Ken Walker (physician)

Kenneth Francis Walker (born 28 February 1924) is a British-born Canadian medical writer, celebrity doctor, and retired obstetrician and gynecologist. As an author and columnist he publishes under the pen name W. Gifford-Jones, M.D..

Background
Walker was born in 1924 in Croydon, England. His family moved to Canada when he was 4, settling in Niagara Falls, Ontario.

Walker earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Toronto and graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1950.

Author and columnist
He adopted the Gifford-Jones pseudonym when he wrote his first book in 1961, Hysterectomy: A Book for the Patient, due to the College of Physicians and Surgeons which ruled he could not publish a medical book under his own name as this would constitute advertising for patients and was not permitted under the college's rules. He went on to publish several more books under his pen name and used it when he launched his column, "The Doctor Game" in 1975 in the Globe and Mail. It was syndicated to over 40 newspapers by the end of the 1970s.

The column appeared in the Globe and Mail until 1989 when it moved to the Toronto Sun. At its peak it was syndicated to over 85 newspapers in Canada, 300 newspapers in the United States, including the Chicago Sun-Times, and newspapers in Europe. He has also written nine books, has been a senior editor of Canadian Doctor magazine, and was a regular contributor to Fifty Plus magazine.

The Postmedia chain, including the Toronto Sun discontinued the Gifford-Jones column at the end of 2019.

The weekly column continues to be published online and in smaller newspapers such as the Westerly Sun, the Kingsville Times, the Penticton Herald, and the Prince Albert Daily Herald and has been co-authored with his daughter, Diana MacKay (using the pen name Diana Gifford-Jones), since 2020.

Campaigns and advocacy
While practicing in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Walker was an advocate of women's right to choose abortion and was an abortion practitioner in the area after the procedure became legal in 1969, resulting in death threats from abortion opponents.

In 1979, he began campaigning for the legalization of heroin as a painkiller for terminal cancer patients through his column, by creating the Gifford-Jones Foundation to raise money for the campaign and through newspaper advertisements and collecting 30,000 names on a petition and soliciting 20,000 letters from his readers in support of his efforts. His foundation donated $500,000 to the University of Toronto Medical School to establish the Gifford-Jones Professorship in Pain Control and Palliative Care.

Walker has also advocated the right to assisted suicide and euthanasia and is a member of the physicians advisory council of Dying with Dignity Canada.

Controversies
At age 73, Walker suffered a serious heart attack, and soon after had a triple bypass. He rejected the recommended statin therapy and recalling an interview he had with Linus Pauling advocating Vitamin C megadosage, began a regimen of 10 grams of Vitamin C, and 5 grams of the amino acid lysine, which he claimed saved his life. Walker's advocacy of a combination of large dosages of Vitamin C and lysine to prevent or reverse coronary disease and his questioning of the use of statins has been criticized by medical professionals and also led to accusations that Walker's advocacy of this and other alternative treatments puts him in a conflict of interest as he sells vitamin supplements online, including a product that combines Vitamin C and lysine. Dr. Raphael Cheung, an endocrinologist at Windsor Regional Hospital, wrote in an op-ed response to Walker's advice that: “Dr. Gifford-Jones’ anecdotal experience belongs to medicine that was practiced half a century ago!” adding "Why does [the Windsor Star] keep printing articles written by a retired OB-GYN regarding vascular health? Not knowing any better, there are patients who are at high risk for heart disease and stroke in our community who have stopped taking their medications after reading Gifford-Jones articles." Cheung also stated that he was surprised when a patient with coronary heart disease told him that he had stopped his heart medications and "had started taking Dr. Gifford-Jones’s Medi-C Plus treatment purchased online.”

In 1986, Walker participated in a "fact finding" tour of South Africa sponsored by the apartheid government. Upon his return he wrote an op-ed in the Globe and Mail titled "The good side of white South Africa" which opposed sanctions against or disinvestment from South Africa and also opposed the prospect of ending white minority rule in the country.

In 2018, the Toronto Sun pulled a Gifford-Jones column from its website following an outcry over its urging readers to consider "both sides of the vaccine debate". Sun editor Adrienne Batra said it was removed from the newspaper's website after medical professionals pointed out inaccuracies in the column. By 2021, Gifford-Jones was taking a stronger position in favor of vaccination writing "I have never been against vaccination and proven science" and in regards towards COVID-19 vaccines "the risk is so, so minimal versus the risk of dying unvaccinated".

Later life
After spending much of his life in Niagara Falls, Walker and his wife moved to Toronto's Harbourfront neighbourhood where they celebrated their 60th anniversary in 2016. Walker retired from his practice at the age of 87. As of 2024, the couple live in a retirement home in Toronto.

He turned 100 on February 28, 2024. The city of Niagara Falls, Ontario declared the day Dr. W. Gifford-Jones Day and staged a special illumination of Niagara Falls in his honour.