Iatrogenic disinformation

The Covid pandemic brought nuts with M.D. degrees out of the woodwork. Of course they were always around -- Viz. Mehmet Oz, who had a popular TV show he used to spread medical disinformation for years. Many physicians signed a petition to have has medical license pulled, or for Columbia to fire him, but neither happened. Now Richard Baron and Yul Ejnes in NEJM discuss the problem of how licensing boards should respond to physicians who spread disinformation, notably by social media since most of them don't have a TV show. (Of course, some of them worked for the Trump Administration and currently work for Ron DeSantis, a problem they avoid.)

This seems to be a First Amendment problem, since state licensing boards are government agencies. As the authors note:

Coleman has observed that “professional speech” is a legally contested domain between speech that can be regulated or prohibited by licensing boards and speech protected by the First Amendment. It is also unclear when physicians’ speech on social media constitutes “medical practice.”1 Mello has questioned why First Amendment protections should extend to harmful speech that leads to death from preventable disease, when some other forms of speech — such as fraudulent commercial speech, which may be less harmful — are prohibited. 2

I think those are compelling questions. As the authors go on to discuss, board certification in a specialty is bestowed by private organizations, but it is not necessary to practice medicine, although not having it may restrict employment opportunities.  As far as I'm concerned, whether you like it or not, while there are many disputed or uncertain issues in medicine, there are also many propositions which are known to be untrue. For example, hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin are completely useless against Covid 19; and conversely, authorized vaccines do prevent severe disease, hospitalization, and death. Homeopathy is a fraud. Human Immunodeficiency Virus is the cause of the disease called AIDS. And many more unquestionable truths that some lunatics who possess M.D. degrees deny. No, I can't explain why.

As these facts are as well established as any in the medical literature, anyone with a medical license who tells people otherwise should lose their license. I'm sure the religious fanatics on the Supreme Court will disagree, but that's my opinion.