This article, about William Makis and his attempts to treat cancer patients, was written by Dorit Rubinstein Reiss, Professor of Law at the University of California Law, San Francisco, who is a frequent contributor to this and many other websites, providing in-depth and intellectually stimulating articles about vaccines, medical issues, social policy, and the law.

Professor Reiss writes extensively about the social and legal aspects of vaccination in law journals. Reiss is also a member of the Parent Advisory Board of Voices for Vaccines. This parent-led organization supports and advocates for on-time vaccination and the reduction of vaccine-preventable diseases. She is also a member of the Vaccines Working Group on Ethics and Policy.

On March 4, 2026, a justice of Alberta’s Court of King’s Bench found Viliam (William) Makis in contempt of a preliminary injunction that prohibited him from calling himself doctor, a variety of other titles that implied he was a physician, and prohibited him from practicing medicine. The justice made the injunction permanent, found Mr. Makis in contempt, and gave Mr. Makis a chance to avoid imprisonment by immediately stopping the treatment of patients and removing online references to himself as a physician.

Mr. Makis, in (understandably) unsettled Substack posts, characterized the decision as an attack on cancer patients, but that’s not true.

This post will describe the case, the decision, and the problems with Mr. Makis’ response.

The William Makis case

As described in the decision, Mr. Makis received an MD in 2005 and worked as a physician. In 2013, He got a “position with Alberta Health Services as a nuclear medicine physician practicing at Cross Cancer Institute in Edmonton.” He also, according to his deposition, wrote “over 100 peer-reviewed articles.”

He stopped working at Cross Cancer Institute in 2016 “[b]ecause of workplace issues,” and lost his practice permit in 2019 “because of failure to renew the permit and pay the annual registration fee”, though the decision also mentions “disciplinary proceedings in 2018”.

In 2018, Mr. Makis was declared a vexatious litigant over filing, essentially, a lot of complaints in relation to his “failed working relationship” at the Cross Cancer Institute; parts, but not all, of that order were put aside in 2020. 

My familiarity with Mr. Makis is through his Twitter/X posts claiming that all kinds of people died from COVID-19 vaccines – often making those claims for people who have a different cause of death.

One example is blaming the death of a man who died in a mountain biking accident on the vaccines. Mr. Makis claimed he has reported many such cases, and the evidence behind his claims has been patchy.  That is not, however, why he got into trouble with the College of Physicians & Surgeons of Alberta (CPSA), the regulatory authority that brought the claims against him.

That came from his other line of activity, online and apparently in practice, where he recommended “ivermectin, mebendazole, and fenbendazole” to cancer patients. In the time after he no longer had his license (from 2019), Mr. Makis himself alleged online that he diagnosed tens of thousands of patients with cancer, and alleged that he treated thousands of patients with cancer.

Much of his Substack consists of testimonials of people he, allegedly, helped with cancer – and of course, we cannot check or verify those claims. As a reminder, anecdotes are not a good source to assess whether medicine works – there are anecdotes behind a whole variety of fake treatments, from urine therapy, through black salve, to MMS (industrial strength bleach). Mr. Makis, to my knowledge, has no data behind his cancer protocol, and there are reasons to doubt it. 

David Gorski, MD, PhD, an oncologist and scientist, discussed, for example, an exchange over Scott Adams’ unhappiness with Makis’ treatment of his cancer, something both parties posted about. Mr. Makis is also one of the proponents of the false turbo-cancer narrative, blaming COVID-19 vaccines for causing “turbo-cancer”, a term that is not a professional term, without evidence, but that, too, is not the basis for this case.

The heart of the court case is that the regulator brought a case against Makis for practicing medicine without a license and using the term medical doctor when he was not licensed and not entitled to. 

On August 15, 2025, Justice Keith D. Yamauchi from the Court of King’s Bench of Alberta granted an interim injunction against him, prohibiting Mr. Makis from: (this is quoting the March 4 decision):

• “representing or implying that he is a regulated member of the CPSA or otherwise licensed to practice medicine in Alberta;
• …using the title “doctor” or “oncologist” or the abbreviation “Dr.” alone or in combination with other words in connection with providing a health service; and
• offering or providing any health services to the public, including, but not limited to, offering or providing advice or consultations regarding cancer treatment.”

