The following statement was sent to me and other members of the medical staff at a local hospital in October by its executive committee after approval at a medical staff meeting:
“In early September, the Federation of State Medical Boards, as well as the American Board of Family Medicine, American Board of Internal Medicine, and American Board of Pediatrics, issued a statement about vaccine misinformation. They stated that providing misinformation about the Covid-19 vaccine contradicts physicians’ ethical and professional responsibilities, and therefore may subject a physician to disciplinary action, including suspension or revocation of their medical license.
In support of this position, the Medical Staff voted to issue the following statement:
‘We believe that distribution of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation by a physician or advance practice provider via any means is contrary to the known science and the best interests of patients. Such conduct is also inconsistent with our standard and those practitioners may be subject to Medical Staff action.’”
It is no small thing to imperil a physician’s medical license, practice, livelihood and family over differences of opinion regarding optimal treatment for a particular condition.
That, however, is precisely what this hospital and medical staff have done. Specifically, they have threatened physicians with “disciplinary action, including suspension or revocation of their medical license” for the crime of distributing “misinformation about the Covid-19 vaccine.”
There are intense debates surrounding the vaccine, its efficacy, how long immunity lasts, its experimental nature, its “emergency use authorization,” and the serious side effects and adverse reactions, including death, that have been well documented. Many who have been vaccinated still contract and spread the virus and fall ill from it. Tens of millions of Americans, previously infected, have natural immunity, which is far broader and more durable, and do not require the vaccine.
The recovery rate for patients under 70 and in good health is 99.95 percent, better than the flu, and many choose not to get the vaccine for various reasons, including risk-benefit analysis, concerns over potential complications, religious and medical objections, or simply personal choice. Patients under 18 face far more risk from the vaccine than from COVID-19, for example.
There have been some 17,000 deaths attributable to the vaccine for all ages — many believe the numbers are much higher, even as much as 150,000 — along with other serious complications such as thromboembolic phenomena, myo-endo-pericarditis, menstrual irregularities, stroke, myocardial infarction and others.
Further, the various COVID-19 vaccines are not “vaccines” as commonly understood but gene therapy, mRNA platforms that insert themselves into our DNA. They then harness our own cellular machinery to produce the famous “spike protein” to be distributed throughout the body, eliciting the immune response, but sometimes with devastating consequences, as we have learned.
A vaccine generally takes four to six years of development before being released, and for the COVID-19 vaccine to have come out in just a few months meant bypassing the usual safeguards that serve to protect the public before a new drug or vaccine is brought to market.
Moreover, the principle of bodily integrity or bodily autonomy, the right to do what we wish with our bodies (within reason), is settled law in this country based on a number of Supreme Court decisions, including Cruzan, Griswold, Casey, Loving, Roe and others.
The right to one’s own personhood, the right to possession and control of one’s own body, free of restraint or interference, including the right to breathe freely and unmasked or the right to choose not to receive a medicine or vaccine, is as foundational as the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The right to self-govern and the freedom to choose are implied in our Constitution and, hence, constitutional rights. Beyond that, they are God-given natural rights.
There is also much discussion about the optimal treatment for COVID-19, the use of therapeutics and the questionable logic of mass vaccination, particularly using a leaky vaccine, in the face of a pandemic. Such an approach may produce a “superbug,” highly transmissible, that easily evades the uniform and less robust immunity derived from the COVID-19 vaccine.
Science evolves swiftly as new data and research arrive, even on a daily basis. What may be “science” or “truth” one day may be found incorrect and false the next. Further, the issues of COVID-19, lockdowns, school closures, masks and the vaccine itself have become heavily politicized. “Science” has been recruited in some quarters to pursue a particular political agenda; hence, it is not science so much as political science.
All of this is to raise some questions: What, exactly, is “misinformation,” who decides what it is, and who is responsible for distributing it? We may, with time, be surprised at the answers to these questions. Perhaps we will find that the culprit is the large pharmaceutical companies and their allies in government, the establishment media and elsewhere.
Is this essay “misinformation”? Will my privileges and license be revoked for writing it?
This statement threatens and intimidates those who may disagree with the received wisdom of the public health and medical establishment. It silences free and open debate regarding best practices for COVID-19, including the use of the vaccine, even where there is legitimate disagreement. It chills honest discussion and sincere, worthwhile professional exchange.
It suppresses healthy skepticism and quashes dissension, critical in a free society and for the scientific enterprise. It leads to the outright censorship of earnest interlocutors who differ in their medical opinions. It represents, therefore, an attack on free speech and our First Amendment. It is an assault as well on reasonable scientific inquiry and examination.
It is, in a word, tyranny. Hence, it is unwise, unsound and unscientific. It is also unconstitutional and un-American. It is unworthy of the medical profession, the scientific process and this great nation. It should be repealed immediately.
I communicated these sentiments in writing to the president and other members of the medical staff, executive committee, executive team and board of directors. There has been no response, nor did I expect one. They have already indicted themselves with their statement. They are complicit with evil and unlikely to alter their position.
The public health and medical establishment and its allies in government and the media have done horrendous harm to the nation with 19 months of actual misinformation and disastrous policies, including lockdowns, school closures, quarantines, and mask and other mandates, none of which had any effect on the trajectory of the virus. They have inflicted enormous collateral damage on society far worse than the virus itself.
The medical establishment has refused to recommend or offer early treatment and therapeutics, sacrificing tens of thousands of lives that could have been saved. Now, it pushes a very questionable and experimental “vaccine” upon the nation, including children at little risk from the virus. It has regrettably subsumed itself in the interests of pharmaceutical companies and others.
History will judge this to be medicine’s darkest hour. It will rank among the worst of medical atrocities and genocides. What is telling and tragic is that the rot of official medicine has spread not only in its commanding institutions, but to local hospitals and medical staffs.
But a medical freedom movement that rejects such tyranny is forming.
The views expressed in this opinion article are those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by the owners of this website.