TUCSON, Ariz., Sept. 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Medical specialty boards are trying to silence physicians who supply nonapproved COVID-19 remedy, or who counsel about adversarial results of COVID-19 vaccines, by threatening to revoke their hard-earned board certification, writes lawyer Andrew Schlafly within the fall challenge of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons.
A lawsuit filed by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons Educational Foundation asks the federal district court docket within the Southern District of Texas to challenge a declaratory judgment that physicians’ First Amendment rights are violated when specialty boards have interaction in concerted exercise with the Biden Administration to suppress opinions they disagree with.
“Though ostensibly nonprofit and non-partisan, [the boards] are outspokenly allied with the Biden Administration on fundamental issues of lockdowns, mask and vaccine mandates, and some of them even on additional issues including abortion and surgical and pharmacological transgender interventions,” Schlafly writes.
“Physicians, like everyone else in the U.S., have a constitutional right and also a duty to speak out on matters of public concern,” he states.
The lawsuit additionally argues that every of the specialty boards has a certification monopoly and that, in violation of antitrust legislation, they’ve abused their examination-based monopoly in an effort to intervene with physicians’ freedom of speech.
“Although specialty boards are not governmental entities, many hospitals and insurance networks require certification by specialty boards, and thus their revocation of board certification can have a devastating effect on the practice of medicine by a physician, in some cases being tantamount to revoking his license to practice medicine,” Schlafly notes.
“Severe harm is already occurring due to the threats made against good physicians who speak out, and legal action to prevent against such retaliation is warranted immediately.”
The Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons is revealed by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), a nationwide group representing physicians in all specialties since 1943.
