wanted to really make sure it was safe. And then I did a literature search and I tried to find accidental and intentional overdose with ivermectin. And if you do that search for Tylenol, you will find thousands of reports. Not so for ivermectin. I couldn't find a single report of either accidental or intentional overdose with ivermectin. Ivermectin, and that's what prompted me to start using it. Which seems to me doctors all the time, you know, go outside, you know, repurposing, you know, repurposed use of a drug is accepted across medicine and science.

This one was so shocking to me because it could be argued that Ivermectin is one of the safest drugs on the planet. So if safety, safety should have been the number one concern at a point where they're saying we don't know how to treat this. We don't know what's going on. So if doctors want to try things, which, you know, certainly the PEP Act was making it possible for doctors to get outside the box, why this? Why did they go after both hydroxychloroquine incredibly safe used by millions of people around the world, even that are suffering from malnutrition take hydroxychloroquine and then ultimately Ivermectin, which proved even more effective. In all of your work looking at it and, you know,

You've obviously done a bunch of podcasts. You keep talking about it. What happened? What are you, what is your theory on what happened here? What was this about? It was an orchestrated attack and it was all meant to promote the COVID shot. So you look at March 2021, only 10% of the population had gotten these shots. Government was nervous about that.

They put something, the FDA put something on their website telling people not to take Ivermectin for COVID. April 1st, 2021, Houston Methodist Hospital becomes the first in the country to mandate the shots. That's five months before Biden. Same day, April 1st, 2021, Biden launches COVID-19 Community Corps, $10 billion propaganda program, just boatloads of money going out to influencers, church groups, sports groups, to promote the safe and effective narrative of the vaccine. August, late August, 2021, FDA puts out the horse tweet. Again, they're frustrated. This is the third and largest surge of the pandemic. Clearly, the shots aren't working. They've been out for quite a while.

And all of a sudden, in the late summer, early fall, 2021, we see a huge spike in COVID patients. Government doubles down, puts out the horse tweet. And the horse tweet is the attractive health care worker. She's nuzzling a horse. So seriously, y'all, you're not a horse. you're not a cow stop it that that tweet just goes viral and at that point on it became very hard for me to prescribe ivermectin the medical boards started coming after uh doctors all over the country who were promoting ivermectin a couple weeks later Biden mandates the shots and takes away monoclonal antibodies if you look at the timeline it's very clear amazing and so our government then was involved in promoting and rushing out a vaccine.

Is there something about the technology you think that was necessary to get out there? Was it the adult mandate? They wanted adults to get used to being vaccinated? Like why? Why? You know, I have my perspective, but from your perspective, because you're a doctor. I'm not. I'm just a journalist that's watched this crazy thing happen and watch doctors, you know,

act in ways we didn't expect, like blocking people from seeing their loved ones inside of a hospital when they were on their deathbed. I mean, literally being inhumane with people that like, what do I care? I don't care if I'm at risk for getting sick inside your hospital. I want to see my loved one, you know, blocking use of a drug that was so incredibly safe. Lots of studies, obviously, out there. You had Pierre, Corey, speaking to the Senate, saying this is a wonder drug. What was the agenda, though?

Why this vaccine? Why this moment? What are your thoughts on that? Well, I mean, I believe the virus is a bioweapon. I believe it was released on purpose. And the COVID shots was part of that. It was, you know, a countermeasure. And, yeah, I don't think there's a simple answer to that.

I mean, I think that's part of it. I think part of it's the financial. I mean, imagine giving a shot that has to be injected. It has an entire world. And you have no liability if anything goes wrong. I mean, it's like the ideal product, right? I mean, what? And then there's a lot of ego involved.

There's, you know, there's, you know, medicine has become so centralized. You know, when I got out of medicine, it wasn't that way. Well, it was getting that way. But now, I mean, so many doctors are just employees. They don't, my practice is set up differently. And that it was very purposeful and it served very well during the pandemic. but if you are working for a third party, whether it's the government or insurance companies or a hospital or even a big practice that's owned by private equity, you've got a third party whispering into your ear and influencing how you practice medicine. So you had another, there's another hearing this week here in Texas over your use of Ivermectin, I believe, taking into patients in hospitals that you weren't.

