Group of physicians combats misinformation as unproven COVID-19
treatments continue to be prescribed
The
group wants state boards to discipline doctors who spread misinformation.
By Soo Rin Kim,Laura Romero,Dr. Mark Abdelmalek, and Steve Osunsam
i
March 4, 2022
In July 2020,
as the country faced its first summer wave of coronavirus cases,
a group of physicians stood in front of the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court and
held their first self-titled "White Coat Summit" to tout the unproven
benefits of hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 treatment.
"It is called hydroxychloroquine, zinc, and Zithromax,"
Dr. Stella Immanuel, a Houston-based primary care physician, told the crowd.
"I know you people want to talk about a mask. Hello? You don't need a
mask. There is a cure."
But
as those doctors were promoting unproven COVID-19 cures like hydroxychloroquine
and ivermectin, and denouncing proven non-pharmaceutical
mitigation measures like mask-wearing and lockdowns, another group of
physicians was emerging.
No License for Disinformation, a group of doctors motivated by the
unproven claims of the White Coat Summit, came together with a mission to call
on state medical boards and other governing bodies to take disciplinary
measures against doctors spreading dangerous misinformation.
"They were anti-mask. They were anti-lockdown. They wanted
everybody to believe that it was safe to continue life as normal," the
group's founder, California physician Dr. Nick Sawyer, told ABC News. "It
was anti all of the public health measures that had been put out as guidance to
help prevent the transmission of this novel virus."
Calling the group that spoke on the
steps of the Supreme Court "very well-funded physicians who are
essentially weaponizing the white coat in order to spread disinformation,"
Sawyer said there has been an "institutional failure" by state
medical boards to protect patients by not going after doctors more
aggressively.
In Pennsylvania, Texas and Maine, some physicians have faced
repercussions for spreading misinformation about coronavirus vaccines and
treating COVID-19 patients with unproven drugs like ivermectin or
hydroxychloroquine -- but Sawyer says there's still a long way to go.
"Disinformation is needlessly killing Americans. And the
people who have the authority to stop just information, whether it be the
social media platforms, legislators, the medical boards need to step up and
protect the public from this dangerous, conspiratorial information that's being
pushed out in a massively coordinated way," Sawyer told ABC News.
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