A recent report in The Washington Post last week reveals just how badly state medical boards have been failing when dealing with physicians spreading COVID-19 misinformation and using quackery to prevent and treat the disease. None of this is anything new, unfortunately. The pandemic has merely stress tested state medical boards, and most have failed because of political choices made long ago.
Last month, Dr. Rashid Buttar, a prominent antivax “integrative medicine” practitioner, died suddenly. Because he hadn’t been vaccinated, antivaxxers struggled mightily to reconcile his death with their conspiracy theories about COVID-19 vaccines. It turns out, however, that that Dr. Buttar had not been a well man since 2016 and was as much a victim of quackery as his patients had been.
Dr. Rashid Buttar, one of the first quacks I ever wrote about, died suddenly last week. Antivaxxers are contorting reality to blame vaccines.
Last week, it was reported how increasingly there is a war on the science-based regulation of medicine and physicians. It’s an old story, but unfortunately the forces arrayed against science-based policy have been emboldened by the pandemic and an stronger alliance with political groups that are against government regulation in general.
Last month, the New England Journal of Medicine published an editorial by the President of ABIM discussing how the board certification can be taken away from diplomates who spread medical misinformation. Is this too little, too late?
