American Medical Association President Opposes Free Speech
Dr. Jesse Ehrenfeld was inaugurated president of the American Medical Association in 2023. He and his colleague—Dr. Benjamin Hoffman, an Oregon-based pediatrician—just wrote a very foolish editorial in MEDPAGE TODAY titled: Medical Misinfo Runs Rampant Online. The Gov’t Must Retain the Right to Intervene.—Combating vaccine falsehoods and other inaccurate claims protects public health
According to Dr. Ehrenfeld’s bio that is posted on the AMA website, he has a distinguished career in anesthesiology.
His bio also states:
Upon his inauguration, Dr. Ehrenfeld made AMA history as the first openly gay president of the organization.
For the past two decades, he has been a nationally recognized advocate for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ+) individuals.
In 2018, in recognition of his outstanding research contributions, he received the inaugural Sexual and Gender Minority Research Investigator Award from the director of the NIH.
I’m immediately struck by the combination of anesthesiologist and gay rights activist, as both endeavors have been matters of great controversy since the mid 19th century.
Imagine if—following Friedrich Sertürner’s discovery of morphine in 1805—medical boards in the United States (affiliated with the British East India Company) insisted that ONLY opioid-based analgesics could be used, and that no one could use ether to anesthetize patients.
To understand just how much disagreement, discussion, and debate there was around the use of ether, take a look at this history of the Ether Controversy.
Imagine if a medical board in Boston established a censorship apparatus to prevent anyone from challenging the supremacy of morphine as an analgesic, so that William Morton, Crawford Long, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. couldn’t publish about the value of ether for surgical anesthesiology.
Fast forward to the end of the 20th century. Imagine if no one was allowed to publish any criticism of the promotion and marketing of OxyContin by Purdue Pharma.
Now imagine if—following the passage of Britain’s Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885, which criminalized sex acts between men—a strict censorship regime was imposed that banned all written protests of the 1885 law.
Imagine that no one was allowed to protest in writing Oscar Wilde’s draconian prison sentence for breaking this law.
Dr. Ehrenfeld gravely errs in his assumption that he and his fellow defenders of orthodoxy are different from the censors of the past. The sentiments he expresses in his editorial are identical to the sentiments expressed by every censor in history.
There is literally ZERO difference.
It makes no difference that our understanding of medical matters is now greater than it was in the past. There is still a universe of things in nature that we do NOT understand.
If the United States Supreme Court accepts Dr. Ehrenfeld’s advocacy of censorship, our Constitutional Republic and the advancement of all knowledge will be imperiled.
Dr. Ehrenfeld should carefully consider the views of Charles Bradlaugh, the British social reformer and MP for Northampton from 1880-1891, who was himself prosecuted in 1877 for publishing a book that explained human reproduction and possible methods of contraception.
Without free speech no search for truth is possible… no discovery of truth is useful…
Better a thousandfold abuse of free speech than denial of free speech.
The abuse dies in a day, but the denial slays the life of the people, and entombs the hope of the race.
See more here substack.com
Header image: Chicago-Sun Times
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Tom
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For sure since the AMA is a big pharma owned agency.
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Saeed Qureshi
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@ “Vaccines have long been one of the safest and most powerful tools in protecting public health..” https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/second-opinions/109343
How? Where is the evidence?
@ “Both the FDA warned of serious adverse effects from people taking ivermectin, an anti-parasitic, to prevent or treat COVID-19, even after numerous studies showed it was entirely ineffective against the virus.” But where is the (scientific) evidence that there is/was the virus?
The authors of the articles are medical practitioners with an M.D. (non-science undergraduate degree), so making claims about science requires some attention (https://bioanalyticx.com/doctors-and-science/). For example, there is no scientific evidence that the virus exists, and treatments, including vaccines, have been tested against it (https://bioanalyticx.com/the-fda-committees-review-of-pfizer-biontech-covid-19-vaccine-unscientific-false-and-deceitful/).
No wonder government help is needed to protect the falsehood.
(https://petermcculloughmd.substack.com/p/ama-president-opposes-free-speech?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1119676&post_id=143005874&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1on4vw&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email)
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