I guess they're claiming that you didn't have the right to be in those hospitals. Let's just watch a clip. This is one of the people that you've been in a tug of war with. So let's take a look at this. Given the attention to specific cases received over the past years, I would like to address the facts and clarify why this action against Dr. Bowden specifically was taken today. There's been considerable speculation and public statements about the alleged motives behind the board's decision. For the board, this complaint came down to whether the respondents attempt to treat a patient in a,

hospital without the necessary privileges constituted unprofessional conduct. This question was examined by two independent administrative law judges at the state office of administrative hearings. After evaluating the evidence provided by both the board and the respondent, the judges determined that the respondent's actions were inappropriate and deliberate, thus constituting unprofessional conduct. And this is why we're here today. Despite claims to the contrary, the board has never, ever been concerned with the type of treatment the respondent was attempting to provide.

And I believe I have made multiple, multiple statements to that effect. We do not care what type of treatment is being provided. And that was never the case in this specific case also. TNB would have brought the same case against any other physician attempting to treat a patient in a hospital without privileges, regardless of the circumstances or the treatment, even if it was to give a patient Tylenol in that hospital. Well, I just wanna say from the get-go, I watched during COVID a death rate of about nine out of 10

on people that were being put on ventilators and remdesivir in hospitals all across the country. So any doctor that was trying to get Ivermectin or something else out there, you're an absolute hero. But what were the circumstances? What are they, like you said you had a court order in one case to bring Ivermectin to a patient. Is that the same case that this is all about or is it multiple cases? And what is the accusation they're making?

Yeah, it's this case. It's only, it was only one case. So it was actually four years ago, almost to the day, wife of Jason Jones calls me. The hospital, Texas Hugley Hospital is talking hospice. They've tried everything. They're giving up. She wants him to try ivermectin. They refuse.

So she sues them. And in that lawsuit, I testified. Senator Bob Hall testified, and we won. And the hospital was ordered to grant me emergency temporary privileges. They were not given any discretion in that. It was supposed to be immediate. I submitted an application. And like I told you earlier, they denied my application.

They said they weren't going to approve my privilege. So I submit there was all this back and forth. And also keep in mind, this is like, I've never been so busy in my life because we are just slammed with COVID patients. So I'm juggling all this. And I'm basically just handing this off to the lawyer, right? The patient's lawyer, you know, tell me what to do. Where are we on this? Because it was pretty confusing because they had to go back to the judge.

Anyway, I finally get, and I have text messages showing this from the lawyer saying, we're good to go. You can go to the hospital. It's all been sorted out. Well, you know, the administrative hospital, the administrative secretary told me, you do not have privileges. So I had to choose between her, which we were suing her or the lawyer,

and I listened to the lawyer. So I sent the nurse to the hospital, and they claim that it caused a big disruption. Well, the nurse videotaped the entire thing. It was super calm. There was no yelling, screaming, pushing when she was asked to leave. She left.

But they're claiming that me, sending the nurse to the ICU waiting room she didn't get into the ICU was dangerous to other patients and that i pose a a threat in the future to patients if i don't get punished did this patient ever get the ivermectin no so they appealed and they won on appeal the the patient's wife did rub ivermectin on him every day and he actually did make it out of the hospital but he was never able to make a full recovery. He lost half of his body weight in the hospital. And he did pass away in April of 2023. That's terrible. So now, you know, people want to just let COVID go. They say that was behind us. That's obviously it's not behind us for you. You're still being dragged into these

ridiculous. And it looks like it just to admonish you because they're even saying this is an offense that would warrant taking your license and that they've never been against the product that you were using. Is that all, is that Copacetia? Is that what you believe to be true? My initial complaint that I received has word ivermectin on it. During my deposition, they talked about ivermectin. They mentioned it 86 times. When they brought, they didn't perform a preliminary investigation. So before even putting me through any of this, they're supposed to, you know, talk to the parties involved. They didn't talk to the lawyer.

They didn't talk to the nurse. They didn't talk to the patient's wife. They just took the hospital's complaint at face value. And initially, they wanted me to pay $5,000, take eight hours of CME, and retake the jurisprudence exam. And I just said, I mean, yeah, that's what they give to sex offenders. I was like, no, that's ridiculous. Maybe if they had just given me a speech, as he referred to, you know, maybe I would have

just taken that and gone. but it's a bad system because if they come after you like that and you choose to fight it, I mean, now I've spent over $250,000 fighting this four years, you know, it's a bad system because if you want to fight it, it is going to cost you a ton. And then you go to this administrative court, which is not, I mean, yeah, maybe it's independent, it's biased. I mean, it is, you know, you look at in the federal system, if you go to an administration, administrative court, odds are 90% of the time, the administrative court is going to win.

