California’s Medical ‘Misinformation’ Crusade Could Cost Lives
As with Covid treatment, the intolerance of different views risks stifling scientific advances.
A medical transporter moves a patient into a Covid-19 unit at Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo, Calif., February 2021.
PHOTO: JAE C. HONG/ASSOCIATED PRESSEarly in the pandemic, Covid patients with very low oxygen levels were put on ventilators, the standard of care for severe respiratory diseases. But some doctors noticed that severely ill patients responded better to noninvasive ventilation such as high-flow nasal tubes. They shared their findings with other physicians, and gentler oxygen support became the norm. That change in treatment has saved tens of thousands of lives.
But it would have been illegal under a new bill that Democratic lawmakers have proposed in California. The legislation would require the state Medical Board to take action against doctors found to be spreading “misinformation” related to the “nature and risks of the virus, its prevention and treatment; and the development, safety, and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.”
What is “misinformation”? It’s not clearly defined, but the bill would instruct the board to consider whether a doctor’s order or opinion deviates from the “standard of care” (i.e., recommendations by government bodies or treatments that are widely used by healthcare practitioners) and is “contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus.”
So doctors who prescribe or recommend treatments that haven’t been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for Covid-19—for example, the antidepressant fluvoxamine, which has shown strong results in trials—could be disciplined and even lose their medical licenses no matter if they have scientific evidence to support them. Same for doctors who disagree with masking and vaccines for children.
“The bill would put physicians’ licenses at risk if they say the vaccines are anything other than safe and effective,” says Teryn Clarke, a neurologist in Newport Beach, Calif. “But all medicines and medical procedures carry a risk of adverse events, and patients deserve to know what those potential risks are.”
Much of what was learned early in the pandemic was from doctors sharing their clinical experiences and knowledge. Patients receiving oxygen did better when placed in a prone position, for instance, and the steroid dexamethasone could tamp down the “cytokine storm” in severely ill patients. Early in the pandemic some doctors hypothesized that the virus could spread through aerosols, and therefore 6 feet of distance wouldn’t necessarily prevent infection. This outlier view could have been deemed misinformation under California’s law. It is now conventional wisdom.
California’s bill would punish doctors for discussing disfavored ideas, making it almost certainly unconstitutional. Some liberal public-health experts say that makes the Constitution the problem. “Vaccine misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic underscores how reverence for freedom of speech in the US intensifies our vulnerability to public health threats,” Stanford’s Michelle Mello recently wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Ms. Mello laments “the Supreme Court’s attachment to a particular conception of free speech rights,” which limits the government’s ability to impose speech restrictions. She suggests that state medical boards can “suspend the licenses of physicians whose statements constitute unprofessional conduct,” which could include “misinformation” as they define it.
A couple of doctors in a recent JAMA commentary float some First Amendment workarounds. They say it may be constitutional merely to “threaten disciplinary action by licensing boards against health professionals whose speech to patients conveys incorrect science or substandard medicine.”
That’s essentially what Illinois is doing. The state’s Department of Financial and Professional Regulation warned in November that doctors could face disciplinary action for failing to “conform with evidence-based medicine and standards of care” when treating Covid patients. It also encouraged doctors to report their peers for “misinformation.”
The Federation of State Medical Boards last summer warned that physicians who spread misinformation about the Covid-19 vaccine risk “disciplinary action by state medical boards, including the suspension or revocation of their medical license.” So doctors in other states could also be disciplined for, say, suggesting children don’t need to be vaccinated.
The intolerance of different viewpoints that is infecting the medical profession may itself be a public-health threat. Emails obtained by the American Institute for Economic Research showed how the National Institutes of Health’s Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci tried to discredit the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which opposed the lockdown consensus. “This is a fringe component of epidemiology,” Dr. Collins told the Washington Post. “This is not mainstream science. It’s dangerous.”
What’s actually dangerous is silencing debate on critical public-health issues. Mainstream science is often wrong, as vaccine expert Paul Offit explains in his book “Overkill: When Modern Medicine Goes Too Far.” Dr. Offit details how many conventional medical recommendations, like finishing a course of antibiotics or giving Tylenol to reduce a child’s fever, aren’t supported by science and can do more harm than good. Many recommendations have changed over time as scientists learn more and do more studies.
As Dr. Clarke says: “Dissent and discussion are intrinsic to the evolution of scientific and medical knowledge. To limit that will certainly hamper our progress in understanding and combating this virus.”
Ms. Finley is a member of the Journal’s editorial board.
I finally figured it out, Dr. Nass: you in particular are being punished for [most likely] saving the life of Dr. Malone.
ReplyDeleteAccording to my reading of the Cali bill [and Rep. Cyburn's covid subcommittee in Congress]: they want Dr. Malone dead, you in jail, and people like me [and ~10% of the population prone to anaphylaxis] to take the spike shots so we are dead or permanently disabled.
Attorney Michelle M. Mello, JD, PhD, MPhil, Stanford Law School and Department of Health Research and Policy, Stanford School of Medicine, a grotesque sickness, virus personified.
According to her logic, she should be banned from teaching law, and publishing anything until she reads and reads until she understand The Rebel, by Camus.
Mello may one day understand executioners of the left and right are from the same family.
And that Camus' one visit to US, in 1950s, warned us about institutions, in particular, our government, and those acting as its agents/henchmen, like her, that no institution has right to treat the people like a slab of meat.
This is precisely what this uninformed, ignorant, and dangerous law professor is advocating; she is a partisan, political actor -- masquerading as a savant.
She has no business occupying a chair at any college, much less Stanford.
