California needs a remedy for doctors who spread COVID disinformation
California needs a remedy for doctors who spread COVID disinformation San Francisco Chronicle
The patient’s wife was crying on the other end of the phone. It was 2020 and her husband was in the intensive-care unit with COVID. He was getting sicker each day, and the medicine their family doctor had prescribed “might have stopped working,” she explained.
Her nephew had connected us and she’d reached out to me because she wanted “another doctor’s opinion.”
I asked what drug her husband had been taking. “Hydroxychloroquine. He’s been taking it for weeks.”
“Weeks?” I asked. “Why would he take it for weeks?”
“Because the doctor said if we both took it, we wouldn’t get sick with COVID in the first place.”
For every epidemic, there is a clout-chasing snake oil salesperson touting fake cures. As a public health physician, a former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Epidemic Intelligence Service officer and a health reporter, I’ve tracked the spread of disease and disease disinformation for a decade, through outbreaks of Ebola, Zika, whooping cough, and now, COVID and monkeypox. Back in 2020, I fielded call after call about hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, medicines approved to treat malaria, rheumatoid arthritis and other diseases — but not COVID. The drugs were touted by then-President Donald Trump as a potent elixir against the new coronavirus, even after the Food and Drug Administration revoked its emergency use authorization in June that year, and clinical trials published that summer showed the drugs did not prevent or treat COVID.
What’s worse than a president pushing unproven cures? Medical professionals who spread medical misinformation.
Even as the evidence against hydroxychloroquine piled up, some doctors continued prescribing the drug for COVID. Unwitting patients filled prescriptions and became sick with the virus, the drug’s side effects or both. Thousands of people suffered needless pain and died avoidable deaths simply because they were duped, some of them by doctors.
As for those whose lives depended on hydroxychloroquine to treat conditions such as lupus and sarcoidosis, they were left scrambling for dwindling supplies thanks to the new COVID wonder drug.
Friends often ushered frantic loved ones my way. For them, I was a trusted voice on the pandemic. But in instances when the worried people I spoke with had been misled about COVID by their own doctors — medical professionals who had cared for them and their families for years and sometimes across generations — there was only so much I could say to correct the lies. My corrections, in the face of opposing advice from their own doctors, caused confusion.
Misinformation spread by medical professionals wreaks a particular type of misery. In my research, I found that the spread of false health information inflicts the deepest damage when retweeted and reaffirmed by those we entrust with our bodies in our most vulnerable moments. But even as a misinfodemic continues to spread alongside COVID, there has been little recourse against medical professionals who exploit their platform and accolades to spread lies.
Until now.
Last week, a new bill, AB2098, designed to counter the spread of COVID falsehoods spread by medical professionals, passed both houses of the California Legislature. The bill follows last year’s warning by the Federation of State Medical Boards that doctors who share misinformation risk disciplinary action by medical boards. But so far, not a single state has codified that policy. If signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom, AB2098 would make California the first state to take legal action against medical professionals who spread COVID lies. These medical professionals could face disciplinary action for unprofessional conduct by the Medical Board of California or the Osteopathic Medical Board of California. As a result, their state medical licenses could be suspended or revoked.
The bill defines unprofessional conduct as spreading false information about COVID and its treatments. It defines misinformation as “false information that is contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus contrary to the standard of care.” Some critics have argued that since standards of care can shift during emergencies, this definition jeopardizes the foundation of the scientific process, which includes the intellectual freedom to push back against a consensus view.
Having witnessed firsthand the sickness and angst caused by doctors who spread lies, however, I believe this bill is an important first step in holding accountable the people we trust with our lives.
Yes, there is a chance that this bill could backfire. Suspending or revoking licenses may not deter some medical professionals; it might fan the flames of fame and falsehoods. Some doctors have flipped negative publicity to boost social media followings, decry a deep state that suppresses free speech, aligned themselves with high-ranking public officials who also spread anti-science lies and become the go-to doctors for those seeking illegitimate vaccination exemptions.
The woman I spoke with in 2020 texted weeks later to say her husband was on the mend. Despite the news stories and journal articles that I shared with her, she believed hydroxychloroquine may have saved his life because her family doctor had told her so.
Gov. Newsom has two weeks to sign this legislation. Although its passage into law will be too late for many, California’s medical misinformation bill could prevent further needless pain and death and finally offer a remedy against medical professionals who spread medical misinformation.
Dr. Seema Yasmin is director of the Stanford Health Communication, visiting assistant professor of crisis communication at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, and author of “What the Fact?! Finding the Truth In All the Noise.”
