How many Millions Will Die if AB2098 Becomes Law?
Sacramento, CA. September 8, 2022. The most important part of medical treatment is the relationship of trust a patient has in his or her doctors who are honest with their patients and put saving lives above forced narratives. Yet AB2098 requires doctors to lie to their patients and even to let their patients die for a false narrative and and to please the pharmaceutical industry, which has paid off legislators who voted for the bill as well as those who did not speak up. This sits on Gavin Newsom's desk and he will have to decide whether corrupt funding from Big Pharma is worth millions of California's lives. If Newsom signs the bill, the health of California residents and ability of California's best and most honest doctors to continue practicing medicine will lie in the hands of the courts. If the Constitution and precedents are followed, the courts will strike down the law.
There is a long history of tyrants attempting to silence scientists and doctors long before AB2098. The most notable historic example took place in the Seventeenth Century. On June 22, 1633, Galileo was pronounced guilty of heresy, “…of having believed and held the doctrine…that the sun is the center of the world and that it does not move from east to west and that the earth does move, and it is not the center of the world.” He was sentenced to hours arrest for the rest of his life. Imagine Galileo foolishly going against the scientific consensus that the sun revolved around the Earth.
Whether the sun or the Earth is the center of the universe is not a life and death matter but the forcing doctors to refrain from being honest with their patients and save lives when the government approved consensus is lethally wrong, could cost up to forty million lives in the State of California. If Governor Gavin Newsom signs AB2098 into law, the blood of all who die from dangerous injections or failure to obtain competent treatment will be on his hands. The deaths of possibly millions Californians who cannot get proper medical care due to a mass exodus of honest doctors will also be on his hands.
Originally, AB2098 was a terrible bill, forcing doctors to lie to their patients and refrain from life-saving practices but the doctors would not lose their licenses as the they did no harm. The California Senate amended the bill to remove the requirement of doing harm before a license could be revoked and the Assembly approved the amendment. In other words, a doctor who saves thousands of lives using his best judgment can lose his license while a doctor who kills thousands of patients while following a narrative will get to keep his license. The result will be a lack of trust between patients and those doctors who keep their licenses and choose to remain in California. Why would anyone trust a doctor who would sacrifice lives to follow a narrative?
Legislators of both parties are equally guilty and responsible for AB2098. Though it was the Democrats who pushed the bill and removed the requirement of harm, no Republican legislator spoke on the floor against it.
Appointments with doctors and constituents affected by the legislation were scheduled with Democratic legislators (such as State Senator Josh Newman) but these were canceled at the last minute when the legislators discovered the doctors and their affected constituents scheduled were to meet with them opposed the bill. Some legislators simply created excuses to avoid scheduling meetings with doctors and constituents as it was well known that most doctors and constituents opposed the legislation.
Among the groups opposing the bills are the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons. This is what that prestigious and respected organization of doctors has stated.
There is a long history of tyrants attempting to silence scientists and doctors long before AB2098. The most notable historic example took place in the Seventeenth Century. On June 22, 1633, Galileo was pronounced guilty of heresy, “…of having believed and held the doctrine…that the sun is the center of the world and that it does not move from east to west and that the earth does move, and it is not the center of the world.” He was sentenced to hours arrest for the rest of his life. Imagine Galileo foolishly going against the scientific consensus that the sun revolved around the Earth.
Whether the sun or the Earth is the center of the universe is not a life and death matter but the forcing doctors to refrain from being honest with their patients and save lives when the government approved consensus is lethally wrong, could cost up to forty million lives in the State of California. If Governor Gavin Newsom signs AB2098 into law, the blood of all who die from dangerous injections or failure to obtain competent treatment will be on his hands. The deaths of possibly millions Californians who cannot get proper medical care due to a mass exodus of honest doctors will also be on his hands.
