Those Doctors Calling for Spreaders of Covid Misinformation to be Punished Should be Careful What they Wish For
Many of their Claims – that the Vaccinated Couldn’t Infect Others, For Instance – Turned Out to be False
BY NIGEL WILSON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | AUGUST 24, 2023
The Journal of the American Medical Association recently published a review of alleged ‘misinformation’ about COVID-19 that physicians were responsible for, either on social media and in other news sources.
In the paper, the corresponding author, Dr. Sarah L. Goff, MD PhD, defined misinformation. She surveyed social media platforms and news sources for anything written by other physicians that fits her selected examples of both. She then proposes that physicians guilty of writing what she judges to be misinformation should be “regulated and disciplined”.
Dr. Goff and her co-authors define misinformation as “false, inaccurate or misleading information according to the best evidence available at the time” and disinformation as “having an intentionally malicious purpose”.
Dr. Goff states: “We conservatively classified inaccurate information as misinformation rather than disinformation because the intent of the propagator cannot be objectively assessed.”
Dr. Goff identified four major themes of alleged misinformation. These included: (1) vaccines were unsafe and/or ineffective; (2) masks and/or social distancing did not decrease risk for contracting COVID-19; (3) other medications for prevention or treatment were effective despite not having completed clinical trials or having been FDA approved, and (4) other misinformation.
Dr. Goff includes a brief discussion of vaccine safety and effectiveness and mask effectiveness, but does not attempt to undertake a full review of the published evidence in these areas. Instead, she seems to assume that her readers will agree that any suggestion that vaccines or masks were ineffective or unsafe are self-evidently false.
Dr. Goff states that the American Medical Association has called for disciplinary action for physicians propagating COVID-19 misinformation. She laments the fact that “few physicians appear to have faced disciplinary action” for alleged sins against Covid orthodoxy.
I am not an expert in analysis of published medical research. I don’t work in a School of Public Health like Dr. Goff. I have worked as a licensed physician in England for over 40 years as a family doctor and an occupational physician and I have over 40 years’ experience reading the medical peer review literature. I retired from full time medical practice in 2017. I have a reasonable understanding of English, maths, logic and critical thinking. I don’t pretend to have read all the published research on masks or vaccinations. However, I continue to read leading medical journals on a regular basis.
I understand the concept of truth and how hard it is to establish an absolute truth in science. I understand the enlightenment principles that any ideas can be discussed, that nobody has a veto on ideas and that it is important to doubt and test all of our ideas continually. There is no indication from her writing that Dr. Goff understands how important it is to doubt, question and test the effectiveness and safety of interventions such as vaccines and masks.
From my reading of the peer review literature, for illustration purposes, I identified the following four publications as examples of publications which should raise concerns and questions about COVID-19 vaccines and masks.
In 2019, the World Health Organisation (WHO) published a report entitled ‘Non-pharmaceutical public health measures for mitigating the risk and impact of epidemic and pandemic influenza’. The WHO concluded: “There are a number of high-quality randomised controlled trials demonstrating that personal measures (e.g. hand hygiene and face masks) have at best a small effect on transmission.”
In February 2023 a Cochrane review into the effectiveness of masks concluded: “Compared with wearing no mask in the community studies only, wearing a mask may make little to no difference in how many people caught a flu-like illness/Covid-like illness.”
A study from the Department of Infectious Diseases in Cleveland, Ohio, in December 2022 found that “the bivalent COVID-19 vaccine only offered modest effectiveness”.
A study from the University of Queensland in September 2022 concluded: “Never in vaccine history have 57 leading scientists and policy experts released a report questioning the safety and efficacy of a vaccine. They not only questioned the safety of the current COVID-19 injections but were calling for an immediate end to all vaccination. Many doctors and scientists around the world have voiced similar misgivings and warned of consequences due to long-term side effects.”
These four publications are examples which give us a legitimate reason to question the use of masks and the Covid vaccines and to look further for evidence. Are we not allowed to raise questions about these issues without being threatened with disciplinary procedures? Not to ask any questions would be lacking in curiosity in the extreme, especially for practising physicians concerned about the safety of their patients and the integrity of their advice. These publications do not prove anything conclusively, but they should not be ignored. Expressing doubt and asking questions about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines and masks is not false, inaccurate or misleading, to use the definition adopted by Dr. Goff. If questions arise in my mind, why don’t similar questions arise in the minds of Dr. Goff and her co-authors? How did Dr. Goff reach such a degree of certainty about the effectiveness of masks and vaccines against COVID-19 that she can classify any statement to the contrary as misinformation worthy of disciplining a colleague? Why does she conclude that a colleague who disagrees with her does not have the right to be heard? Why would she seek to silence those who disagree with her?
Inaccurate information which is not deliberately intended to deceive is simply inaccurate. In science and medicine there are many inaccurate statements made in good faith by researchers who are presenting their data or their theories as accurately and honestly as possible. It is important that all theories and all research data can be published, even when the data or the theory are wrong. Disciplinary action for any statement which turns out to be inaccurate or false would surely suppress a large proportion of all scientific and medical discourse. Is this what Dr. Goff wants?
It could be argued that the examples of misinformation used by Dr. Goff are themselves misinformation. To suggest that anyone who states that the Covid vaccines were unsafe and/or ineffective is guilty of misinformation is to ignore significant evidence which raises questions about the vaccines. To suggest that anyone who states that masks did not decrease risk for contracting COVID-19 is guilty of misinformation is also to ignore evidence to support this view. It could be argued that Dr. Goff is using false, inaccurate or misleading examples of misinformation in her study in order to suppress dissenting views.
Dr. Goff appears to have very little humility. She does not appear to be in any doubt that she and her co-authors are infallible in relation to masks and vaccines. She seems to think she is the ultimate arbiter of truth, and that she is immune from being regulated or disciplined for her views in the way she promotes for others. I would not propose disciplining or applying regulatory sanctions to Dr. Goff or her colleagues if her publication includes false, inaccurate or misleading statements. Instead, I would propose respectful dialogue with her to debate her proposal, offering arguments to the contrary with a view to educating her and myself.
In England, medical doctors are obliged to respect colleagues’ skills and contributions, and to treat colleagues fairly. We must create a working environment in which it is safe to ask questions and raise concerns. I believe in these principles. Failure to adhere to these standards can lead to disciplinary action against medical doctors. I understand that similar professional obligations apply to medical doctors in the United States. Dr. Goff does not appear to respect the skills and contributions of colleagues who disagree with her. She seems to be promoting a working environment in which it is not safe for those who disagree with whatever the orthodoxy within the medical profession is at any one time to ask questions and raise concerns. Does she not realise that this may make it unsafe for her to raise concerns and ask questions in due course?
Dr. Goff acknowledges in her final sentence that “a coordinated response by federal and state governments and the profession that takes free speech carefully into account is needed”. This tiny nod towards free speech is somewhat undermined by her attempts to censor her colleagues’ right to disagree with her. Free speech is nothing if it is not accorded to those with whom we disagree.
Frederick Douglass, the American social reformer said: “To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.” If Dr. Goff persuades those in power to regulate or discipline those who disagree with her, then their right to free speech is violated and our right to hear them is violated. Does Dr. Goff not have a glimmer of doubt about her omniscience? Does she not think there is even a faint possibility that physicians who disagree with her might have something useful to say?
Why do some physicians think that the best response when another physician disagrees with them is to censor their colleague? How could any physicians achieve such unshakeable certainty in their own omniscience? When did they forget the fundamental principles of the enlightenment, that all ideas can be discussed and that nobody has a veto on any ideas? How did the principles of treating colleagues with respect and upholding the free speech of those with whom we disagree become so degraded?
Dr. Goff and her co-authors should be careful what they wish for. They seek to discipline colleagues for daring to disagree with their orthodoxy. If they succeed, the cancel police may be coming for them next.
Dr. Nigel Wilson MRCGP FFOM is a retired consultant occupational physician.
