California bill allows medical board to punish physicians for COVID-19 ‘misinformation’
Legislation introduced in the California State Assembly would allow the California Medical Board to act against medical professionals who challenge the COVID-19 narrative.
When Bill AB-2098 was first introduced in February, it required the board to “consider specified factors prior to bringing a disciplinary action against a physician and surgeon.” On Tuesday, the bill was amended in the State Senate to remove that clause, allowing the board wide discretion in disciplining medical professionals.
Action will be taken against healthcare professionals who “disseminate” medical misinformation in the form of treatment or advice.
The bill’s authors, including primary sponsor Assemblyman Evan Low, cite the mainstream media as proof that dissenting medical opinions on COVID-19 vaccines are misinformation.
"Major news outlets have reported that some of the most dangerous propagators of inaccurate information regarding the COVID-19 vaccines are licensed health care professionals,” reads the bill.
Also included in the legislation are statements which have raised concerns among medical professionals for being disinformation.
“The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:
“(a) The global spread of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, or COVID-19, has claimed the lives of over 6,000,000 people worldwide, including nearly 90,000 Californians.
“(b) Data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that unvaccinated individuals are at a risk of dying from COVID-19 that is 11 times greater than those who are fully vaccinated.
“(c) The safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines have been confirmed through evaluation by the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the vaccines continue to undergo intensive safety monitoring by the CDC.”
According to Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, MD, the above statements are “demonstrably false.”
Regarding the bill’s first claim, he says in his Substack newsletter, those death count figures "are grossly overestimated by hospitals failing to distinguish dying from COVID vs. dying with COVID and the financial incentives from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to overestimate COVID deaths.”
As for claim b), “the efficacy of vaccines has declined with time and new variants, so the statistic cited here is no longer true of the vaccines against omicron.”
Dr. Kheriaty then points out that the CDC’s “intensive safety monitoring” never happened, as reported by America’s Frontline News.
“The CDC has consistently failed to follow-up on serious safety signals, apart from myocarditis, and the post-marketing surveillance data acquired from our FOIA request showed serious safety issues in the first three months of vaccine rollout,” said the physician.
"The supposed scientific ‘facts’ mentioned in the bill make it clear just what information will be considered ‘misinformation’ under this law,” Dr. Kheriaty added. “This bill will spell the end of scientific integrity and medical freedom in California.”
Neither the bill’s authors, nor the major news outlets they trust, nor the California Medical Board are headed by medical experts.
As reported by America’s Frontline News, the California Medical Board is headed by attorney Kristina Lawson. Lawson, who is known for being lenient on physicians who sexually abuse their patients, has made it a point to intimidate physicians who offer alternative advice or treatment for COVID-19.
