By Tamzin A. Rosenwasser, M.D.
Physicians have received a chilling threat about COVID-19 vaccination from the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB):
“Physicians who generate and spread vaccine misinformation or disinformation are risking disciplinary action by state medical boards, including the suspension or revocation of their medical license. Due to their specialized knowledge and training, licensed physicians possess a high level of public trust, and therefore have a powerful platform in society, whether they recognize it or not. They also have an ethical and professional responsibility to practice medicine in the best interests of their patients and must share information that is factual, scientifically grounded, and consensus-driven for the betterment of public health. Spreading inaccurate COVID-19 vaccine information contradicts that responsibility, threatens to further erode public trust in the medical profession and puts all patients at risk.”
The FSMB has been described as a “private lobbying organization that represents the state’s attorneys who work for medical boards.” It does not by itself have the legal authority to take a doctor’s license but is highly influential.
The NKVD , the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs, was the Soviet secret police agency, the precursor to the KGB.
The FSMB statement reminds me of Ignaz Philip Semmelweis, the physician who spread misinformation and disinformation about hand-washing in a hospital in Hungary in the mid-1800s. He had noticed that the mortality rate after childbirth was about six to nine times higher in a clinic where the physicians had been mandated (that word again!) to do autopsies in addition to taking care of patients, than in another clinic, where midwives delivered the babies, but did not do autopsies.
Dr. Semmelweis thought that there was something being carried from autopsies to the delivery room. He therefore required the medical students and doctors he supervised to wash their hands with a chlorinated lime solution, which cleaned and also even removed the smell from their hands. His rule caused a dramatic fall in death rates among post-partum women. Nonetheless, his ideas were discounted and widely ridiculed.
In 1861, Dr Semmelweis became depressed and was put into a mental hospital, where he was beaten. An injury became infected, and he died of sepsis. The person who took his place in the maternity clinic abandoned hand-washing, and mortality rates increased seven-fold.
In the 1980s Barry Marshall and Robin Warren wrote a scientific paper concerning their discovery of the role the bacterium Helicobacter pylori plays in peptic ulcer disease. At that time, the “ consensus – driven information” generally believed was that peptic ulcer disease was caused by too much stomach acid plus spicy food and stress. They were met with skepticism, but at least they weren’t beaten to death in an insane asylum for their efforts to take care of their patients. They won the Nobel Prize for physiology in 2005.
Now, we have an experimental vaccine for a disease with a greater than 99 percent survival rate except in patients who are over 70 years old or have comorbid conditions. Though it is available only under an Emergency Use Authorization, people are under intense pressure to receive it. Severe side effects have occurred in some recipients: myocarditis in more than 3,000; Guillain-Barré syndrome in more than 450; bleeding and clotting disorders in about 2,000; and death in more than 11,000. But mass vaccination is apparently consensus-driven.
To coerce people to be vaccinated against their will violates the Nuremberg Code . Did we not once have an actual meeting of minds that the things done by doctors in Germany at the direction of that National Socialist government warranted the Nuremberg Code, designed to prevent any recurrence of such medical experiments?
Was there a consensus in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s that Jewish, Romany, and Slavic peoples were a disease on the superior Aryan race? Was that consensus enforced by fear? Was there also a consensus that Jehovah’s Witnesses, Catholic priests, and Lutherans like Dietrich Bonhoeffer who did not agree with that consensus were to be tortured and executed along with the people they defended?
Is there now a consensus among all 50 States that physicians are to be muzzled, silenced, and have their lives destroyed in case they do not agree with the new NKVD?
Isn’t forced consensus a synonym for group-think? If no one can ever think or say anything that does not meet with the approval of the FSMB, we will never advance. At one time, there was probably a consensus that the only way to get from point A to point B was to walk .
Physicians have a right to free speech. We are not serfs, slaves, pawns, or puppets of the new NKVD. If physicians and their patients see a cause for caution, they must be left alone, not coerced to follow the Party line.
Dr. Tamzin Rosenwasser earned her MD from Washington University in St. Louis after putting herself through medical school. She is board certified in Internal Medicine and also Dermatology, and has practiced Emergency Medicine as well. Dr. Rosenwasser served as President of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) in 2007 and 2008. Dr. Rosenwasser has written numerous articles and opinion editorials, and has been a guest on many media broadcast shows. She is currently writing a book on medical practice. She also serves as a member of the Research Advisory Committee of the Newfoundland Club of America. She currently serves as Treasurer of the Association of the American Physicians and Surgeons. As a life-long dog lover and trainer, she realizes that her dogs have better access to medical care and more medical privacy than she has, and her veterinarians are paid more than physicians in the United States for exactly the same types of surgery.