When Doctors Spread Disinformation

The Lawfare Podcast

The Lawfare Institute

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4.7 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 14 July 2022

⏱️ 60 minutes

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Summary

Since the beginning of the pandemic, we’ve talked a lot on this show about how falsehoods about the coronavirus are spread and generated. For this episode, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with two emergency medicine physicians who have seen the practical effects of those falsehoods while treating patients over the last two years. Nick Sawyer and Taylor Nichols are two of the cofounders of the organization No License for Disinformation, a group that advocates for medical authorities to take disciplinary action against doctors spreading misinformation and disinformation about COVID-19. They argue that state medical boards, which grant physicians the licenses that authorize them to practice medicine, could play a more aggressive role in curbing falsehoods.

How many doctors have been disciplined, and why do Nick and Taylor believe that state medical boards have fallen down on the job? What are the possibilities for more aggressive action—and how does the First Amendment limit those possibilities? And how much good can the threat of discipline do in curbing medical misinformation, anyway?

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair
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0:14.7	That's patreon.com slash LawFair.
0:18.2	Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair
0:25.6	no bull and the aftermath.
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1:06.4	The thing that I find important about this is the difference between free speech and
1:11.7	professional speech.
1:14.0	If you look at the actual rules that put the boundaries around acceptable position behavior,
1:22.4	each state has a medical practice act.
1:26.2	There's actually legislation with provisions within the medical practice act that say what
1:31.1	is acceptable and what is unacceptable.
1:33.6	This is the law that was put forth and legislated and signed by the governor.
1:39.0	So what we're finding is that state medical boards aren't following or enforcing their
1:44.2	own state medical practice acts.
1:47.1	And so there's very, very few doctors that have been disciplined.
1:53.4	I'm Quinteduristic and this is the LawFair podcast July 14, 2022.
	...

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