The missing context on AB2098
The missing context on AB2098
As the legal battle over the California disinformation accountability law heats up, here is what you need to know
The Koch Industries-backed ‘New Civil Liberties Alliance’ is suing Governor Gavin Newsom over his signing of physician accountability bill AB2098. Dr. Tracy Beth Høeg, a member of the Great Barrington Declaration 2.0 known as “The Urgency of Normal” and Governor Ron DeSantis’s new public health “integrity” committee, is the leading name on the lawsuit. As “The Unity Project” psychiatrist/”ethicist” and Defeat the Mandates speaker Dr. Aaron Kheriaty (also on the NCLA lawsuit) is celebrating on Twitter, a California judge has issued a preliminary injunction against the law. As someone who advocated for the bill, allow me to provide some much needed insight that you won’t get from Koch ally Fox News or direct beneficiary the Brownstone Institute.
Those of us who advocated for this bill, supported by the California Medical Association, agreed that it should not be necessary if the California Medical Board had been carrying out its duty to discipline bad acting doctors per the Summer 2021 Federation of State Medical Boards warning. It was meant to motivate the CMB, which licenses a sixth of physicians in the US, into action. Unfortunately, there were existing issues at the CMB - see T. J. Watkins’s whistleblower case about their failure to protect patients from bad doctors. Even without AB2098, the CMB has the jurisdiction and the responsibility to discipline doctors. There has been no such movement from the CMB since the passage of the law.
AB2098 was narrowly focused to cover just the patient-provider relationship and does nothing to police the social media or any outside the office behavior of these doctors. In any case, there is a big difference between free speech and professional speech. Medicine relies on scientific consensus for guidelines to provide the best quality care to patients. We have years of data on Covid, vaccine safety and efficacy, and the lack of efficacy of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin for the virus. Fox “News” guest Dr. Houman David Hemmati can cry about his “top rated” friends like Laura Ingraham (named in Covid Oversight reports) not being counted as reliable sources and carelessly compare AB2098 to the actual tyranny of Iran all he wants.
In reality, they don’t have the facts to back up their claims. Just because Fox “News” or doctors funded by Koch money say something, does not make it true. Additionally, this is not the only case the NCLA is arguing in California against accountability. The other case had its motion for a preliminary injunction denied so they are at 50% success rate there, not that they/Fox would admit that openly.
Fraudulent Data
Furthermore, the data they continue to push about “early treatment” is based on fraud. French physician Dr. Didier Raolt is responsible for the papers on hydroxychloroquine for Covid pushed in the US by Dr. Simone Gold’s America’s Frontline Doctors. He is now being criminally investigated for this fraudulent work carried out on the homeless in their non-native language (ie. no consent).
The AFLDS ivermectin spin-off the Frontline Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance co-founder Dr. Pierre Kory and Senator Ron Johnson (also named in Covid Oversight reports) called AB2098 “insane” in a September Fox “News” OpEd, claiming it was declaring “war on doctors over so-called medical ‘misinformation’”.
In reality, Kory - another Defeat the Mandates speaker - is responsible for many of the fraudulent, retracted studies on ivermectin for Covid. His FLCCC co-founder Paul Marik (who lost his Virginia medical license) had a history of publishing fraudulent data on Vitamin C for sepsis prior to Covid. Their FLCCC colleague Dr. Flavio Cadegiani is accused of crimes against humanity for his unregistered proxalutamide for Covid trials in the Amazonas region of Brazil.
Dr. Peter McCullough, Kheriaty’s “The Unity Project” colleague was on fraud ivermectin studies out of Australia with Dr. Thomas Borody that are tied to the Ziverdox pharma patent for IVM for Covid. McCullough also has a history of obscuring financial conflicts of interest in his pay-to-play cardiac journal.
Telehealth and Financial Grift
Both AFLDS and the FLCCC used tele-health to push this early treatment grift based off this fraudulent data.
Gold’s AFLDS refused to respond to letters from Rep. James Clyburn’s Select Subcommitte on the Coronavirus Crisis requesting this financial information.
AFLDS’s Dr. Ryan Cole’s recent letter from the Washington Medical Commission explained how he used tele-health and includes the poor outcomes for four patients treated remotely by the rogue pathologist who had misrepresented his credentials.
NCLA’s Own Conflict of Interests
The NCLA, the organization supporting Høeg and Kheriaty’s lawsuit against AB2098, is financed by the Koch Industries. This is the same organization that backed the discredited Covid-minimizing Great Barrington Declaration policy and its “spiritual child” the Brownstone Institute. Both Høeg’s “Urgency of Normal” and Kheriaty’s “The Unity Project” have contributed to the Brownstone.
Furthermore, the Koch Industries are members of the Council for National Policy that created America’s Frontline Doctors to push hydroxychloroquine to downplay the risk of the virus for political gain. For her service with both AFLDS and the Insurrection, Gold has been granted membership to the CNP.
This is not about free speech. This is about Trumpian politics. The Lancet’s September 2022 report “COVID-19 response: a massive global failure” specifically calls out the US government (Trump) and dis/misinformation as sources of this failure. The money behind both come from the Council for National Policy. CNP members the Koch Industries are funding this lawsuit as a face-saving mission. It’s about skirting accountability for their doctors and themselves. It’s not at all about patients, public health, or public safety.
Dangerous Political Radicals
Simone Gold is an insurrectionist and a dangerous political radical, having appeared on Mike Flynn’s “ReAwaken America” tour both before and after her imprisonment. Someone so swayed by politics and ideology (as well as her own profit) over science is not safe to be providing medical care. Her brief stint in prison last summer was the only time her California medical license saw any action - an automatic suspension.
Her deadly fraud is grounds enough to lose her license according to both the FSMB warning, the CMB’s professionalism guidelines, and AB2098. While AB2098 does not cover her out of office action, certainly even “integrity” committee member Høeg and “ethicist” Kheriaty can admit that the stalking, ambushing, and filming of California Medical Board president Kristina Lawson is, to put it extremely lightly, unprofessional conduct. The footage was used for an AFLDS conspiracy film depicting Lawson as a Nazi with a whip. This occurred while Gold was out on bail prior to her sentencing for her role in the Capitol attack. Per her plea deal, she was not to commit any crimes during that time.
Disinformation doctors like Gold have used fear tactics and legal thuggery to try to avoid accountability for their destruction, emboldened by the infinitely deep pockets of their lobby. Høeg and Kheriaty themselves have continued to work with Great Barrington Declaration authors Drs. Jay Bhattachary and Martin Kulldorff who have invoked civil war and guillotine imagery in their revenge fantasy writing in the Brownstone Institute and posting on Twitter. Kheriaty spoke at Defeat the Mandates where people like MAGA-aligned billionaire Del Bigtree called for Nuremberg 2.0 for pro-vax doctors, politicians, and journalists. These are not people to be taking professionalism advice from, especially as attacks on fact-based physicians and scientists picks up with offline consequences.
As the Koch Network continues to misuse free speech and attack all opposition to achieve the very censorship they claim to fight, we ask that the California court considers the people who can no longer speak - the victims of the disinformation doctors’ deadly political fraud.