The American Board of Internal Medicine’s Longstanding War On Doctors Is Escalating
The ABIM’s history proves their present actions are political/financial and not scientific. They are making examples of us “dissenters” to scare the rest of the country’s docs to keep quiet.
BY PIERRE KORY, MD, MPA | AUGUST 23, 2023
The unholy alliance of industry captured high-impact medical journals, federal public health agencies, professional societies (ABIM, AMA, APHa etc), and most importantly, the state medical licensing boards directed by the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) are still going hard after us “dissenting” doctors. You know, those of us that very publicly called out the unscientific policies implemented by corrupted policymakers in a directed pursuit of profits and power. Their actions trying to silence us (and to scare other doctors from speaking out) are escalating.
Recently, what I call the “misinformation committee” of the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) voted to strip Professor Paul Marik and myself of our Board certifications. To best understand why they would do this, I think it is important to review what the ABIM is, how it operates, and then detail their absurd attempt to paint us as misinformationists by using disinformation.
Let’s trace my current relationship with the ABIM to today:
At the end of my training, I became Board Certified by the ABIM in three specialties (Internal Medicine, Pulmonary Diseases, and Critical Care Medicine).
What is the ABIM? Well, from this devastating article by Kurt Eichenwald, an accomplished corporate investigative journalist who did a devastating takedown of the ABIM and its officers in a Newsweek piece in 2015:
The ABIM is a purported nonprofit that certifies new physicians as meeting standards of practice. Beginning in the early 1990s, the ABIM ordered certified doctors to be recertified, again and again. Without the ABIM seal of approval, lots of internists and subspecialists can’t get jobs and can’t admit patients to hospitals. So by taking advantage of that monopolistic power, the ABIM has forced hundreds of thousands of physicians to follow recertification processes that doctors complain cost them tons of money (paid to the ABIM), require tons of time (taken from families and medical practices) and accomplish nothing.
In many doctor’s opinion, this cash grab of the ABIM by selling “certifications” is a corrupt farce. There is no evidence that certifying doctors in this highly costly way does anything to improve the quality of care delivered. The ABIM has not only refused to produce data showing the program improves patient care but also hasn’t conducted any studies on that matter. In fact, the ABIM and its related organizations are:
harming American medicine and diminishing the quality of scientific research, pushing physicians to close practices rather than wasting time on expensive and frustrating busywork, and forcing specialists to play a game of medical trivial pursuit. (Even Baron has admitted that he was tested for recertification on topics he never used in his practice.)
But it sure does generate cash for ABIM executives. Note that Board Certification used to simply be a sort of “honor” denoting that the member passed a more rigorous examination in their specialty. That “honor” comes at a price though:
Since I am (was?) Board certified in 3 specialties, lets do some math as this is what it costs me to re-certify every ten years:
$1,430 for Internal Medicine
$2,325 for Pulmonary Diseases
$2,325 for Critical Care Medicine
But wait, we are not done yet. These bastards were not making enough money with once-every-ten-year recertification exam fees, so they invented a new program of annual busywork education requirements which they called Maintenance of Certification (MOC) which costs you $220 every year for every certification (plus late fees if you forget). To wit, I went into my patient portal and discovered. I owe them $480 for each of my certifications!
And get this – that money essentially goes to ABIM executive salaries and pensions and other dubious private investments as described by Eichenwald where he details the insane lengths the ABIM goes to “hide” the compensation and pension data on its executives. What is worse is that ABIM certification has now been made a requirement of employment as a faculty member of academic medical centers and hospitals and is also a requirement to be on many insurance company panels (these actions further strengthen the control of doctor behavior).
Doctors have started publicly slamming the group in industry publications. “ABIM is imposing on us an onerous and ill-conceived tool, one that most physicians agree is irrelevant,” Dr. Karmela Chan wrote in Internal Medicine News. “I am glad this conversation is happening, because, frankly, the process was enough to make me want to quit being a doctor.” Further, in a recent poll of 2,211 physicians conducted on a doctors-only website called Sermo, 97 percent of the respondents criticized recertification.
Richard J. Baron, the ABIM CEO that sent letters threatening decertification to me and Paul, makes close to a million dollars a year, however that data is almost impossible to find due to the ABIM’s multiple attempts to obscure it as well as its spokespeople avoiding answering any inquiries on the topic. Here is a summary of Eichenwalds findings on the ABIM:
- In 2015, they were 5 months late in filing their publicly available financial report with the IRS (that several journalists were very interested in).
- The report is full of obfuscations and anomalies of reporting of not only the actual money earned by the executives, and particularly Baron, but his financial conflicts of interest are even better hidden.
- A big percentage of the ABIM’s millions was in the form of cash to one former employee.
- The ABIM in 2013 had 57 million against liabilities of 105 million – while Baron was going around saying that its assets are three times its liabilities (this was a 100% lie. When I get to the ABIM’s response to our defense letter, remember that what liars do is.. lie).
- It lost $4.8 million on $55.5 million in revenues, no small feat and almost entirely due to a bloated payroll.
- It also claims it spends no money on lobbying while it spent between 100K to 160K annually to lobby Congress on Medicare and Medicaid (another lie).
- The data on top officers compensation is so obscured and fragmented, Eichenwald reported that he had found it much easier to discover executive compensation at Enron, Worldcom and Adelphia – all famous for lying on tax filings. Again no small feat (to be one of the top corporate liars in the U.S).
- Officers “double dip” – former CEO Christine Cassel got $741K from ABIM and $247K from the ABIM “Foundation” (slush fund for ABIM officials) and also got $219K in “other compensation” – totaling $1.2 million for one year. (Nice gig if you can get it).
- But wait, we are not done. Cassel also got $504K in “deferred compensation” for a total of $1.71 million more that year (six times the median compensation for similar sized non-profits). Six times.
Then there is this doozy of an article which came out this week in The Defender by Children’s Health Defense, detailing the ABIM CEO Richard Baron’s conflicts of interest:
Some of the most disturbing reveals:
“The head of a national medical organization who publicly called for doctors to lose their licenses unless they supported government narratives on COVID-19 treatments and vaccines concealed his relationship with a public relations firm whose client list also included Pfizer, Moderna and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Dr. Richard Baron, president and CEO of the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) is a client of Weber Shandwick, investigative journalist Paul D. Thacker reported on Wednesday.
Note that I went after Weber Shandwick in my book, “The War on Ivermectin” where I argue (without proof, although I believe that is coming because I know of a subpoena coming their way) that they created and launched the “Horse Dewormer PR campaign,” highlights of which was the famous FDA tweet and absurd Rolling Stone article:
In late 2021, Baron publicly pushed for doctors who spread “misinformation” about COVID-19 and the vaccines to lose their license and certification.
Last year, Baron partnered with Weber Shandwick to propose a South by Southwest (SXSW) panel titled “When Doctors Prescribe Misinformation.” The proposal was subsequently accepted and the panel took place at SXSW in Austin, Texas, on March 13.
According to Thacker, “Weber Shandwick’s panel featuring Dr. Baron has been widely promoted by the PR firm’s employees,” including Sarah Mahoney, executive vice president, Healthcare Communications, Strategy & Planning for Weber Shandwick, who in a LinkedIn post, wrote she “can’t think of a more important topic right now.”
Although to the unawake the following may seem normal public health practice, but to those of us fighting agency capture by Big Pharma, it is absurd:
The CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD) in September 2020 awarded Weber a $50 million contract “to promote the vaccination of children, pregnant women and those at risk for flu and increase the general acceptance and use of vaccines,” according to the PR firm’s website.
Thacker said he believes much of what is labeled “misinformation” in medicine and academic research “is really just corporate PR,” and that “Congress needs to take a harder look at funding for ‘misinformation research.’“
Speaking of taking a harder look at where the funding is coming from for “misinformation research” and the ABIM, it turns out that.. we can’t. Why? Check out this tweet showing a clause inserted into the ABIM’s by-laws in 1998:
But wait, it gets better, like way better. Also in their by-laws:
Information that is disclosed will be kept confidential except to the:
-
- President and Chair of the Board;
- The chairs of the relevant Subspecialty Boards, Test-Writing Committees, and other Committees of the Board, members who serve on the relevant Boards and Committees, and staff working with the respective committees;
- The Conflict of Interest Committee members and Conflict of Interest Committee staff,
except as required for the purposes of continuing medical education.