She is scourge on humanity, an executioner -- and in that role, she has a ton of company these days.
"Given what we know about how vaccine misinformation influences vaccine acceptance and how intractable false beliefs are, this misinformation may be among the most significant barriers to controlling infectious disease in the 21st century." Mello states.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama-health-forum/fullarticle/2790169
In actual reality -- in contra-distinction to the plastic reality of fantasy and fairy tails she, et. al., occupy -- there are basic tenets of science and research.
Such as hypothesis testing, and use of models and theories, on road to possibly contributing to knowledge.
Any new drug, product, vaccine, prophylactic: must be shown to be Not Unsafe.
Manufacturer must demonstrate they are not unsafe.
Thus the null hypothesis is: product unsafe; and manufacturer must show with at least 95% confidence that that null hypothesis -- product unsafe -- can be rejected.
Simply put, this means: they must overcome built-in assumption product is unsafe, which is the null hypothesis -- until they can prove it is not.
Mello's uninformed, juvenile concern, expressed: "vaccine misinformation influences vaccine acceptance" -- demonstrate that she is not yet even potty trained when it comes to comprehending among most basic, elementary scientific methods.
It is great moral turpitude among all institutional actors, including her: that have been and continue to invert the null hypothesis on these mRNA spike shots -- for partisan, and worse, political agendas.
Put another way, the null hypothesis assumes "vaccine hesitancy" and "vaccine acceptance" are not only to be expected, but, this is key: that is the rule in science.
Prove vaccines are not unsafe, first! Otherwise, vaccine hesitancy and non-acceptance of vaccines, for example, is not only normal, rational, sane, but expected.
To have the attitude Mello et. al. express are stuff of the liar, the phony, the insane, the deranged, the deviant, the criminal, the executioner.
FDA's job: ensure products are not unsafe.
Instead, with EUAs, we got, essentially: they are worth the Risk!
That's what EUAs do, exempt product and its manufacturers from having to prove that they are not unsafe.
However, absent this key, manifold dimension, absent adhering to this essential function of scientific method, there is something far worse than Mello's nonsense about her hatred of free expression. And thus, she herself become complicit in mass murder.
-Jim
-30-
ReplyDeleteSHOCK:
Pfizer tried to hide data showing its COVID vax caused massive increase in miscarriages, stillborn babies!
https://www.naturalnews.com/2022-04-24-shock-pfizer-tried-to-hide-data-showing-its-covid-vax-caused-massive-increase-in-miscarriages-stillborn-babies.html
Against Normalization: The Lesson of the “Munich Post”
ReplyDeletehttps://lareviewofbooks.org/article/normalization-lesson-munich-post/
Covid warning as new variant rips through UK with 1,300 cases recorded on Friday ALONE
ReplyDeleteA NEW variant of Covid is spreading rapidly with almost 1,300 new cases of the pathogen occurring throughout the UK on Friday.
By Brian McGleenon 16:28, Sat, Apr 23, 2022
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1600116/covid-news-UK-variant-new-cases-UK-omicron-xe-strain
Flattening the Curve’ Remains Our Best Policy Option WSJ
Supercontagious XE Covid variant detected in The Canary Islands Euro Weekly News
https://euroweeklynews.com/2022/04/22/four-cases-of-the-supercontagious-xe-covid-variant-detected-in-the-canary-islands/
A Covid-19 vaccine effective against multiple variants is possible before the end of 2022 with yearly jabs ready for 2023
Annual Vaccines Planned Pfizer Eyes COVID-19 Vaccine For All Variants Before 2023
https://www.channelstv.com/2022/04/13/pfizer-eyes-covid-19-vaccine-for-all-variants-before-2023/
Another booster?
The Evaporating Effectiveness of Covid-19 Vaccines as Shown by the Newest Ontario Government Data | C2C Journal
4/23/22
https://c2cjournal.ca/2022/04/the-evaporating-effectiveness-of-covid-19-vaccines-as-shown-by-the-newest-ontario-government-data/
* But a new mutation could spell doom for the vaccines, he said.y
Could future COVID-19 variants evade vaccines? What experts say
Duke health experts are concerned that any future coronavirus variant could evade the coronavirus vaccines
* That’s why, he said, the vaccines need to be updated regularly.
4/20/22
https://www.deseret.com/coronavirus/2022/4/22/23035510/could-future-covid-19-variants-evade-vaccines
ReplyDeleteFYI!
GVB predicting more virulent strains to come caused by mass vaccination.
https://www.voiceforscienceandsolidarity.org/scientific-blog/predictions-gvb-on-evolution-c-19-pandemic .””
I SERIOUSLY expect that a series of new highly virulent and highly infectious SARS-CoV-2 (SC-2) variants will now rapidly and independently emerge in highly vaccinated countries all over the world…”
Other recent landmark study says the covid vaccines diminish immunity of the vaccinated.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027869152200206X
Meanwhile, Canada which has 30 millions doses of vaccine looking for people (or animals —they’re going after zoos now https://www.cbsnews.com/video/toronto-zoo-animals-get-their-covid-vaccines/ “Toronto zoo animals get their covid vaccine) to inject with, concocted a study, whose author is a Pfiizer advisor as disclaimed in he the study, claiming the unvaccinated are a threat to the vaccinated. “Unvaccinated disproportionately risk safety of those vaccinated against COVID-19, study shows”
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-unvaccinated-covid-risk-for-vaccinated-canada/
i.e. the truth as spoken by the ignored scientist and others is being turned on its head and the lie disseminated as the truth, with the effect of distributing a proven poisonous injection. Evil times.