Medical Censorship and the Erosion of Scientific Discourse: Patients and doctors must navigate bias in an era of suppressed debate

Abstract

Medical care should remain insulated from partisan political pressures, preserving clinicians’ obligation to provide impartial, patient-centered treatment. (1) However, many professional medical organizations now extend their activities beyond direct representation of physicians and patients by issuing policy statements and engaging in legislative and public-policy advocacy; in one analysis of six major U.S. organizations, 33.2% of policy statements were classified as ideologically aligned. (2) During the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. news coverage was highly politicized and polarized, with politicians receiving more attention than scientists in newspaper coverage. Such a communication environment complicated evidence-based professional discussion of contested medical and public-health questions. (3) "Prevailing" establishment views on issues such as COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness, mask mandates, and vaccine hesitancy were often labeled as "consensus" by key leaders, allowing them to classify dissent as "misinformation" and threaten doctors who disagreed. (4) Despite warnings about the problems that can occur when medical boards are used to regulate misinformation, (5) the American Board of Internal Medicine revoked the specialty-board certifications of Pierre Kory, MD, Paul Marik, MD, and Peter McCullough, MD. Kory’s revoked credentials included internal medicine, pulmonary disease, and critical care medicine; Marik’s included internal medicine and critical care medicine; McCullough’s included internal medicine and cardiology. (6)