ADVOCATES FOR PHYSICIANS' RIGHTS WARNS OF DANGERS OF AB 2098

The State of California wants to dictate what information doctors can share with their patients. Medical and human rights advocates are saying "Not on our watch."

Press Conference at the Capitol on the West Steps, Friday 9/30, 12:00 PM

SACRAMENTO, Calif., Sept. 29, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- A bill up for signature by Governor Gavin Newsom essentially criminalizes free speech by subjecting doctors – who speak out against the COVID-19 narrative – to penalties. 

"This bill would designate the dissemination of misinformation or disinformation related to…COVID-19, as unprofessional conduct" by doctors, and allow the Medical Board to "take action" against such doctors, including license penalties. 

Censorship is not the hallmark of free society; rather, it is the ugly bellwether of a freefall into totalitarianism:

"When the Nazis came to power in 1933, the German constitution guaranteed Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press. Through laws, the Nazis abolished these civil rights and destroyed German democracy…. Later in the War, the regime even sentenced people to death for listening to foreign radio stations."

Source: United States Holocaust Museum, Nazi Propaganda & Censorship. 

Simply stated, the residents of California do not wish their doctors to be targeted for Warsaw Ghetto status, nor do we wish to be branded the Nazis of our era. The censorship above simply cannot be countenanced. If we are to remain a constitutional republic and not a dictatorship, physicians must remain free to exercise their professional clinical judgment without fear of retribution or professional penalty.

Doctors must be allowed to use their own clinical judgment – not a consensus of the masses – when counseling patients, in order to uphold their oath to "First, do no harm." And they cannot do that if they face licensure repercussions for speaking their truths, particularly in a field like medicine where the die is never cast – it is always evolving. To put a very fine point on it: Going against the status quo is how medicine advances. This bill does not just chill the practice of medicine, it will kill it outright by creating an unprecedented brain drain when the medical geniuses of Stanford flee the shackles of California in search of a state that doesn't criminalize the practice of medicine.

And a warning for bill authors Low, Pan and Wiener: not only is this bill unconscionable, it is unlawful on its face… given that it is well settled that entities like State Boards cannot engage in the practice of medicine. Put simply: It's a crime for groups – even state boards – to practice medicine by consensus: only individual human beings using their own independent judgment may do so.

In sum, the authors who drafted this bill that seeks to morph California's Medical Board into a modern-day Ministry of Medical Truth should be ashamed of themselves. And Governor Newsom should veto AB 2098 forthwith … unless he's looking to rack up a new title as King of a Rising Fourth Reich. 

Leigh Taylor Dundas, Esq.
Advocates for Physicians' Rights

Contact
Sandra Brown
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 714.925.1763

SOURCE Advocates for Physician's Rights