So, basically, they can take money from any corporate entity and do not have to disclose it to anyone. Again, nice gig if you can get it.
Back to the ABIM’s history: One of Eichenwalds more disturbing observations about the behavior of the ABIM:
I can attest to the ABIM’s pomposity. Starting with my first story about the ABIM, the organization usually has refused to acknowledge I even asked a question. The only other group to do that in my 30-year journalism career was a company that processed payments for child pornography websites. Plus, when I reported on the uprising by doctors, the ABIM ignored the facts and instead investigated me.
Now lets fast forward to Covid. On July 29, 2021, the FSMB (this entity controls the state medical licensing boards, not the ABIM – at least on paper) issued a policy statement that “Physicians who generate and spread COVID-19 vaccine misinformation or disinformation are risking disciplinary action by state medical boards, including the suspension or revocation of their medical license.”
What is interesting is how fast and how rigidly the ABIM followed the FSMB’s lead and enacted their own misinformation policy despite the fact that, as my colleague Meryl Nass has pointed out:
“suddenly claiming that using licensed drugs for COVID, criticizing federal policies for COVID or criticizing the value of COVID vaccines is unprofessional” gives the specialty board the right to revoke a certification—well, that was never part of its contract with me. So pulling my certification for issues that were never specified in the original contract is breach of contract.
I think it would only be a breach if contracts, like our Constitution and the practice of medical ethics, were still “a thing.”
The ABIM apparently liked the FSMB’s “misinformation policy” idea to attack dissenting doctors so much (or were told to like it) that 2 months later, they, along with their colleagues at the American Board of Pediatrics and the American Board of Family Medicine, issued a statement supporting the FSMB’s position, saying, “We all look to board certified physicians to provide outstanding care and guidance; providing misinformation about a lethal disease is unethical, unprofessional and dangerous.” (note that they seem particularly focused on Covid misinformation and not any other disease model or therapeutics. Do you think it could be because Covid vaccines and therapeutics opened immensely profitable markets to Pharma overnight?).
Again from Meryl Nass (please subscribe to her Substack):
Furthermore, the processes the ABIM is using, as described by CEO Richard Baron, MD in his podcast with the New England Journal of Medicine are procedurally unfair. Dr. Baron earns $1 million/year to threaten doctors for a crime that does not exist. Baron, notably, refused to specify where the line was between misinformation and genuine disagreement in that podcast, though he seems to have no difficulty at all drawing the line when it comes to licensees who speak publicly about how to manage COVID. In a truly Orwellian effort, the ABIM and the ABIM Foundation have dedicated the year to ‘building trust’ in medicine.”
In what I suspect was the ABIM’s first enforcement of their shiny new policy, they go after Peter McCullough, Paul Marik, and myself on the same day (May 26, 2022) with a letter quoting numerous public statements we made, implying that we needed to defend the substance of such statements with supporting data or risk losing our certifications.
“Game on” I thought, looking forward to the exercise of “debating” scientific data with the ABIM. However, our FLCCC lawyer, Alan Dumoff pointed out that the ABIM’s policy and procedures state that the process of accusing a member of misinformation requires that they first provide evidence to us that what we said was inaccurate. So, we wrote back, pointing out to the ABIM their brazen “error” (yeah right) in not complying with their own policy and procedures.
“Nonsense” they wrote back (in short). Their logic was truly shocking – they say that the fact they provided the substance and references to my public statements means they did their duty (rather than their providing references that would refute my statements which is what their policy states they need to do).
You can read their brazen, illegitimate, dismissive response here:
This letter above demonstrates the unchecked power they have – they alone determine whether they are following their own policy which they so clearly were not. What did I say about liars before?
Anyway, rebut them we did. We wrote a 76 page treatise with 175 references, 11 exhibits, and 22,000 words, marshaling and weaving numerous data sources to support all our public statements that they had a problem with. May it enter the historical record here (I think you Covid vaccine and ivermectin data geeks will find the letter impressive).
We sent that letter over 6 months ago… and finally got an answer a few weeks ago. To understand the misinformation committee’s response, note this statement from an editorial written by Baron where he tries to give examples of misinformation:
A whole range of statements with which many — or even most —physicians might disagree would therefore not trigger our disciplinary process. On the other hand, when someone certified by the ABIM says something like “the origin of all coronary heart disease is a clearly reversible arterial scurvy” or “children can’t spread Covid” or “vaccines don’t prevent Covid deaths or hospitalizations,” we are not dealing with valid professional disagreement; we are dealing with wrong answers.
That last sentence is critical as Baron literally is saying that the ABIM gets to determine what is a valid professional disagreement versus a “wrong answer.” Good to know, especially in regards to the fact that the narrative that “vaccines prevent Covid deaths or hospitalizations” was strongly refuted in our initial response letter.
This issue about drawing a line between misinformation and genuine disagreement is a critical one. From our letter of appeal written by our lawyer Alan Dumoff:
Threshold Issue: What Standard Distinguishes Legitimate Differences of Professional Opinion and Misinformation
We disagree with the Committee’ s interpretation of the data, which we address below, but the initial question is by what standard the American Board of Internal Medicine (“ABIM” or “Board”) evaluates evidence to determine that disagreement with consensus generally, and regarding controversial matters around COVID-19 policy specifically, rise to the level of actionable misinformation. The Board’s policy recognizes the right to legitimate debate, which requires it not merely show evidence supporting a consensus view but that it demonstrate that these professional disagreements are not legitimate but outright misinformation.
If not grounded in an articulated standard, at the very least, the Board must demonstrate that the views at issue are false by citing the fallacies in the actual substance of the evidence provided, not simply by critiquing a few isolated studies divorced from the totality of evidence. Resting solely upon citations to mainstream publications while substantially avoiding the evidence in our Submission, and our detailed critiques of these publications does not provide a basis for the Board to take action against my clients.
A diplomate’s medical positions must be plainly erroneous to merit sanction. Departure from consensus is hardly unusual and by itself insufficient. While the Sanctions Notice gives the appearance of having done so, the Committee did not directly engage the numerous imperfections in the mainstream approach Drs. Kory and Marik’s have pointed to in substantial detail. The Committee has not engaged the evidence submitted and demonstrated it is illegitimate, only that it departs from the consensus, that is insufficient to support a sanction.
The point is that the ABIM appears absurdly obsessed with getting doctors to spout only consensus opinions. This is literally unprecedented in science. From Michael Chrichton the author:
I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had. Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.
I love that last line so much it bears repeating, “If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.”
Now, let’s look at their response to our 76 page letter teeming with supportive data for our statements. Can read their letter in its entirety here but I thought I would just pull the most illustrative sections:
… the CCC (i.e. misinformation committee) concluded that your statements about the purported dangers of, or lack of justification for, COVID-19 vaccines are false and inaccurate because they, too, are not supported by factual, scientifically grounded, and consensus driven scientific evidence. In fact, the overwhelming body of factual, scientifically grounded, and consensus-driven evidence – at and since the time you made those statements – shows that the COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective for children and for adults
I have heard of the term “evidence-based medicine (EBM)” which is what I practice, but not “consensus driven science” (completely new invention – pernicious indeed. I Actually adhere to the original definition and conceptual framework envisioned by the founders of evidence based medicine which was incredibly well detailed in a by my friend “A Midwestern Doctor” in his brilliant recent post “What Happens To Doctors Who Innovate”.
Anyway, they then listed a few published, peer-reviewed papers supporting their point, blissfully un-acknowledging of the fact that the high-impact journals have been systematically censoring pretty much all negative analyses of the vaccine campaign’s impacts while publishing nothing but positive reports with cherry-picked and/or fraudulent data – so there is no way for the truth about vaccines to win in scientific debates my friends.