Note: this is a decision under Canadian law, which does, apparently, limit the use of some titles to those licensed. 

The court gave him until September 22, 2025, to change his social media profiles to comply with this. Mr. Makis requested that the Court of Appeal allow him to appeal the injunction and the case, and the Court of Appeal sent the case back, concluding that the case should work through the usual forum first, leaving the temporary injunction in place.

In the meantime, Mr. Makis apparently applied for a license in Florida. According to his submissions to the court, he was “granted conditional licensure in the state of Florida and upon obtaining a US social insurance number will have full licensure.” Another part of the decision makes it clear that this refers to a Social Security number. So if and when Mr. Makis obtains a Social Security number in the United States, he will be licensed to practice in Florida.

This suggests that he is not yet licensed, and he does not, indeed, appear in the Florida records as licensed. 

The case in question here is the result of CPSA alleging that Mr. Makis violated the initial injunction. Three issues were discussed by the court, by Justice Douglas R. Mah: (I will use “justice” since that’s the term the Court of King’s Bench appears to apply to its judges).

1. Is Mr. Makis in contempt of court for violating the injunction?
2. If yes, what should be the sanction?
3. Should the injunction be made permanent? 

The justice made it clear that the issue is not about whether Mr. Makis’s cancer treatment is valid, or his other online statements about vaccines or ivermectin, but about the specific injunction, which prohibits him, since he is not licensed, from practicing medicine or presenting himself as a medical doctor, oncologist, or radiologist. 

The decision

The justice concluded that Mr. Makis was in contempt of the initial injunction, that although a fine or administrative sanction would not be enough, Mr. Makis should be given a chance to avoid imprisonment, and that the injunction should be made permanent. Among other things, the justice found Mr. Makis to be not credible, and found him to have tried to get around the injunction while, in practice, violating its terms.

The decision is very thorough and careful, and gives Mr. Makis’ claims substantial space. 

To find contempt, the court explained that three elements need to be established beyond a reasonable doubt: 

• The Order alleged to have been breached must state clearly and unequivocally what should and should not be done;

• The party alleged to have breached the Order must have had actual knowledge of it; and

• The party allegedly in breach must have intentionally done the act that the Order prohibits or intentionally failed to do the act that the order compels.

Much of the discussion focused on the credibility of the online evidence brought, and the court put aside some of the materials – the ones Mr. Makis suggested were faked or non-credible – but relied on the ones Mr. Makis did not challenge, and which fit the materials clearly created by him – his Substack and YouTube videos.

The justice concluded that by denying some of the evidence as his (e.g., claiming Facebook posts were by an impostor) but leaving the rest, Mr. Makis left the rest to be considered his. The justice concluded that there is enough evidence to conclude that “Mr. Makis is the originator of all the online material extracted from the internet, and the emails to Dr. McLeod.”

The justice also found that Mr. Makis was being charged with breaking an injunction order in Alberta, not for his conduct elsewhere, and he is not being targeted for his online statements, but for specific services to the public, which are the practice of medicine and using titles that are regulated. 

The court found that Mr. Makis is not credible for several reasons:

• His claims are “self-serving and evasive.” He claimed that he does not provide treatment, but the language in his posts and his clients’ claims show otherwise – that he sets himself up as providing cancer treatment, and his patients take it that way.
• He engages in personal insults against those “whose actions displease him” – he called doctors in CPSA “pedophiles”, accuses people in CPSA of a conspiracy to criminalize cancer patients, called the justice that issued the initial injunction corrupt. 
• He shows “a certain looseness” in presenting facts – for example, although he was licensed in 2005 and alleges he has not practiced medicine since 2019, he claims he practiced medicine for more than 20 years. The justice says: “The math does not add up, unless one counts activity since 2019”. He claims he had a license in Florida from February 2026, but the license is contingent on getting a United States Social Security number and is not yet active.