So you're, you know, you've got that against you. So now it's going to go to the district court, or it's going to go to the 15th court of appeals, which will be slightly better, I hope, in terms of fairness. And why fight it? Why? I mean, it's, it looks like it's a slap on the wrist and an eight-hour, you know, speeding ticket course in a way, but it sets. a precedent, I guess, for other doctors. Is that what you're concerned about? Yeah. I mean, it's, I'm fighting on principle, and I'm not the only one that's been targeted by the medical board over things that happened during COVID. Stella Emmanuel, Richard Erso, Joe Verone. I don't know if you know, Eric Henson, he lost his license because

he would not wear a mask in his office. I mean, this is Texas. So it's just we need to bring awareness. Texas is not what people think. We have the largest medical center in the world in Houston, the Texas Medical Center. And I call it the medical mafia. I mean, and there is a reason that mandates started in Houston and started in Texas. They knew if they could get away with the mandates in Texas, they could get away with them anywhere. So now when you look at the vaccine program, when you look at drugs being approved, when you look at, you know, obviously there's been a huge shift in in government, you know, I think because of this, I think people have reacted and said, you know, enough people in America said that just wasn't right. I was locked down. My child's education was destroyed. I, you know, as I drive through these no king's marches right now, I just think, I'm with you.

I don't want a king. I don't want a king that, you know, locks me in my house. It doesn't allow me to go outside. Arrest you for surfing in the bay all by yourself, you know, forces you to take a product that hasn't been properly tested. I mean, so, you know, but when we look at where we're at right now, what is your concern for medicine? I mean, you obviously studied this. This is what you do. I haven't seen any apology, I don't think, from any major medical institution in America. Have we? As anyone said, our bad, we should have let you have ivermectin.

It was wrong for us to block that or we shouldn't have, you know, forced remdesivir or vaccines. Are we ever going to get an apology? Yeah, I doubt it. I mean, the problem is the trust has been destroyed. I see it every day in my office. People are fearful of going to the hospital. I keep a list of trusted doctors, and it's like gold to my patients

because they just don't trust anymore. And I don't blame them. I don't want to go to the hospital. And this is, you know, this is a festering wound, and it's huge. And it's not going to heal on it. own. We need, you know, the government could help with that with the messaging. We could, you know, Marty McCarrey, the FDA could come out and make a statement about FDA. I actually sued the FDA

over that horse tweet and we won and they were forced to take it down. They were forced to take down the misinformation from their website. But it'd be nice to have some proactive measures where they could just say, hey, I still hear people saying, oh, I thought that was only for animals still. I know. And they can send some messaging out that oh yeah, ibermectin is, you know, just a fax. It doesn't have to say, oh, take it for COVID, but just give some, you know, re-educate the public on on how this drug actually works. But yeah, you know, the thing that gives me hope, though, is that people are not taking these shots. There's this illusion of consensus. It is totally false. If you looked at that ASIP meeting in September, the CDC showed that only 10%

of physicians or health care workers are getting these shots. Wow. So we're getting the message out. It's just, we just, unfortunately, the government is just not acknowledging what the rest of the country knows. So now stepping into where I'm at, we've just put out a film and inconvenient study. You had a very nice tweet about it. I appreciate that.

This is hard to watch as a mother of four and a doctor who followed the CDC vaccine schedule. would do things differently now. Please share with every young mother you know. When you look at the childhood schedule, is this difficult? Is it difficult to move from COVID, which a lot of people, Dr. Peter McCullough,

when he first came on to our show, the COVID vaccine is bad, the childhood vaccine program is great. I did this with Brett Weinstein. Almost everybody that first woke up around COVID just thought this was an anomaly. Now it's becoming more and more clear, clear as, you know, we've been beating this drum, no placebo trials on any of the childhood

vaccines, no ability to do a post-marketing placebo trial because it's unethical. And when you watch this whole game being played as a position, as, you know, where are you at now when you look at, you know, this is a foundational principle of modern medicine as the childhood vaccine program. What, what, what, what would you tell your, you know, children or grandchildren if they were having kids now? Yeah. I mean, that, you're, that, that, that film rattled me. I mean, I was I was teary-eyed. It was really, because I have four kids and I didn't even question it. And, uh, it's, yeah, I mean, definitely, uh, a wake up call. And I, yeah, I, I, I, in terms of what I tell patients, I'm like, if it were me and my kids, I would hold off until we actually have real data.