The high-impact journal censoring of adverse vaccine data is identical to their censoring of dozens of positive trials of ivermectin, something I extensively detail in the chapter called “The Journal Rejections of Positive Ivermectin Studies” in my book.
It gets even better – they next argue against my claims of lack of safety of the vaccines by, get this, referencing proclamations by the WHO and CDC. They ignore all the immense data to the contrary that I submitted while of course being willfully oblivious to the fact that the CDC and WHO are fully Pharma captured agencies:
Moreover, the vaccine safety data overwhelmingly (overwhelmingly?) contradicts your statements about vaccine risks. See, e.g., Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Safety of COVID-19 Vaccines,” https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/safety-of-vaccines.html (updated March 7, 2023) (reporting that “Adverse Events (Serious Safety Problems) Are Rare,” and that “[t]he benefits of COVID-19 vaccination outweigh the known and potential risks”); World Health Organization, “Safety of COVID-19 Vaccines,” https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/safety-of-covid-19-vaccines (March 31, 2021) (stating that “[b]illions of people have been safely vaccinated against COVID-19,” that “mRNA vaccines [for COVID-19] have been rigorously assessed for safety, and clinical trials have shown that they provide a long-lasting immune response”).
The paragraph above should enter the historical record… somewhere. That will NOT age well. The only thing more absurd to contemplate is whether they know they are lying in their letter or if they are simply referencing propaganda that they themselves swallowed whole? In a way, the former might be more acceptable to me at this point.
Their opinion on how I got ivermectin wrong was similarly brazen – they ignored all the meta-analyses (historically considered the strongest form of data, a fact they seem to have willfully avoided) in favor of listing a handful of trials where ivermectin was supposedly found ineffective, relying mostly on citing “the Big 6” (what I named the chapter describing the fraud behind the 6 largest, Pharma-conflicted and most publicized trials on ivermectin). This was 100% unsurprising.
Check it out:
First, the CCC concluded that your statements about the safety and efficacy of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine as treatments for COVID-19 are false and inaccurate because they are not supported by factual, scientifically grounded, and consensus driven scientific evidence (there it is again).
Susanna Naggie, M.D., M.H.S., et al., “Effect of Ivermectin vs Placebo on Time to Sustained Recovery in Outpatients With Mild to Moderate COVID-19,” 328 JAMA 1721 (2022), https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2115869 (finding in a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled study with 1,800 participants that “[a]mong outpatients with mild to moderate COVID-19, treatment with ivermectin, compared with placebo, did not significantly improve time to recovery,” and that “[t]hese findings do not support the use of ivermectin in patients with mild to moderate COVID-19”);
I laughed out loud when they led their argument with the Naggie trial funded by the NIH as it contained the most brazen fraud of the Big 6 Pharma Ivermectin trials. All you need to know about the trial is that they moved the primary comparison endpoint of the trial.. in the middle of the trial. They moved the main comparison from symptoms at Day 14 to Day 28. Note that changing endpoints in the middle of a trial is a supposed never event. Except the same trick was pulled in the Remdesivir trial.
Anyway, in a presentation by Naggie, in this secondary endpoint, you can see that ivermectin was superior at Day 14 to a high degree of Bayesian “statistical significance” but the “statistical significance” was not reached at Day 28 (I use quotes around statistical significance because it is an erroneous concept when doing Bayesian statistics but that is what they did anyway when they pre-specified a threshold of above 0.95 as “significant”). Can anyone tell me why they moved the endpoint to Day 28 in the middle of the trial:
With this brazen maneuver (and many others) it allowed Naggie et al to publish this conclusion: “these findings do not support the use of ivermectin in patients with mild to moderate COVID-19.” Not-so-fun fact: Naggie also sat on the NIH covid treatment guidelines committee where she voted to not recommend ivermectin right before she and her University received tens of millions.. to study ivermectin in Covid. You want more? She also owns stock in a competitor to ivermectin (monoclonal antibodies for Omicron) and has received money from numerous other Big Pharma companies including Gilead. Lets get back to the letter…
Rather, the CCC seeks to accomplish precisely what you assert ABIM should be doing: seeking to “further the professional integrity of medicine by encouraging evidence-based debate” (emphasis added).
Indeed, as set forth in ABIM’s False or Inaccurate Medical Information policy, physicians have an ethical and professional responsibility to provide factual, scientifically grounded, and consensus driven scientific evidence (there it is again). As discussed above, by touting the effectiveness of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine as COVID-19 treatments and casting doubt on the efficacy and safety of COVID-19 vaccines with such seemingly authoritative statements, you have made statements that are inimical to ABIM’s ethics and professionalism standards for board certification.
In light of all the evidence and circumstances, the CCC determined to recommend that your board certification be revoked.
There is only one silver lining here. One – the impending loss of my certifications does not affect me materially because I have a private fee-based practice due to my need for complete autonomy and lack of restrictions in empirically treating the vaccine injured with various repurposed and alternative therapeutics. I thus cannot and will not accept insurance, and secondly, my academic career is over – no longer will I ever enter back into the system of medicine.
About the only opportunity this whole attack has created is one where I get to defend myself on appeal in a debate with three academic white coats of their choosing. Bring. It. On.
Although the outcome of the debate is assuredly pre-determined, I know it will satisfy a deep yearning many of us dissidents have had for going on 3 years now – to debate someone, anyone, anywhere. Crush them with data. Make ‘em look silly although I will be the only one who knows it happened. It will let me vent my disgust at how they have widely disseminated corrupted scientific evidence and policies while simultaneously ignoring the clinical observations and expertise of frontline doctors who have treated thousands of actual Covid patients.
I will then toss in a little lecture about how RCT’s have long ceased to be a credible means of proving anything in science given that in modern medicine only “Big RCT’s” count and that all “Big RCT’s” require such massive funding that the bias of the funders outweighs any objectivity such trials can profess to attain. I will also remind them that throughout modern medical history, the findings of RCT’s and retrospective observational trials are identical, yet academia has been taught to systematically ignore observational trials. Reason: only massively funded entities can conduct a “Big RCT” while any committed clinician willing to give up nights and weekends can conduct an observational trial. Pharma cannot allow research to be conducted that they have no control over – so they took over the journals and medical school curriculums which now literally teach that observational controlled trials can only be considered “hypothesis generating” and thus their results should not be acted on. Nonsense.
I will also remind them that they are violating international law and human, civil, and political rights as argued by Meryl Nass in another of her excellent posts regarding her own persecution by her state licensing Board:
International law is on our side. A total of 172 countries are parties to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights:
According to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19,
“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
According to the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,
“Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.”
And the Nebraska Attorney General protected doctors and pharmacists in Nebraska from their Boards, explicitly allowing them to prescribe HCQ and IVM. His opinion is a tour de force, which goes into detail about why the CDC, FDA and NIH guidelines are contradictory, unscientific and should not be followed. It should be cited in every case.
I also plan on reminding them that the FDA got its ass handed to them in court last week during a hearing of Paul Marik, Mary Tally Bowden and Robert Apter’s suit against the FDA. From an Epoch Times article on the hearing:
“FDA explicitly recognizes that doctors do have the authority to prescribe ivermectin to treat COVID,” Ashley Cheung Honold, a Department of Justice lawyer representing the FDA, said during oral arguments on Aug. 8 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit.
The statements “don’t prohibit doctors from prescribing ivermectin to treat COVID or for any other purpose” Ms. Honold said.
“FDA is clearly acknowledging that doctors have the authority to prescribe human ivermectin to treat COVID. So they are not interfering with the authority of doctors to prescribe drugs or to practice medicine,” she said.
So, if the FDA recognizes we have the authority to prescribe ivermectin, then assuredly we are allowed to have the opinion that it is a valid therapy. However, the ABIM will not allow an ABIM certified physician to publicly express this opinion or recommend this practice. Maybe the ABIM should have a little chat with the FDA?
