A few weeks ago, I introduced an imaginary man, Dr. James Martin. He’s an oncologist. He works on behalf of the Pipe/Snuff/Cigar/Cigarette/Hookah Using (PSCCHU) rights movement.

The piece pointed up the absurd illogic of Jesuit Father (not Doctor) James Martin. He’s doing for sexual sinners what Dr. Martin could do for smokers. Now the real Fr. Martin is stoking civil war in Catholic circles. How? Through his glamorous speaking gigs before faithful Catholic audiences. So I thought it was time to check in on Doctor Martin. Let’s see how the media’s treating him. The news report below reproduces almost verbatim the New York Times’ coverage of Fr. Martin’s latest controversy. I just switched a few words out here and there. See how balanced, objective, and fair the Times’ report appears in that new light.

Oncologist Sticks Up for Smokers, Then Takes the Heat

James Martin, M.D. knew his latest book — which urges a dialogue between the medical establishment and Pipe/Snuff/Cigar/Cigarette/Hookah Users (PSCCHU) who feel estranged from it would be provocative. Even though the book was approved by his superiors in oncology at Walter Reed Hospital as being in line with hospital policy and was endorsed by several radiologists, he did not expect everyone to agree. That’s fine, he said. That’s why dialogue was needed.

His public position on this hot-button issue — most recently in the book, Building a Bridge, but also in speeches, articles and social media — has earned him the gratitude of parents of young smokers or adults who feel unwelcome in gyms and hospital waiting rooms because of their smoking orientation. But his stance has also led to “joking” threats of violence and insults against him. Old-fashioned doctors have called him “reckless,” a “tobacco industry shill,” “a patsy” and guilty of “leading young people to early deaths.” In recent weeks, campaigns by people opposed to him have prompted three high-profile medical groups to disinvite him from events where he was to be the featured speaker.

Where’s the Free, Open Debate?

On Friday, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center withdrew its invitation to Doctor Martin, who was scheduled to deliver a speech on the legacy of Walter Reed in early October. The hospital said in a statement that the decision was made after “increasing negative attacks” on social media. And while hospital officials “in no way” agreed with the critics, the hospital wanted to avoid “distractions” during centennial events, the statement said.

This is about reaching out to people out in the smokers’ pen.

Sean Harvey, the hospital’s president, made it clear in a statement released Saturday that it did not support the decision to disinvite Doctor Martin. He also lamented how attempts to stop “the civil exchange of ideas” at teaching hospitals nationwide apply to all shades of medical opinion. “It is problematic that individuals and groups within the medical community demonstrate the same inability to make distinctions and to exercise transparency,” he said.

The reactions he has gotten from many people who have read his latest book has been encouraging. Apart from his call for a dialogue, the second half of the book is devoted to breathing exercises and mild aerobic activity, though that aspect gets lost in the debate over the book. He had long received desperate messages and impassioned emails seeking medical advice, and the publication of Building A Bridge prompted even more. He gets about 50 messages daily, in which people talk about things like how a doctor would not give a dying man in hospice care a lousy pack of Kools; or how someone was fired from a job in an operating room because of their smoking orientation.

Taking the Heat for Smokers

But he has also been the victim of ad-hominem attacks, even from other doctors who, he said, do not seem to remember that many doctors nationwide themselves are secret smokers. He tries to ignore the criticism, but when the American Cancer Society, an old line medical group, sent out a message — which it said was in jest — that Doctor Martin had been “beaten like a rented mule” by a prominent cancer surgeon, he filed a complaint with Twitter that resulted in the account being temporarily suspended.

That, in turn, prompted Shawshank Druze, the president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, to call Father Martin’s reaction “patsified,” dubbing him “Doctor Snake Oil” as well as a “perfidious physician.”

Mr. Druze, who is also a contributor to Breitbart News, did not apologize for using those words. “They are qualifiers for his bad behavior in lying about the comments of the American Cancer Society on Twitter,” he said in an email. “I could have used snake oil because that’s what he’s peddling. He lied and caused the American Cancer Society to be suspended from Twitter and held up to public ridicule.”

A Torrent of Hatred

Of his critics, Doctor Martin said that even an invitation to listen to PSCCHU people has “unleashed this torrent of hatred.”

A doctor would not give a dying man in hospice care a lousy pack of Kools. One smoker was fired from a job in an operating room because of their smoking orientation.

“It’s insane. This is about reaching out to people out in the smokers’ pen. But on that issue it tells us that we have a lot to learn. If we can’t even begin a dialogue without a charge of quackery, then we need to take a good look at how we understand the Hippocratic Oath.”

Like many others who have found themselves aghast at the easy outrage and invective found on Twitter, he tries to ignore the more hateful of his critics. It has not, however, reduced his reliance on social media to connect with people. He started using it 10 years ago to promote My Life with the Snuffdippers, one of several best-selling books he has written.

Going to the Peripheries, to the Smokers’ Yard

“At first I thought I was too busy, but then I realized it could be kind of a ministry,” said Doctor Martin, who is editor at large at Longevity Magazine (on whose board I once served). “It’s reaching people where they are. Walter Reed went to where the people were and spoke to them in their language. And he was always going to the smokers area.”

Despite the name-calling, innuendo and canceled speeches, Doctor Martin said he will press on. He has received support from presidents of cancer hospitals — who request boxes of his book — and from his colleagues at Walter Reed. He will not step back from social media, saying it is part of his calling to “find health in all activities.”

Yes, even on Twitter.

“We are not afraid of going to the smoking section,” he said. “That is what Everett Koop and Joycelyn Elders asked us to do. As Joycelyn said to us, go to the lawns and vestibules where the medical community has not been serving people or where people need it the most. There is no one more marginalized in the medical community than PSCCHU Americans. So, I’m right where I should be.”