Originally, AB2098 was a terrible bill, forcing doctors to lie to their patients and refrain from life-saving practices but the doctors would not lose their licenses as the they did no harm. The California Senate amended the bill to remove the requirement of doing harm before a license could be revoked and the Assembly approved the amendment. In other words, a doctor who saves thousands of lives using his best judgment can lose his license while a doctor who kills thousands of patients while following a narrative will get to keep his license. The result will be a lack of trust between patients and those doctors who keep their licenses and choose to remain in California. Why would anyone trust a doctor who would sacrifice lives to follow a narrative?
Legislators of both parties are equally guilty and responsible for AB2098. Though it was the Democrats who pushed the bill and removed the requirement of harm, no Republican legislator spoke on the floor against it.
Appointments with doctors and constituents affected by the legislation were scheduled with Democratic legislators (such as State Senator Josh Newman) but these were canceled at the last minute when the legislators discovered the doctors and their affected constituents scheduled were to meet with them opposed the bill. Some legislators simply created excuses to avoid scheduling meetings with doctors and constituents as it was well known that most doctors and constituents opposed the legislation.
Among the groups opposing the bills are the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons. This is what that prestigious and respected organization of doctors has stated.
A dangerous bill, AB 2098, has been passed by the California legislature, that will punish physicians who seek to publicly speak out about issues that directly impact their patients’ well being.
For example, under AB 2098, physicians who advocate for the potential benefits of early treatment with off-label drugs, or who ask questions about COVID vaccine safety, could be charged with unprofessional conduct for promoting “misinformation or disinformation” and lose their medical license.
Physicians must not be coerced into blindly following the establishment “consensus” and refraining from entering into debate that is crucial to advancing both science and rational public health policies.
Such a policy would be harmful to the welfare of California patients, the integrity of the medical profession, and the wellbeing of the entire state. https://aapsonline.org/california-alert-ask-legislators-to-oppose-ab-2098-protect-physician-free-speech/
Physicians For Informed Consent included the following to the state legislators regarding the bill.
On behalf of hundreds of physician and surgeon members of Physicians for Informed Consent (PIC) and thousands of our health-freedom members, in the interest of the health and safety of all Californians, and in allegiance to the U.S. Constitution, we oppose AB 2098—and deem it as the worst bill of the 2022 legislative session. https://physiciansforinformedconsent.org/oppose-ab2098/
University of California, Irvine Medical School’s most popular and trusted professor of medical ethics, Dr. Aaron Kheriaty wrote the following letter that was received by all legislators before they voted on the bill.
To: California Legislators and Committee Members
RE: AB 2098: Physicians and Surgeons: Unprofessional Conduct - OPPOSE
As a licensed physician in California I strongly oppose the proposed California bill AB 2098 and urge you to vote no and oppose as well.
Advances in science and medicine typically occur when doctors and scientists challenge conventional thinking or settled opinion. This is the very nature of scientific progress. Fixating any current medical consensus as “unchallengeable” by physicians will stifle medical and scientific advances and give undue authority to a few gatekeepers who act as guardians of the consensus. As I testified in January at a U.S. Senate panel on Covid policy: “The scientific method suffered [during the pandemic] from a repressive academic and social climate of censorship and silencing of competing perspectives. This projected the false appearance of a scientific consensus—a ‘consensus’ often strongly influenced by economic and political interests.”
One need only look at the last two years to see how frequently public health recommendations and consensus thinking about Covid changed from one month to the next with the advent of new information. It was frontline ICU physicians who discovered and spoke out about bad outcomes when patients were prematurely placed on ventilators. This shifted the consensus in the direction of avoiding ventilation as much as possible. Likewise, it was frontline physicians who discovered that placing covid patients face-down in the prone position while they were ventilated could improve outcomes, challenging another consensus. Both of these advances came by way of challenging the way things were currently being done. Other physicians challenged the early consensus, which did not recommend the use of steroids to treat Covid. Eventually, this dissenting opinion gained ground and now represents conventional thinking: corticosteroids for critically ill covid patients are now standard care. Many other examples regarding guidelines on masks, social distancing, and other Covid policies could be cited here.