The nonsense doesn’t end with the ABIM, as they are only one prong of this campaign. How is this for some comic relief, published last week in one of the top journals in the world where they found that almost all the Covid misinformation in the U.S on social media can be traced to 52 doctors.
I was honored to discover that yours truly made the list! In their quoted examples of misinformation in Table 4, I have taken the liberty of owning up to the posts attributed to me, all of which I stand by to this day:
I think I will finish with this excerpt from a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed touching on the Missouri vs. Biden case where the administration is being sued for its systematic censoring of U.S citizens on social media by every intelligence and health agency in our Federal government :
This is where the decision of U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty sheds light. His detailed recounting shows a Washington energetic in protecting Americans from Covid opinions, expertise and claims that conflicted with its own, at a time when it served politicians to show they were trying to save Americans from encountering a virus that couldn’t be avoided. When government has a message to deliver, especially when the political stakes are high, it won’t be content just to push its own message, it will try to silence others. Fighting back will always be necessary. The only surprise in our age is how thoroughly the “liberal” position has become the pro-censorship position (that last line is a doozy).
German Courts Are Going FULL Dystopia
OffGuardian | August 23, 2023
It’s been an astonishing couple of days for German judges. Well, “astonishing” if you’ve been living in a cave for the last four years.
Many of you likely already know that satirist and playwright (and frequent OffG contributor) CJ Hopkins is being prosecuted in Germany for “disseminating propaganda, the contents of which are intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist organization,”
All because the cover of his book has a swastika on it.
Needless to say, the charges are absurd. Insultingly so. You can read CJ’s first-hand account of this nonsense here and here.
Anyone who isn’t a) stupid or b) delusional can plainly see these charges have nothing to do with a stock-image swastika, and everything to do with the content of the book. In short, they are politically motivated charges brought against an author for criticizing the state. The very essence of dystopian tyranny.
… and yesterday he was convicted.
He now faces 60 days in prison or a 3600 Euro fine.
That’s case one, and as we say one you are likely familiar with if you’re regular readers.
Something you probably haven’t heard is that, just this morning, a different German court sentenced a former judge to two years in prison.
His crime? Ruling that mask mandates in schools were not constitutional.
The case dates back to April 8th 2021, when Weimar District Family Court judge Christiaan Dettmar ruled that two schools in the district a) could not enforce mask mandates, b) must continue in-person classes and c) could not force pupils to test for “Covid”.
From Human Rights Blog :
The court case was a child protection case under to § 1666 paragraph 1 and 4 of the German Civil Code (BGB), which a mother had initiated for her two sons, aged 14 and 8 respectively, at the local Family Court. She had argued that her children were being physically, psychologically and pedagogically damaged without any benefit for the children or third parties. At the same time, she claimed this constituted a violation of a range of rights of the children and their parents under the law, the German constitution (Grundgesetz or Basic Law) and international conventions.
After listening to testimony from expert witnesses, the judge ruled in favour of the mother, writing in his verdict:
These are the risks [to mask mandates]. The children are not only endangered in their mental, physical and psychological well-being by the obligation to wear face masks during school hours and to keep their distance from each other and from other persons, but they are also already being harmed. At the same time, this violates numerous rights of the children and their parents under the law, the constitution and international conventions.
Two weeks after handing down this ruling, his home and office were raided by the police and his mobile phone was seized.
And now, two years later, he was found guilty of “judicial misconduct” and initially given two years in prison (the court has since suspended the sentence). “Judicial Misconduct”, for simply disagreeing with the government.
Free speech is the first and most vital liberty, without it no one is truly free. An independent judiciary is a must to preserve any kind of justice, judges who simply nod along with government edicts are the building blocks of authoritarian states.
The voice of the people and the power of the courts – ideally – work together to hold the government to account.
And yet, whether in the judiciary or the arts, the German legal system is now a machine for criminalizing and punishing dissent of any kind.
… I’d make a comparison to another German government that used to function in a similar way, but I really can’t afford a 4000 euro fine.
Feds want to make it easier to identify independent doctors
They want to obtain the National Practitioner Data Bank
BY MERYL NASS | AUGUST 22, 2023
Do the feds want to be ready to censor or even round up doctors who may oppose their next round of heavy-handed “public health” measures?
Need and Proposed Use of the Information: The NPDB acts primarily
as a flagging system; its principal purpose is to facilitate
comprehensive review of practitioners' professional credentials and
background. Information is collected from, and disseminated to,
eligible entities (entities that are entitled to query and/or report to
the NPDB as authorized in Title 45 CFR part 60 of the Code of Federal
Regulations) on the following: (1) medical malpractice payments, (2)
licensure actions taken by Boards of Medical Examiners, (3) state
licensure and certification actions, (4) federal licensure and
certification actions, (5) negative actions or findings taken by peer
review organizations or private accreditation entities, (6) adverse
actions taken against clinical privileges, (7) federal or state
criminal convictions related to the delivery of a health care item or
service, (8) civil judgments related to the delivery of a health care
item or service, (9) exclusions from participation in federal or state
health care programs, and (10) other adjudicated actions or decisions.
It is intended for NPDB information to be considered with other
relevant information in evaluating credentials of health care
practitioners, providers, and suppliers.
Likely Respondents: Eligible entities or individuals that are
entitled to query and/or report to the NPDB as authorized in
regulations found at 45 CFR part 60.I have a black mark in the NPDB despite lack of a completed hearing — the demand for a psych evaluation and temp suspension gave me the black mark.
Meta Pays Supposedly Independent Australian “Fact-Checkers” 800 Dollars Per Fact-Check
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | August 21, 2023
Those who doubt that “fact-checking” is an industry created around the push for internet censorship that’s been going on these last years might be persuaded otherwise by information that emerged from a lawsuit.
The lawsuit was filed by Australia-based reporter and commentator Avi Yemini, and it reveals the amount of money changing hands between Facebook (Meta) and its notorious “fact-checkers” whose purpose is supposed to be weeding out “misinformation.” And who are supposed to be “independent.”
However, these efforts disturbingly often end up in plain censorship of “disfavored” opinion on political and social issues.
And even though Yemini eventually had to withdraw his lawsuit in order to avoid costs he was unwilling or unable to pay, the legal process while it was ongoing produced some interesting findings, including the true nature of some of the “fact-checkers’” purported financial independence from Big Tech.
According to a deal cited in the court documents, the figure went up to half a million dollars annually – and that’s involving just one “fact checking” operation, RMIT University’s FactLab, also based in Australia.
The agreement was kept confidential, but surfaced in Yemini’s defamation suit naming RMIT FactLab as the plaintiff. Yemini claimed that this group subjected one of his reports to a false “fact-check.”
But, whether that’s true or false, RMIT lab was given 800 Australian dollars per “check,” up to 40,000 per month – with the contract stipulating that RMIT would run up to 50 articles through its “fact-checking machine” each month.
The issue that this discovery sheds light on is the nature of these arrangements – namely, “independent fact-checkers” seem to be very much involved in commercial dealings with social media giants, which has the inherent potential to sway the results of their work in a desired direction.
At the same time, given the reach and influence of the huge platforms where content is “arranged” in a certain way thanks, among other things, to the work of these organizations, this means that public opinion could be unfairly influenced through biased information.
RMIT University, which is behind RMIT FactLab, maintains that the group is in fact independent and that the money comes from “philanthropic donations and independent research grants.”
The UN is Building a “Digital Army” To Fight What it Calls “Deadly Disinformation”
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | August 21, 2023
The UN is tripling down on its role as an important global player in the “fight against online misinformation” and amplification of the narrative of a supposedly serious threat this allegedly new phenomenon brings to humankind.
Thus UN peacekeepers are adding another task to the duties the member-states fund when they approve their missions meant to help people and countries devastated by war and other disasters: they are now also “building a digital army.”
And according to a writeup on the UN website, “misinformation” is viewed by the world organization in exceedingly alarmist terms as, “deadly,” and posing “existential” risk to such core building blocks of modern societies as democratic institutions and fundamental human rights.
