The Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) recently issued a statement about how doctors must communicate with patients about COVID-19 vaccines. The FSMB is a non-profit organization that represents the medical boards of the individual states and territories. The state boards license medical doctors, investigate complaints, and mete out disciplinary action. The statement is an astonishing bit of medical authoritarianism that should terrify patients expecting to receive informed consent and have an honest discussion with their doctors about COVID-19 (emphasis added).
Physicians who generate and spread COVID-19 vaccine misinformation or disinformation are risking disciplinary action by state medical boards, including the suspension or revocation of their medical license. Due to their specialized knowledge and training, licensed physicians possess a high degree of public trust and therefore have a powerful platform in society, whether they recognize it or not. They also have an ethical and professional responsibility to practice medicine in the best interests of their patients and must share information that is factual, scientifically grounded and consensus-driven for the betterment of public health. Spreading inaccurate COVID-19 vaccine information contradicts that responsibility, threatens to further erode public trust in the medical profession and puts all patients at risk.
Which facts? Suppose a doctor listened to the discussion about boosters and heard Doran Fink, M.D., deputy director of the clinical side of the FDA’s Division of Vaccines and Related Products Applications, discuss cardiac-related risks post-vaccination. When Dr. Arnold Monto, the acting committee chair, asked Fink if it was possible to determine at what age the side effect ceased to be a problem, Fink answered:
“If you look at the healthcare claims data, you see that there is evidence of some attributable risk at all age groups, although, the older you get, the higher the risk of complications from COVID that offset the risk of myocarditis,” he said. “So, when you look at the balances of risk versus benefit, what we really start to see is risk of myocarditis being higher [than COVID-19] in males under age 40.”
Fink also told the advisory committee that the risk of myocarditis was 1:5000 according to medical claims data. Say a doctor is counseling a 24-year-old male with healthy body weight and no pre-existing conditions. Understanding the current data, he tells his patient that the vaccine’s risk of cardiac side effects is more significant than risks related to COVID-19. Would he be putting his license at risk for misinformation? The physician would be quoting an FDA official but deviating from the narrative that everyone must be vaccinated.
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