Allowing the free interchange among competing perspectives is absolutely necessary for scientific and medical progress. Good science is characterized by conjecture and refutation, lively deliberation, often fierce debate, and always openness to new data. The censorship of free speech in AB 2098 spells not only the demise of civil liberties and constitutional rights, but the end of the scientific enterprise when it comes to dealing with Covid in CA.
Patients will not trust physicians if they believe their physician has been muzzled by the law and cannot speak his or her mind honestly. Patients want to know that if they ask their physician a question, including a question about Covid, they will get their doctor’s honest opinion—regardless of whether they follow that opinion, seek a second opinion, or whatever. Patients will not trust physicians if they know their doctor is simply parroting a consensus judgment that he may or may not agree with or endorse.
This bill will not help us to deal with Covid more effectively. Doctors will be punished for practicing medicine according to their best judgment. Informed consent, the foundation of good medical ethics, will be seriously compromised, and the trust necessary for the doctor-patient relationship will be shattered. I strongly urge you and your fellow lawmakers must oppose AB 2098. It will harm not only physicians and medical institutions in California, but even more concerningly, it will harm patients.
Sincerely,
Aaron Kheriaty, MD
Doc1 Health
Newport Beach, CA
Given the vote, the legislators clearly did not care about the health and well-being of California residents. Even the National Law Review, comparing the bill to the forced consensus that resulted in Galileo’s sentence, noted:
An unintended consequence of this bill will be to stifle the scientific process. Yet unsparing skepticism is fundamental to the scientific enterprise. Scientific knowledge is based on a continuing process of questioning, observation and experimentation.
Recently, Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was quoted as saying that the C.D.C. was "responsible for some pretty dramatic, pretty public mistakes, from testing to data to communications" with respect to the Covid-19 pandemic. Although I doubt that AB 2098 was directed at C.D.C. physicians, the bill's definition of "misinformation" certainly creates that possibility. https://www.natlawreview.com/article/could-california-bill-result-discipline-cdc-doctors
With doctors, other experts and affected constituents eager eager to meet with and educate legislators and with extensive information from professional resources having been sent to each of the legislators, no California legislator can deny their culpability in what could turn into the worst medical crisis in California history. If Newsom signs the bill, it will not be without knowledge of the harm it will cause. Then it will be in hands of the courts to attempt to undo the damage and the Constitutional violations AB2009 presents.
If former liberal U.S. Supreme Court Justices William O. Douglas, Hugo Black and John Marshall were alive today, they would be shocked at the passage of AB2098 and would have declared the law Unconstitutional in a heartbeat. William O. Douglas believe all speech was protected by the First Amendment. Douglas, Black and Marshall overturned laws nowhere near as oppressive as AB2098 Former California Governor Earl Warren, who authored the Brown v Board of Education of Topeka Kansas decision, would have been sadly disappointed that his state would even consider adopting such an extremely Unconstitutional law. In 2022, all of the California legislators (particularly the Democrats) are to the far right of the liberals and progressives of the Twentieth Century. Even so, if Newsom signs this bill into law, Constitutional scholars are expecting the law to be tossed as violative of both the California and U.S. Constitutions.
If former liberal U.S. Supreme Court Justices William O. Douglas, Hugo Black and John Marshall were alive today, they would be shocked at the passage of AB2098 and would have declared the law Unconstitutional in a heartbeat. William O. Douglas believe all speech was protected by the First Amendment. Douglas, Black and Marshall overturned laws nowhere near as oppressive as AB2098 Former California Governor Earl Warren, who authored the Brown v Board of Education of Topeka Kansas decision, would have been sadly disappointed that his state would even consider adopting such an extremely Unconstitutional law. In 2022, all of the California legislators (particularly the Democrats) are to the far right of the liberals and progressives of the Twentieth Century. Even so, if Newsom signs this bill into law, Constitutional scholars are expecting the law to be tossed as violative of both the California and U.S. Constitutions.