Politician pressures board to protect Tennessee’s ‘medical quacks’
EDITOR:
In response to Dec.15, 2021, state Rep. Ragan’s guest column ...
The anti- misinformation policy, unanimously adopted by the Board of Medical Examiners in September, established that doctors who spread demonstrably untrue information about COVID-19 vaccines could have their licenses suspended or potentially revoked.
Members voted 7-3 to delete — but not rescind — this policy under improper pressure from Rep. Ragan.
The proposed targeting and misinformation policy adopted in September aligned the official position of the board with the stance of the Federation of State Medical Boards, an overarching association of similar licensing officials. The entire policy was little more than one paragraph establishing doctors have an “ethical and professional responsibility” to share factual, scientifically-grounded information and could face consequences if they did not.
Board members also directed the Department of Health to begin investigating doctors who spread disprovable claims to patients or on social media. Investigators were told to prioritize cases involving obvious falsehoods or outrageous lies that vaccines are poisonous, cause infertility, contain microchips or can magnetize the body.
“I don’t know that we can police opinion, even though it’s wrong and even though it’s causing – obviously causing – major problems in this state,” said board member Dr. Debbie Christiansen at the September meeting. “But we can tell people they cannot say things that are absolutely false.”
The core purpose of the Board of Medical Examiners is to credential qualified medical practitioners and properly police the profession. Permitting a licensed medical professional to treat his patients with quack cures or withhold scientifically and medically accepted methods and treatments, such as vaccines, based on personal preferences or other considerations is witchcraft and not permissible in a rational, democratic society.
Rep. Ragan, without a rational basis or sound medical grounding, has imposed his political slant on barring the proper supervision of those licensed medical professionals veering toward medical quackery. The recent history in this state with the bruhaha over vaccines for teens and now this political overreach, clearly places the public’s health in the state on very tenuous grounds and in the hands of quacks and politicians.
Harry Shatz
Norris
