Doctors sue California Medical Board for hunting dissenting doctors

A group of doctors has joined a complaint filed against the California Medical Board (CMB) for hunting physicians who don’t toe the line on the COVID-19 narrative set by the medical establishment. 

It began last year, when Dr. Douglas Mackenzie made remarks critical of the COVID vaccines during a Zoom meeting with the Santa Barbara School District. 

“We are not going to get to Zero Covid ever,” said the plastic surgeon. “We can’t make it disappear with a vaccine, especially one that may improve symptoms, but as we are seeing won’t stop reinfection or transmission. 

“And despite the hype from the politicians and media, public health officials and physicians should have known this from the conclusions of the original studies. As far as variants, no, it’s not the unvaccinated’s fault, it’s the nature of a respiratory virus and the limitations of these vaccines. They actually risk creating more virulent escape mutations.” 

“As we just heard, unnecessary overtesting now being proposed for children?!” Dr. Mackenzie continued. “Vaccination in younger and younger people, where the harms from the vaccine far outweigh the harms of the disease?! The obsession for masking?! I see kids outside, playing sports, wearing masks, it’s absurd! There is no science or logic to support that! I worry about society’s descent into a mass psychosis trying to reach an impossible goal of eradicating Covid.  

“Brace yourselves for ever more cycles of fear and confusion as the next variant arises, and the vilification of people unwilling to subject themselves to coerced vaccines gets more hateful. This can’t end well unless more people wake up. Fortunately, as we see from the massive protests in the UK and France, the burning of vaccine passports in Italy and the vindication of ivermectin as a safe and effective treatment, people are waking up.” 

Dr. Mackenzie was reported to the CMB, who sent him a letter in December notifying him that he was under investigation. While Mackenzie’s lawyer responded promptly asserting First Amendment rights, the CMB refused to cease its investigation. 

Last month, attorney Rick Jaffee filed a complaint against California Medical Board Executive Director William Prasifka, a lawyer with no medical background, demanding a preliminary injunction against Mackenzie’s investigation and any investigation against a physician for "COVID-19 misinformation”. 

In the complaint, Jaffee cited multiple precedents affirming that disagreeing with the medical establishment is protected under the First Amendment, which former Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson stated is specifically purposed for opinions which disagree with public authority. 

“The very purpose of the First Amendment is to foreclose public authority from assuming a guardianship of the public mind through regulating the press, speech, and religion,” wrote Justice Jackson in Thomas v. Collins. 

In 2018, the Supreme Court also quoted in a majority opinion that "Throughout history, governments have ‘manipulat[ed] the content of doctor-patient discourse' to increase state power and suppress minorities." 

Six days after the lawsuit was filed, the CMB dropped its investigation against Dr. Mackenzie. 

However, a dropped investigation made the complaint moot and unnecessary – so on July 29, 2022 Jaffee filed an amended complaint involving medical rights activist group Physicians for Informed Consent. 

The amended complaint included meeting minutes from a board meeting in February, in which CMB President Kristina Lawson, who also has no medical experience, announced the CMB would be targeting physicians who speak out against the government’s response to COVID-19: 

Ms. Lawson stated it is the duty of the board to protect the public from misinformation and disinformation by physicians, noting the increase in the dissemination of healthcare related misinformation and disinformation on social media platforms, in the media, and online, putting patient lives at risk in causing unnecessary strain on the healthcare system. 

Ms. Lawson elaborated in July 2021, the Federation of State Medical Boards released a statement saying physicians spreading misinformation or disinformation risk disciplinary action by their state medical board.

As reported by America’s Frontline News, Lawson has been rabidly against medical dissent – even deputizing California citizens to inform on physicians for “COVID-19 misinformation” – while remaining alarmingly laissez-faire about physicians who sexually assault their patients. 

According to a Los Angeles Times report, “. . . 10 of the 17 physicians who lost their licenses for sexual misconduct and petitioned for reinstatement since 2013 succeeded, board data show — a rate of 59%.” 

Civil rights organization America's Frontline Doctors confronted Lawson as part of its docuseries Doc Tracy: Physician Investigator.