Thread by @gbrumfiel

Let's talk about doctors behaving badly. Specifically, licensed physicians who promote misinformation about COVID-19.

And let's start with one in particular: Simone Gold. I've spent much of the past few weeks listening to what she has to say...🧵

npr.org/sections/healt…

Gold describes herself as an emergency physician or, sometimes "a board-certified emergency physician..." That's half-true...

She is a licensed physician in California, but her American Board of Emergency Medicine certification expired in December of 2020.

Her real specialty is misinformation. She inflates the dangers of vaccines by saying they are causing excessive deaths (they’re not: npr.org/sections/healt… )

Or, for example, that they can cause fertility problems (they don’t:
npr.org/sections/healt… )

Gold also pushes alternative therapies that have not been proven effective against COVID0-19. At public talks she promotes $90 telehealth appointments with her group, America’s Frontline Doctors.

I’m not going to go too deep into THAT business model, because @VeraMBergen already hit-it-out-of-the-park with an investigation showing just how problematic those telehealth appointments have been:
time.com/6092368/americ…

Gold has also been arrested for participating in the January 6th insurrection. She’s currently awaiting trial.

She declined through her lawyer to be interviewed for my story, but has pleaded not guilty.

And yet, if you check with the California Medical Board, Gold has an apparently clean bill of health. There’s no record of disciplinary action or malpractice complaints on her record. How is this possible?

It all comes down to the fragmented system in the U.S. for licensing doctors. Each state has its own medical board. And those boards are a mix of doctors, attorneys and members of the general public. They’re really set up for malpractice, not misinformation.

"People assume that licensing boards are on the lookout, they're on the internet," says @DrHankChaudhry, president of the Federation of State Medical Boards. "They actually don't have the resources — neither the money nor the manpower — to monitor what happens on the internet."

Investigations can also take time. The California Medical Board, for example, has to conduct a full investigation and submit it to the state’s Attorney General before action can be taken. Until action is taken, every aspect of the investigation remains confidential.

NPR examined the licenses of 16 doctors. We found that 15 still had active medical licenses more-or-less in good standing. (The exception, whose license has lapsed, still appears as an MD on this platform BTW).

These MDs have a big influence. They appear on conservative talk radio and outlets like Newsmax. They downplay the benefits of vaccination, despite hard data showing an 11-fold drop in COVID mortality amongst the vaccinated.
cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/7…

The @TheFSMB has called on medical boards to get tougher with doctors who distort the risks of vaccination. So far, not much has happened.

For her part, Gold is now awaiting trial. While she does, she continues to give talks as a fully licensed MD.

Finally, if you're interested in more on Gold's rise and personal journey, check out @smencimer’s fantastic investigation for Mother Jones:

motherjones.com/politics/2021/…