Medical Board Letters Threatening to Revoke Certifications Over ‘Misinformation’ Contain ‘No Evidence of Any Falsehood:’ Lawyer

A doctor in a file image. Hannah McKay/Pool/Getty Images

The letters sent by medical boards to physicians threatening to revoke their certifications contain vague language and don’t allege any specific falsehoods, a lawyer who sued the boards says.

“The letters generally allege misinformation ... but they’re not specific. They don’t specifically identify anything that’s false that anyone has been saying. There’s no evidence of any falsehood,” Andy Schlafly, who is representing the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons in the legal case, said on NTD’s “The Nation Speaks.”

It’s “sort of general allegations,” he added, “and then it’s a demand that the physicians prove that they’re innocent.”

Both the American Board of Internal Medicine and the American Board of Family Medicine have sent the letters, according to the suit, which was filed in federal court in Texas this month.

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Another board, the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology, has warned providers against disseminating “misinformation and disinformation about COVID-19, reproductive health care, contraception, abortion, and other OB GYN practices that may harm the patients we serve or public health.”

The boards did not respond to requests for comment or could not be reached.

Retaliation

The moves to revoke certifications are retaliation for speaking out on issues related to COVID-19, including criticism of the COVID-19 vaccines, plaintiffs say.

In missives sent in May, the internal medicine board sent threatening letters to doctors “for making public statements that disagree with the approach taken by Dr. Fauci and the Biden Administration to Covid-19,” according to the suit. Dr. Anthony Fauci is the longtime head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser.

The family medicine board distributed similar missives, the suit says.

The letters have threatened to revoke the certifications that the boards bestow. They contain similar wording, according to Schlafly, and were sent out around the same time, raising concerns of collusion.

“They’re not letters that are individual, that were written from scratch for each position. Rather, there’s some sort of template that was copied and pasted from and then a dozen or two dozen letters went out almost on the same day to these physicians,” he said.

The letters are an attempt at intimidation and are having a “chilling effect,” the lawyer said, adding that they are outside of the boards’ normal practices.

The suit asks the court to declare the defendants have violated the First Amendment and to order the boards to stop threatening to revoke certifications.