I mean, shocking. They studied hepatitis B for five days. They didn't teach us that in medical school. And shame on me for not looking into that. But yeah, it was a blow. I don't know if you saw my post this morning, but I'm just rethinking all sorts of things now. We have it right here. Thanks to the pandemic, I'm now questioning all vaccines, Tylenol, psychiatric medications, organ donation,

the definition of brain death, cholesterol, lowering meds, and the list will likely continue to grow. I had Dr. Paul Merrick on probably a year or so ago. He said exactly the same thing. Dell, I'm questioning everything I learned in med school now. I wonder how much of it was truly good science. It's like everywhere I look, it's just assumptions and bravado and a lot of funding and financing from the pharmaceutical industry. It's getting really, really hard to know what of medicine we can believe in anymore. I completely agree. I completely agree.

And I'm glad I don't have young children because that's that's a battle. I mean, you have to deal with the schools. And I love what Joe Latipo is doing because, and that's another thing. Like, I just never questioned the fact that in order for my kid to go to school, I had to inject him with, you know, multiple vaccines. And that, you know, just, oh, sure. Now, oh, my gosh. why should we force somebody to get anything injected in their body ever? We should never do that.

So it's just, it's amazing. It's a wild time. How, you know, do you feel like doctors are waking up? I mean, is there is, I mean, I know you have some sense of hope. Do you have doctors reaching? Because that's who I'm concerned about. I feel like the population's moving very quickly, but 90% of doctors across America turning down the booster means. 90% of the doctors in this country are now going against a CDC recommendation. Is that a good sign? Where are we at? How long will it take to get back to the scientific method? How long will it take before all of medicine says we're going to ask harder, deeper questions? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's almost like we need another pandemic to jumpstart this again, because people have sort of let this go by and are complacent and no one's really talking about it anymore.

So, yeah, I definitely have, I feel like there are more doctors out there that are like-minded. At least I see them on X and every once in a while I'll get emails or calls from other doctors, which gives me hope. But I think by and large, the true believers are still out there. and I don't know if we'll ever change their minds. How was this experience for your family, your husband, your kids, taking on the medical establishment. There's no small task.

Were you afraid? Was there a conflict around that? Well, funny enough, I got a divorce six months before the pandemic. Okay. And if that hadn't happened, I probably would have been muzzled because my ex thinks quite different. than I do. It's very bizarre. But my kids, luckily, were in a school that was super supportive.

I did have one kid who was an eighth grade when everything hit the fan. You know, I got in the news, and he was rejected from every private school we applied to, even though he had good grades and very well behaved. And I know for a fact that one of those schools admitted it was because of me. So that was the hardest part, but, you know, they are very supportive of me and they're proud of me now. So it's been fine. And luckily, I was in a school that no mask, no shots, no lockdown. I mean, it was great. It was a wonderful school.

That's wonderful. Well, Mary, you're a hero, I think, by, you know, our entire audiences in our book, watching you stand up for what's right. It's not easy. You've taken a lot of slings and arrows. And I just want to thank you. You're still, I mean, while all of us get to sort of move on with our lives, you're still getting dragged through this conversation,

but you're not giving up. I mean, in some ways, it seems like they want to wear you down and you're not letting that happen. So I think that's huge. And I just want to thank you for your courage, because I think these are those things that are going to be written in the history books. When we look back at this horrific moment with COVID,

I think it's a transformational moment, but only if we documented, only if we stand up and make sure that the courts and everybody recognize what happened there. So without you, we have no history. And so I really want to thank you for taking that on. It's super important. Well, thank you for having me, Dell, and helping me spread the word. Absolutely. Look, if you stick around for off the record after the show, you and I at times haven't been totally aligned on Robert Kennedy Jr. and the government, but I want to have a conversation. about that where you're at what you think now and what you'd like to see happens so

we'll have a quick conversation after the show about that how's that sound that sounds great