California to Doctors: Agree With Us or Shut Up – WSJ

These experts are often wrong and loath to admit it, as we learned with pandemic government lockdowns. Yet California Democrats last month enacted legislation that empowers the state medical board to discipline doctors licensed in the state who disseminate misinformation or disinformation that contradicts the contemporary scientific consensus.

The law grants the board broad discretion to define the scientific consensus and misinformation. Yet seven of the board s 15 members, who are appointed by the Governor and state lawmakers, aren t even physicians. The president is an environmental attorney. Another runs a life coaching company.

As an example of misinformation, a legislative analysis offers the hypothetical of a doctor advising patients to inject themselves with bleach to treat Covid. A doctor who did this could be sanctioned for gross negligence and sued for malpractice. But such egregious examples are rare and don t need a new law to discipline.

The law s real purpose is to silence doctors who disagree with the public-health establishment on controversial subjects on which there is substantial disagreement. One example is Covid vaccines for children, which most public-health officials recommend but the science is far from certain.

via www.wsj.com

Well, this is just a horrible law. And it’s got to be unconstitutional, right? Can the state really compel a doctor to keep silent about vaccinating infants or “gender-affirming surgery”? It’s one thing to say, “The State of California officially declares that the state can take your child away and remove her ovaries! For her own good!” And another thing to say, “And if you’re a doctor, don’t you dare speak up against it or we’ll have your license!”

Hannah Arendt was right. We are quickly sliding toward some weird form of technocratic totalitarianism run by dull bureaucrats. I used to think it was way too alarmist to be true, but I would never have thought we would find ourselves where we are now. I don’t think the doctors and lawyers stood up notably against the Nazis. As I recall reading, there were doctors in the concentration camps, doing unspeakable things.