They really do make that connection, verbatim. And they now use the term “war” and “battlefield” to describe (mis)information and other goings on in the media, too.
We’ve heard this before, of course, from the Biden administration regarding the Covid vaccines/pandemic – but the identical wording may or may not be a coincidence.
In order to justify as much as it can this considerable shift in policy and focus from UN’s traditional operations and purpose, the UN article doesn’t talk only about things like undermining epidemic(s)-containing efforts, protecting scientific truths and facts (and, as recent experience has shown, “facts” as well ), and the like.
To prop up the argument, it is claimed that the peacekeeping work itself, and the safety and lives of peacekeepers are also falling victim to “large scale misinformation.”
The UN’s solutions: effectively testing “proactive” approaches to the problem they defined, and doing this in a number of war-torn African countries.
Leading the charge seems to be the UN mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, known as MONUSCO (a French-language acronym).
Then there’s something called the UN Verified initiative, which offers a course free of charge that is supposed to “educate” people in these physically dangerous places on how to keep themselves safe from – online “misinformation.”
This effort expands on several basic topics, including how to recognize “disinformation,” and the UN will also tell you why it is being spread.
Another one is to be able to discern emotional, dramatic, and provocative content (some might say the article from the UN site referenced here might easily qualify.)
London City Hall Tries to Put Pressure on Scientists Who Doubted Climate Policy – Report
Sputnik – 20.08.2023
London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s office tried to “silence” scientists who called into question the effectiveness of the ultra-low emissions zone (Ulez) policy promoted by the head of the city, The Telegraph reported on Saturday.
Shirley Rodrigues, the London Mayor’s deputy for environment and energy, told in emails to Imperial College London professor Frank Kelly that she was “really disappointed” by scientists publishing results that cast doubt on the effectiveness of Ulez, the newspaper reported, adding that the corresponding complaint was sent in November 2021.
In particular, Rodrigues said that she was “deeply concerned” about the damage done to the credibility of the Mayor’s office and Ulez. In response, Kelly promised to write a Ulez-friendly report, the report added.
The report stated that since 2021, Kelly’s research group has received over 800,000 pounds ($1.018 million) from the mayor’s office. However, the publication by scientists led to a cooling in their relations with the London city hall. This, in turn, caused the reluctance of representatives of the scientific community to write any new materials about Ulez, the newspaper noted.
The Ulez initiative was first announced by then-Mayor of London Boris Johnson in 2015. Later, Khan launched an initiative that included, among other things, the installation of special traffic signs and cameras. Since 2020, the London authorities have had to spend over 850,000 pounds to rebuild infrastructure for the initiative, which has been repeatedly damaged by vandals.
Critics Slam JAMA Study Claiming 52 U.S. Doctors Spread COVID ‘Misinformation’
By Monica Dutcher | The Defender | August 18, 2023
Critics of a study published this week in JAMA concluding 52 doctors from across the U.S., propagated “COVID-19 misinformation about vaccines, treatments, and masks on large social media and other online platforms” called the study nothing more than “propaganda.”
“Ultimately, misinformation is just a weaponized term meaning nothing,” said Vinay Prasad, M.D., MPH. “People who use it are often completely ignorant of science and truth.
Prasad and others pointed to several flaws in the study, including the researchers’ definition of “misinformation,” the reported percentage of those with post-COVID-19 condition, or “long COVID” and the false claim that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine alone led to deaths — as deaths also have been linked to the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines.
The CDC as the arbiter of COVID truths
The University of Massachusetts researchers who produced the study defined misinformation as “assertions unsupported by or contradicting U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] guidance on COVID-19 prevention and treatment during the period assessed or contradicting the existing state of scientific evidence for any topics not covered by the CDC.”
But in an Aug. 16 Substack article, Prasad — a hematologist-oncologist and professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco — challenged the notion of using the CDC as the litmus test for pandemic-related information.
CDC “made many errors,” Prasad wrote, citing a paper he published in March, documenting 25 statistical or numerical errors made by the CDC that he said raised questions about the agency’s “real or perceived systematic bias.”
It’s also well documented that the agency constantly changed its mask guidance and published conflicting information about vaccine effectiveness.
Dominique Brossard, professor and chair of Life Sciences Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who studies medical misinformation, told USA Today, “The guidance kept on changing … Communication around the vaccine was horrible.”
Dr. Jeff Barke, an Orange County, California, primary care physician and founding member of America’s Frontline Doctors, called the CDC “a captured agency,” saying “it makes no sense whatsoever to recommend this toxic product [COVID-19 vaccines] to children.”
The CDC never came out with early treatment guidelines, Barke said. It was always about vaccines and masks. Barke recalled prescribing ivermectin to his patients and the pharmacists not filling it, asking him for the “diagnostic code” in order to proceed.
Barke told The Defender :
“The pharmacy never asks for a diagnostic code if you prescribe OxyContin for a patient. So it’s OK for a doctor to prescribe a Schedule II narcotic — no questions asked — but I can’t prescribe a product that has a proven safety record of 50 or 60 years.”
Barke is a co-plaintiff in a lawsuit to stop a California law that subjects the state’s doctors to discipline, including the suspension of their medical licenses, for sharing “misinformation” or “disinformation” about COVID-19 with their patients.
What exactly is ‘misinformation’?
The study’s authors identified four categories of “misinformation”:
- Claiming vaccines were unsafe and/or ineffective.
- Promoting unapproved medications for prevention or treatment.
- Disputing mask-wearing effectiveness.
- “Other misinformation,” to include conspiracy theories and the virus’s origins.
The authors reviewed COVID-19-related posts from doctors on the social media platforms Twitter (now X), Facebook, Instagram, Parler and YouTube between January 2021 and December 2022.
The researchers initially focused their Twitter review on America’s Frontline Doctors’ profile because of the organization’s “volume of COVID-19 misinformation in its tweets” and “large following.”
Physicians who followed America’s Frontline Doctors’ Twitter page were targeted on Twitter and other platforms.
Using the search terms “COVID,” “vaccine,” “doctor,” “physician,” “ineffective,” “pharmaceutical,” “ivermectin,” “hydroxychloroquine” and others, the authors of the study identified 52 doctors — 50 licensed and two unlicensed — who used social media to spread COVID-19 “misinformation.”
Results showed most of the 52 physicians (76.9%) who posted “misinformation” did so in more than one of the four categories identified. The majority posted vaccine “misinformation.”
Dr. Meryl Nass — who on Thursday sued the Maine Board of Licensure in Medicine and its individual members, alleging the board violated her First Amendment rights and her rights under the Maine Constitution — called the JAMA study “a piece of propaganda.”
Nass said:
“There is no science. They [the authors] are trying to make it look like they’re doing something quantitative when they’re not. There was a lot known about the ineffectiveness of the vaccines at the time they were working on this paper.”
Unpacking the misinformation in the misinformation study
The University of Massachusetts researchers said doctors’ claims that myocarditis was common in children who received the vaccine and that the risks of myocarditis outweighed the risk of vaccination were “unfounded.”
But myocarditis “does outweigh the benefits of vaccinations for some ages — in men — and some doses,” said Prasad, citing an article published in the Journal of Medical Ethics.
The paper, which focused on booster mandates at American universities, concluded the mandates were unethical because they could result in greater health risks, like booster-associated myocarditis, than benefits to healthy young adults.
Several other studies have shown either myocarditis deaths across all age groups, or elevated myocardial injury after vaccination.
The researchers also flagged any posts discussing pre-pandemic studies that definitively concluded masks do not prevent the spread of respiratory viral infections. And they deemed as misinformation any post that undermined the role of masks in slowing the spread of the infection and that pointed to rising cases in areas with mask mandates.
But a plethora of studies on mask ineffectiveness emerged during the time the Massachusetts team was conducting its research on physicians and “misinformation.”
There were also reports on “The Foegen effect” — the idea that deep re-inhalation of droplets and virions caught on facemasks might make COVID-19 infection more likely or more severe. German physician Dr. Zacharias Fögen introduced the concept in a study that concluded: “mask use might pose a yet unknown threat to the user instead of protecting them, making mask mandates a debatable epidemiologic intervention.”
