‘Wrong side of history’: Doctor responds after YouTube censors medical experts
Popular physician Dr. Drew Pinsky refuses to comply with YouTube’s demands after the video streaming giant censored two of his videos and threatened to delete his channel over remarks about the COVID-19 vaccine by medical experts.
Pinsky has been a board-certified physician for 40 years and runs an internal medicine practice in California. He previously served as chief resident at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena, program medical director for chemical dependency services at Las Encinas Hospital, and assistant clinical professor in the medicine and psychiatry departments at Keck USC. He is currently a fellow of the American College of Physicians and chief of the medical board of The Wellness Company.
Dr. Drew hosts Ask Dr. Drew, a podcast where he discusses medical subjects. He frequently has guests on the show, including fellow physician Dr. Kelly Victory.
A physician is censored for her medical opinion
In a recent episode, Dr. Victory commented that injuries from the COVID-19 vaccine occur primarily among the younger population.
"[The] vast majority of the people who have been injured are young, healthy people who were under the age of 50 who had fundamentally zero risk from COVID itself,” she said. “They all got COVID. Ninety-eight percent of the population has documentation they've had COVID. These are people who would have been fine if they were just left alone."
Dr. Victory’s remarks are backed by several studies. A Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) study in 2022, for example, discovered a 25% surge in cardiac events among young, healthy Israelis. The findings further showed that the increase was entirely associated with the COVID-19 shots.
YouTube censored the episode due to “medical misinformation” and “vaccine misinformation,” which the company defines as anything that “contradicts local health authorities’ or the World Health Organization’s guidance.”
An attorney is censored for discussing a case
The Google-owned platform also censored an episode of Ask Dr. Drew in which attorney Warner Mendenhall discussed a case involving a nurse who was severely injured by the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine.
"I believe about half a million people have died from taking the shot,” Mendenhall told Dr. Drew. “We are currently representing one of my clients who is extremely ill. Her spinal cord has been damaged . . . she's having trouble breathing . . . she goes by @thecoercednurse."
YouTube censored the episodes and notified Dr. Drew that his channel, which boasts 187,000 subscribers, may be de-platformed unless he completes a course on medical misinformation and goes 90 days without violating the rules.
‘I have a commitment to free speech’
In a series of posts on X Tuesday, Dr. Drew slammed YouTube for its assault on free speech.
“Do I agree with everything Dr. Victory says? I do not,” he wrote. “And she wouldn't hesitate to say the same about me (often on my own show). But I have a commitment to free speech and open debate between dissenting experts. It is not medical misinformation for a licensed doctor to provide an opinion on a broadcast.” [Emphasis original.]
Regarding the second episode that was censored, Dr. Drew said: “Do I agree with everything Mendenhall says? I do not. I haven't seen convincing evidence that 500,000 people died from the shot. But it is not medical misinformation for an attorney to discuss the details of an ongoing case, even if those details do not align with the CDC's preferred narrative at the time (e.g. the Tuskegee Study, Guatemalan STD experiments, Willowbrook Hepatitis study, Camp Lejeune water contamination).
“It is not medical misinformation for someone to state their belief that a large number of people were harmed by a medical product or study. That is his opinion based on evidence from his cases.” [Emphasis original.]
YouTube is not concerned with ‘medical misinformation’
Contrary to its claims, YouTube is not against medical misinformation but rather against content that challenges mainstream narratives. Dr. Drew pointed to instances where YouTube allows medical misinformation on its platform, like when MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow claimed the COVID-19 vaccine protects against transmission of the virus. Although that claim has been acknowledged as false by health experts worldwide, as well as the World Health Organization, it remains on YouTube.
This is not the first time the tech giant has taken action against Dr. Drew’s content. When the tech giant censored one of his episodes last year, Dr. Drew’s producer asked YouTube to schedule a “provider to provider” call where Dr. Drew could speak clinically with the platform’s medical expert who decides what content is “medical misinformation.” The call was never scheduled, however, because there is no such medical expert at YouTube.
“YouTube is free to stay on the wrong side of history,” wrote Dr. Drew. “Their house, their rules. But it's times like these when I'm especially grateful that @ElonMusk brought free speech back to the public square. Both @AskDrDrew episodes are still available on X, and I refuse to delete even 1 second of them to appease Google's unqualified, unlicensed, untrained, unidentified censors.”
