They called COVID-19 a sham, promoted unproven treatments and false claims about the vaccine, including that the injections magnetized the human body.
The promoters of this disinformation were not unknown figures who operated in the darkest corners of the internet. They are a small group of physicians who practice in communities throughout the United States.
Now medical boards are under increasing pressure to take action. Public health organizations have called on them to take a tougher stance to discipline doctors, including revoking their licenses.
The campaign comes as the pandemic enters its second winter and the United States exceeds 800,000 deaths.
At least a dozen regulatory boards in states like Oregon, Rhode Island, Maine and Texas recently issued sanctions against some doctors, but many of the most prolific promoters of COVID-19 falsehoods still have immaculate medical licenses.
“Just because they’re doctors, it’s no different than if someone calls you on the phone pretending to be the IRS to steal money from you,” said Brian Castrucci, president and CEO of the Beaumont Foundation. “It is a fraud and we protect Americans from fraud.”
Castrucci’s organization, which works for public health, and No License For Disinformation, which combats false medical information, released a report Wednesday that highlighted some of the cases. The study was released a week after the Federation of State Medical Boards released a survey that revealed that 67% of boards had seen an increase in complaints of misinformation about COVID-19.
That number “is a sign of how extensive the problem has become,” said Dr. Humayun Chaudhry, president and CEO of the federation.
Dr. Kencee Graves, a physician at the University of Utah Hospital in Salt Lake City, said one of her patients decided not to get vaccinated after hearing misinformation from a doctor.
“She was fooled” by someone she should trust, said Graves, who described the patient as a “very, very sweet old lady.”
The woman later acknowledged her mistake by saying: “I realize now that I was wrong, but I thought it was a person I should listen to.”
There is broad support for penalizing these doctors, according to a national survey by the Beaumont Foundation. In the survey of 2,200 adults, 91% of those interviewed said that doctors do not have the right to intentionally spread disinformation.
But disciplining doctors isn’t easy for boards that were created long before social media. Their investigations tend to proceed at a slow pace, taking months or years, and much of the process is private.
Castrucci said it’s time for boards to “evolve,” but it’s tough. This month, Tennessee’s medical licensing board pulled a newly adopted policy on disinformation off its website under pressure from a Republican state legislator and a new law that imposed sweeping restrictions on the coronavirus.
Even board members have been harassed. In California, the president of the state medical board, Kristina Lawson, noted that an anti-vaccine group harassed her on the side of her residence and followed her to her office last week. He said the people said they belonged to America’s Frontline Doctors, a group that criticizes COVID-19 vaccines and spreads misinformation.
The group’s leader, Dr. Simone Gold, who was arrested during the Jan.6 assault on the Capitol, tweeted this month to his nearly 390,000 followers that “nursing staff know that COVID patients are dying from protocols subsidized by the government in hospitals (Remdesivir, intubation), not by COVID. “
Gold continues to have his medical license in California, although his emergency medicine certification expired last year. The complaints and investigations are not public in the state, so it is not known if there are any against them.
In Idaho, the state medical association became so frustrated with pathologist Ryan Cole’s promotion of the antiparasitic drug ivermectin that it filed a complaint with the state medical board. Susie Keller, the association’s executive director, said she believes it was the first time the group filed a complaint against one of their own. Many doctors, he explained, are very upset.
The spread of falsehoods “has caused our doctors and nurses to be verbally abused” by patients who are convinced that the false information is true, Keller said.
Cole did not respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press, but his work mailbox noted that he “cannot prescribe medications or issue vaccine or mask exemption letters.” The mailbox also instructs callers to enter the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance portal, a group that promotes the use of ivermectin.
Under Idaho law, all medical investigations are conducted in private, unless there is a formal hearing. Meanwhile, the Washington state medical board is investigating five complaints against Dr. Cole, spokeswoman Stephanie Mason said.
Investigating misinformation is “very difficult because many of the actions are not documented,” Mason wrote in an email. Many examples “happen quietly in an office.”
In Ohio, the state medical board automatically renewed Sherri Tenpenny’s license last September after the osteopath testified months ago before the state lower house health panel that CVID-19 vaccines caused magnetism.
Those who get the vaccine “can put a brace on their forehead and it sticks,” Tenpenny said.
Jerica Stewart, a spokeswoman for the state medical board, said the recent renewal of a medical license does not prevent the board from taking action.
“Making a false, fraudulent, misleading or misleading statement” is grounds for sanction, Stewart said.
In Texas, Dr. Stella Immanuel appeared in a video promoting hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug. “You don’t need masks. There is a cure ”.
In October, the Texas medical board ordered Immanuel to pay $ 500 and improve his consent procedures because it discovered that she had prescribed hydroxychloroquine to a COVID-19 patient without properly explaining the potential health consequences, according to documents.
Immanuel did not respond to an AP message on Facebook and the medical office where he works did not respond to an email.
Dr. Nick Sawyer, who runs No License For Disinformation, said the move against Immanuel was “a pat on the wrist” and accused the nation’s top medical boards of “failing to do their job of protecting public health.”
He said he has seen the damage personally, as an emergency physician in Sacramento, California. He claimed that a seventy-something-year-old patient with diabetes insisted just this month that she did not have COVID-19 despite having tested positive in a diagnostic test, immediately demanded that she be given ivermectin and was discharged against the recommendation of doctors once denied the drug.
“She said, ‘If I have COVID, you gave it to me,” she recalls.
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