“The totality of the evidence to date shows no benefit from community mask wearing,” said Prasad, who pointed to Cochrane’s multiple analyses.
According to the JAMA study, doctors who said the COVID-19 vaccines were ineffective at preventing COVID-19 spread or that the virus originated in a lab in China were propagators of misinformation.
Yet plenty of data show the vaccines did not prevent transmission, and scientists even testified to evidence that COVID-19 could have resulted from controversial gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
In the wake of the pandemic, multiple organizations have published guidelines on “medical misinformation” — including YouTube and the American Medical Association (AMA).
Last June, the AMA adopted a new policy to limit medical disinformation, including ensuring that medical licensing boards can take disciplinary action against health professionals who spread health-related disinformation.
In California, however, a judge ruled in January that the state does not have the power to penalize doctors who spread “misinformation” or “disinformation.”
“COVID-19 is a quickly evolving area of science that in many aspects eludes consensus,” the judge decided.
Monica Dutcher is a Maryland-based senior reporter for The Defender.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Medical Board Chief who wanted Doctors delicensed for ‘misinformation’ in bed with PR firm tied to CDC, Pfizer, Moderna
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | August 18, 2023
The head of a national medical organization who publicly called for doctors to lose their licenses unless they supported government narratives on COVID-19 treatments and vaccines concealed his relationship with a public relations firm whose client list also included Pfizer, Moderna and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Dr. Richard Baron, president and CEO of the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) is a client of Weber Shandwick, investigative journalist Paul D. Thacker reported on Wednesday.
In late 2021, Baron publicly pushed for doctors who spread “misinformation” about COVID-19 and the vaccines to lose their license and certification. Baron said then that “putting out flagrant misinformation is unethical and dangerous during a pandemic.”
Weber, the world’s second-largest PR firm, has branded its team as “misinformation and disinformation” experts and says it provides clients with services to help manage any perceived threats posed by spreaders of such information.
The firm has organized conference panels on “medical misinformation” in which Baron participated.
Last year, Baron partnered with Weber Shandwick to propose a South by Southwest (SXSW) panel titled “When Doctors Prescribe Misinformation.” The proposal was subsequently accepted and the panel took place at SXSW in Austin, Texas, on March 13.
According to Thacker, “Weber Shandwick’s panel featuring Dr. Baron has been widely promoted by the PR firm’s employees,” including Sarah Mahoney, executive vice president, Healthcare Communications, Strategy & Planning for Weber Shandwick, who in a LinkedIn post, wrote she “can’t think of a more important topic right now.”
The CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD) in September 2020 awarded Weber a $50 million contract “to promote the vaccination of children, pregnant women and those at risk for flu and increase the general acceptance and use of vaccines,” according to the PR firm’s website.
Under the contract, Weber employees were embedded in the NCIRD to “communicate the risks and recommended actions for outbreaks and convey vaccine recommendations to healthcare providers,” according to Thacker.
Medicine has always been ‘in bed with Big Pharma’
Several doctors have faced disciplinary action by state medical boards for allegedly spreading “misinformation.” One of them is internist and biological warfare epidemiologist Dr. Meryl Nass, a member of Children Health Defense’s scientific advisory committee.
Nass on Thursday sued the Maine Board of Licensure, which suspended her license in January 2022.
The board’s suspension arose from its adoption of a position statement promulgated by the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) threatening physicians “who generate and spread COVID-19 vaccine misinformation” with suspension or revocation of their medical license.
In 2021, ABIM and FSMB collaborated to create the statement used to discipline Nass.
Nass told The Defender that in order to get certified by organizations like ABIM, there are several requirements, primarily related to demonstrating competence in one’s field of specialization, including completing a residency, being certified by the residency director, and paying for and passing the board examinations.
Nass told The Defender that in order to get certified by organizations like ABIM, there are several requirements. She explained:
“You complete a medical residency in your field of specialization. Your residency director certifies your competence and moral character, and you must pay for and pass your board examination to demonstrate your command of your specialty.
“When you’ve paid them for board certification and successfully completed all the requirements, how can they change the rules 20 or 50 years later and say, ‘we’re going to decertify you now because we don’t like your viewpoint?’
“There was nothing in any documentation from the Board of Internal Medicine about misinformation, or any other standards that the board can impose apart from competency to practice when it issued certifications.”
Dr. Richard Eggleston, a retired ophthalmologist in Clarkston, Washington, also faces disciplinary action — by the Washington Medical Commission — arising from articles he published in a local newspaper in 2021, questioning the official narrative and medical advice related to COVID-19.
Doctors aren’t being targeted exclusively for spreading “misinformation” — some, like Dr. Mary Kelly Sutton, an integrative physician, were targeted for their less-than-100% support for COVID-19 vaccines.
Last month, the Massachusetts medical board revoked Sutton’s medical license, claiming she improperly exempted eight children from required school vaccinations. This came a year after California also revoked Sutton’s medical license.
Sutton told The Defender, “The voice of medicine today is determined by the marketing wisdom of Madison Avenue, not by what is sound information from scientific research.”
Sutton said the whole practice of medicine rests on sharing and providing information necessary for informed decisions and consent. When specialty boards issue vague accusations, they engage in “harassment,” and an “egregious overreach of power” and are obstructing the practice of medicine.
A California law aimed at punishing doctors for providing “misinformation” to their patients is now in “legal limbo” following conflicting rulings in state courts earlier this year, which could affect Sutton’s and other California doctors’ cases going through the courts.
This trail of evidence demonstrates medical boards are not simply acting on their own authority but in collusion with state governments, federal agencies and private companies.
“There’s no one who is a ‘misinformation’ or ‘disinformation’ expert whose opinion does not align with the government and with the corporations,” Thacker told The Defender. “That’s what makes them an ‘expert.’”
“What’s always been true is that medicine has been in bed with Big Pharma,” he added. “It’s now becoming a lot more transparent. These relationships are much more transparent.”
‘A very political attempt to shut down people from having alternative viewpoints’
According to Thacker, Baron began his “crusade for the biopharmaceutical industry” in September 2021. In a post for ABIM’s blog, Baron said, “I want to state unequivocally that ABIM can and does take action, independent of state licensing boards, to remove certification from physicians for unprofessional and unethical behavior.”
For Thacker, Baron’s concern about “misinformation” was first triggered when physicians spoke out against COVID-19 vaccine safety, efficacy and side effects. “These are the same concerns held by Weber Shandwick, who Pfizer and Moderna are paying big buck[s] to promote their vaccines,” he said.
“Baron’s relationship with Weber Shandwick was not disclosed” by JAMA, Thacker said, “nor in an accompanying viewpoint Baron wrote for JAMA.”
After an inquiry by Thacker, JAMA’s editor-in-chief, Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, said, “We initiated our internal investigation earlier this week, in accordance with our standard processes for allegations of non-disclosure of conflicts.”
“It is notable that Baron has done his best to mislead the public and other physicians about what he is doing,” Nass said. “He claims the ABIM is trying to ‘protect the legitimacy of medical expertise’ rather than censoring viewpoints it does not like.”
Nass said Baron “conjures up examples of what the board might censure.” She pointed to a Feb. 23, 2023, New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) article Baron co-authored with attorney Carl J. Coleman, which stated:
“When a licensed physician insists that viruses don’t cause disease or that COVID-19 vaccines magnetize people or connect them to cell towers, professional bodies must be able to take action in support of fact and evidence based practice.”
“Yet this is a fabrication,” Nass said, adding:
“Instead, Dr. Baron, who earns about $1.2 million yearly from the ABIM and the ABIM Foundation, has decertified Drs. Peter McCullough, Paul Marik and Pierre Kory — all highly celebrated, published and esteemed doctors in their fields.
