A brief detour on the anti-vax route

The American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) has revoked the certification of two physicians for promoting Covid-19 related disinformation. They lead an organization called the Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance, which promotes ivermectin as a treatment for Covid-19 and also supplements to treat what it calls "vaccine injury." The two physicians, Pierre Kory and Paul Ellis Marik called the ABIM disciplinary proceeding "an attack on free speech." That's just as ridiculous as everything else they appear to believe. (Or possibly they're just in it for the money.)

Here we have the usual misconstrual of the concept of free speech from people who spout nonsense and lies. The First Amendment constrains the government. The ABIM is a private organization, and they can establish their own criteria for who and what they endorse. Their mission is to assure the appropriate practice of medicine, based on evidence. The evidence is incontrovertible, that ivermectin is completely useless in treating Covid-19. That's a fact, not an opinion, and it is not subject to legitimate controversy. They could equally well claim that an effective treatment is to swing a dead cat around your head three times and bury it under a rock in the light of the full moon. Also, that "supplements" can treat "vaccine injury" is a completely invented concept with no basis in evidence or reality.

Loss of board certification, unfortunately, doesn't mean they can't still practice medicine. It would limit their employment opportunities, but I assume they don't care about that because they're making money off of their scams. Which means it isn't hard to explain why they purport to believe in nonsense, or have actually convinced themselves of it. What is harder to explain is why these particular preposterous lies remain attractive to a large segment of the public -- especially so since we now do have real effective treatments. 

The only explanation seems to be that a certain demented orange idiot once endorsed the claim, and there are millions of people for whom that is a an unshakeable foundation of belief. Okay, but why is that? It's turtles all the way down. Anyway, that does set up the next post.