The justice concluded that Mr. Makis is well-educated, the order was clear, and he had counsel, so the first two parts of the test – clear order, knowledge – are filled. He also found that:

[94] Mr. Makis uses semantics to skirt the operation of the Injunction Order. He says he has “clients” rather than “patients” although he does use the word “patient” as well to refer to the people to whom he provides services. He says he is only providing “information” and “research” and not “advice” or “treatment”. Yet the evidence is clear that the information given is intended to and does influence or induce a change in the course of treatment for some individuals, even where other health professionals are involved. He concedes that he receives and reviews patient records and test results in individual cases and does individual consultations by email or online. I take judicial notice here that medical doctors these days typically use alternative communication modes such as email and Zoom in place of and in addition to traditional office visits. Mr. Makis did not challenge or controvert Dr. McLeod’s characterization of “practicing medicine” as including consultations where the skill and qualifications of a physician are held out and advice given to guide the course of care.

[95] I also agree with the CPSA that the activities of Mr. Makis, described by himself on X, YouTube and LinkedIn fall within the definition of the “practice of medicine….””

Based on this conduct, the justice found that Mr. Makis is practicing medicine, and continues to use the “prohibited titles and terms” for himself, so he is violating the order. 

Later in the decision, in discussing whether to make the sanction permanent, the justice added:

[113] At one point in his video entitled “2025-12-09 Update on the largest Ivermectin Cancer Group in the world. 500 days and 7500 patients!” (found at Exhibit D of Ms. Lanz’s February 4, 2026, affidavit), Mr. Makis is heard rhetorically asking why the government, the Courts and the medical regulator aren’t able to stop him from helping cancer patients. He answers the question by saying “the reality is that they’re the evil people, they’re the bad guys, the villains, the people breaking the law.” He is basically telling his video audience that he cannot and will not be stopped from engaging in his activities by any institutional authority, including the Courts. This is a declaration of his contempt. It is clear evidence of his intention to continue breaching the existing Order…

On the sanction, the justice found that:

As stated, Mr. Makis’ persistence in providing medical advice and treatment without a license and using prohibited titles and terms is deliberate. He has attempted to outsmart the Court and the CPSA by relying on “weasel words” to avoid accountability and gloss over the substance of what he is actually doing.

The justice did not think a fine would deter Mr. Makis, but because imprisonment is a drastic sanction, he allowed Mr. Makis to avoid it by: 

With regard to the health coaching business, Mr. Makis must immediately cease providing medical advice and treatment and otherwise practicing medicine without a license. With respect to Mr. Makis’ online presence, he shall have 72 hours within which to remove all offending titles, initials and abbreviations, regardless of whether the content was originally posted by him or reposted by him. The 72 hours will start at 12:01 a.m. on the day after the issuance of this decision.

Looks like Mr. Makis was not imprisoned, so he likely complied (though, understandably, with ill grace, as discussed below). 

Finally, the court concluded that CPSA has a right to insist that those practicing medicine in Alberta be properly licensed. Since Mr. Makis is not, he can be prohibited from practicing medicine. The justice concluded that a permanent injunction is appropriate, given Mr. Makis’s conduct and the need to protect the public from unauthorized practice of medicine.

The justice emphasized that Mr. Makis can make general statements about ivermectin, but the practice of medicine requires a “properly licensed health professional”. 

As a reminder, the reason for this kind of regulation is, in large part, to protect the public from people providing fake treatment with no regulation.

Mr. Makis was ordered to pay CPSA’s costs for the litigation. 

Substack articles from William Makis

William Makis posted on this twice, once on March 8 and once on March 13. The March 8 post is no longer online, as far as I can see, but has been quoted by Facebook posts that I have printed. 

On March 8, Dr. Makis wrote:

As of March 4, 2026, Canadian authorities seek to have me imprisoned for 2 years, by having me arrested as early as March 9, 2026, for helping cancer patients.

The recent March 4 Alberta Court Decision 2026 ABKB159 concludes:

• there is no evidence of any patient harm after 2 years and 9000+ Cancer patients.

• there are documented life saving benefits to cancer patients which the Court deems “irrelevant”.

• doing a Podcast Interview, or making a Youtube Video constitutes “practicing medicine without a license” which can lead to imprisonment up to 2 years (this is new).

• Health Coaching is now illegal in Canada (this is new). 

• This also applies to Naturopathy and all non-allopathic medicine health fields which are now also effectively illegal.

My Response:

• I am complying with the Court’s Directions to remove what was described as “offending social media”.

• I am moving out of Canada as soon as humanly possible.