“None of them have uttered any mumbo-jumbo about cell towers, magnetism or a non-viral etiology for COVID-19. All have had their board certifications revoked for the viewpoints they expressed — viewpoints that are supported by a preponderance of the medical literature.”
In a January 2022 article for Health Affairs, Coleman wrote, “Licensing boards are state agencies subject to the First Amendment, and as such they are limited in their ability to penalize physicians based on the content of their speech.”
Yet, a 2022 NEJM article co-authored by Baron argued that while “Differences of opinion in medicine are necessary for progress … there are some opinions that have been so thoroughly repudiated by existing evidence as to be considered definitively wrong.”
‘All this money is sloshing around now for misinformation research’
According to Thacker, “PR firms are now moving into the ‘disinformation’ space after decades of deceit on behalf of multiple industries,” with Weber Shandwick having “expanded into the disinformation space in late 2021,” promoting tactics that help “brands combat misinformation and disinformation that may implicate them.”
Speaking to Thacker, Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, director of bioethics at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, said, “The ABIM is clearly part of this ‘medical misinformation’ push, which is orchestrated by pharmaceutical companies and their PR allies” and which serves “the interests of Big Pharma.”
Remarking on the presence of a “medical misinformation” panel at SXSW, long known as a music, film and technology festival, Thacker told The Defender, “Anyone and everyone is getting involved in ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation.’”
“Baron has given a TED Talk, for instance. Why is TED Talks involved in this?” he asked.
In 2019 Baron delivered a talk at TEDx Chicago titled, “Please Don’t Confuse Your Google Search with My Medical Degree.”
For Thacker, the answer relates to financial interests. “All this money is sloshing around now for ‘misinformation’ research. Anyone can hop up and down saying ‘I’m an expert on misinformation and disinformation, get me a grant, get me on a panel,’” he said.
Weber embedded staffers within the CDC while representing Pfizer, Moderna
Thacker wrote that prior to discovering Baron’s ties to Weber Shandwick, he had confirmed the PR firm’s ties to COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers Pfizer and Moderna.
These ties did not prevent the CDC from awarding the $50 million contract to Weber Shandwick in September 2020 to push vaccines. The Daily Mail subsequently reported Thacker’s findings.
Medical Marketing and Media reported “Weber’s duties include providing 10 on-site health communications staffers, seven health comms specialists, two health research specialists and one social media specialist” to NCIRD, as well as “generating story ideas, distributing articles and conducting outreach to news, media and entertainment organizations.”
In October 2020, a blog post by Stacy Montejo, senior vice president at Weber Shandwick, disclosed that Pfizer is one of the firm’s clients. A month later, with Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine awaiting Emergency Use Authorization, the company hired Weber Shandwick to handle the vaccine’s publicity, according to PR Week.
Such relationships have continued to the present. In June, Moderna announced a new communications strategy “to further educate the world about Moderna’s mRNA technology and its promise to transform the future of human health.”
The effort is led by Laura Schoen, “who is sometimes titled president of global healthcare at Weber Shandwick, and other times chief healthcare officer at IPG DXTRA, Weber Shandwick’s parent company,” Thacker wrote.
Lucy Rieck, a Weber Shandwick employee, previously publicly tweeted support for a panel Moderna proposed for this year’s SXSW, titled “COVID, Monkeypox, Disease X, What’s Next?” That proposal does not appear to have been accepted for presentation.
Conflicts of interest between Weber Shandwick, the CDC and NCIRD, and Pfizer and Moderna do not appear to have been disclosed.
In October 2022, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) sent a letter to the CDC inquiring about its relationship with Weber Shandwick and requesting “information regarding the nature of Weber’s work for the NCIRD.” It’s unclear whether the CDC complied with the request.
Todd S. Richardson, one of the attorneys representing Eggleston, told The Defender “While it is certainly understandable that governmental agencies will hire PR firms to help them get their message out … it becomes of real concern to me when those agencies, or people working within the agencies, try to silence those who disagree.”
According to Thacker, the web of relationships between Weber Shandwick doesn’t just extend to Big Pharma companies, the CDC and its agencies, or to doctors such as Baron. Academics such as Brown University’s Claire Wardle, Ph.D., a key figure in the “misinformation research” space, have participated in some of the firm’s events.
Wardle, a professor of the practice of Health Services, Policy and Practice at Brown University who has no scientific or medical credentials, participated in an online meeting organized by Weber Shandwick in October 2020 to discuss “election misinformation.”
Subsequently, Wardle played a key advisory role in the Biden administration, federal agencies, social media platforms and Ivy League institutions as they sought to censor content that ran counter to the government’s COVID-19 narrative.
According to Thacker, she “helped organize many of today’s campus disinformation groups … with funding from Google” and later sent Twitter a report aimed at countering the “growing threat of disinformation to trust in COVID-19 vaccines.”
Thacker said the biopharmaceutical industry is “the smartest at putting out disinformation. What other industry has bought off the medical community and the science community?” he asked. “They bought off the researchers, the government, the academic journals.”
Thacker said he believes much of what is labeled “misinformation” in medicine and academic research “is really just corporate PR,” and that “Congress needs to take a harder look at funding for ‘misinformation research.’“
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Pakistan arrests opposition leader in crackdown on Imran Khan’s party
Press TV – August 19, 2023
Pakistani authorities have arrested opposition leader Shah Mehmood Qureshi in a widening crackdown on former prime minister Imran Khan’s party by the military-backed interim government.
Qureshi, who twice served as Pakistan’s foreign minister, was arrested by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on Saturday in the capital Islamabad shortly after he denounced the newly installed caretaker government for its attempts to delay the elections which are scheduled to be held later this year.
“He was arrested from his residence by Islamabad police. We don’t have any further details yet,” a Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP.
In recent months, Pakistani authorities have made widespread arrests targeting Khan’s PTI party in an attempt to crush his grassroots support, causing nationwide anger against the country’s powerful military, which most people believe is behind the crackdown.
According to several independent surveys, the PTI will win a landslide victory in the next elections if the party is allowed to run a political campaign without restrictions.
PTI spokesman Zulfi Bukhari condemned Qureshi’s arrest on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, saying the vice chairman of the party was “arrested for doing a press conference and re-affirming PTI stance against all tyranny and pre-poll rigging that is going on currently in Pakistan.”
“PTI Vice Chairman Shah Mahmood Qureshi has been illegally arrested once again,” the PTI said in social media post on X.
Qureshi was also arrested on May 11 and released on June 6.
In the meantime, Khan, 70, is currently serving a three-year jail term.
Khan was arrested earlier this month and taken to jail after a court found him guilty in one of the more than dozens of cases he has faced.
The former prime minister has maintained that some 200 cases against him are politically motivated to keep him out of power. He says the country’s powerful military is behind these cases.
The three-year jail sentence issued by a lower court disqualifies him from taking part in elections.
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From the Archives
The Geopolitics behind the War in Yemen (I)
By Mahdi Darius NAZEMROAYA | Strategic Culture Foundation | 30.03.2015
The United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia became very uneasy when the Yemenese or Yemenite movement of the Houthi or Ansarallah (meaning the supporters of God in Arabic) gained control of Yemen’s capital, Sanaa/Sana, in September 2014. The US-supported Yemenite President Abd-Rabbuh Manṣour Al-Hadi was humiliatingly forced to share power with the Houthis and the coalition of northern Yemenese tribes that had helped them enter Sana. Al-Hadi declared that negotiations for a Yemeni national unity government would take place and his allies the US and Saudi Arabia tried to use a new national dialogue and mediated talks to co-opt and pacify the Houthis.
The truth has been turned on its head about the war in Yemen. The war and ousting of President Abd-Rabbuh Manṣour Al-Hadi in Yemen are not the results of «Houthi coup» in Yemen. It is the opposite. Al-Hadi was ousted, because with Saudi and US support he tried to backtrack on the power sharing agreements he had made and return Yemen to authoritarian rule. The ousting of President Al-Hadi by the Houthis and their political allies was an unexpected reaction to the takeover Al-Hadi was planning with Washington and the House of Saudi. … continue
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