• I am securing the safety of my family who are in extreme danger after recent threats were issued.

• I intend to open a Florida Clinic to help cancer patients as soon as humanly possible.

• My Florida Medical License is approved and is not in any danger.

Thank you for your support. God bless.

A few points. First, note that the court went out of its way to give Mr. Makis a chance to avoid imprisonment.

Second, the CPSA did not investigate him for patient harm, but we do not know what happened to most of his patients. We do know that he seems to confirm that he was, in fact, treating cancer patients – i.e., practicing medicine without a license. 

Third, there is no good evidence of benefits – testimonials are not actual evidence that his protocol works, and I don’t think he has any good scientific evidence for it. Most of his patients appear to have come to him after getting science-based treatment, and at least some may have ended up healing from that. We – rightly – don’t have full data about their private medical situation, and Mr. Makis does not have published scientific data for his claims. 

Fourth, the court did not find that the videos were practicing medicine without a license, though it did find that in the videos, he described actions that were practicing medicine. 

Fifth, the court did not find that health coaching is illegal – just that when it moves into practicing medicine, you need to be licensed. 

Sixth, naturopaths need to be certified in Alberta, too. 

Seventh, just a reminder that he is not yet licensed to practice medicine in Florida, and that it is contingent on getting a Social Security number. So he can’t open a clinic quite yet.

His March 13, 2026, post is still up. I kept a copy, since it’s free and public now, in case it’s changed later and he makes claims (I will not otherwise share it). 

In this post, he alleges that “[h]elping Cancer patients is now illegal in Canada.” He also claims that health coaching, naturopathy, using ivermectin, and doing podcasts and videos on health are illegal and punishable by up to 2 years of imprisonment. That is not actually true. 

Mr. Makis was found in contempt of a court order that prohibited him from practicing medicine without a license. The idea is that if you’re acting as a doctor towards cancer patients, you should be licensed. It is legal to help cancer patients – but if you want to medically treat them, you need to be licensed. There is no prohibition on using ivermectin, doing podcasts, or health coaching. Naturopathy, again, does need certification in Canada. 

It is illegal to violate a court order, and you may be punished if you do, but that’s different.

It is also not true that sanctioning Mr. Makis for ignoring the injunction “amount[s] to attempted murder of Cancer patients who wanted cutting-edge options for their disease.”

No, I don’t know why Mr. Makis repeatedly capitalizes cancer. I doubt he’s thinking of the God Cancer (if there is such a God), or feels Cancer is a proper name. But prohibiting him from practicing medicine without a license is not an attempt to murder anyone.

If no actually licensed doctor is willing to prescribe ivermectin to cancer patients, maybe there’s a reason. For example, the reason could be that there is no good evidence behind doing that, and it would violate the standard of care. 

Mr. Makis goes on to blame an unknown group of Canadians for what happened, saying:

You could have and should have stopped the Canadian authorities from doing any of this. There were plenty of opportunities to do so.

Now it’s too late.

He also blames the authorities. 

What he does not do is consider any blame that he may have for violating the previous injunction. It’s hard not to read his post as him thinking that he could and should have been allowed to just ignore the injunction without any consequences.

He ends with another reference to his “Florida Cancer Clinic” [sic], which, again, is contingent on his getting a US Social Security number, which he does not yet have.

Conclusion

Mr. Makis has, for a while, sold an unsupported protocol to cancer patients. He was brought to court by a regulator for practicing medicine without a license and presenting himself as a medical doctor while not being licensed – things he appears pretty clearly to have done, as the court found.

After a court put out an injunction prohibiting him from practicing medicine and using the titles of medical doctor, oncologist, and radiologist, he tried to continue business as usual while pretending he was not. He set himself up online to treat cancer patients.

He was cited for contempt for violating the order. A court, in a detailed decision, found him to have violated the order deliberately and to be practicing medicine. The court gave him a chance to avoid imprisonment, which he appears to have taken. Mr. Makis appeared to have assumed he could ignore the law with impunity and was deeply unhappy when he found out that there may be consequences. This is not, in the end, about cancer patients; it’s about a man who thought he could ignore the law and does not like finding otherwise. 

He may end up practicing in Florida. I do not think Florida will gain by it.