Dr. Nass stands up for Physician Autonomy and Early Treatment
A crucial and on-going battle around health freedom and the autonomy of physicians was being fought in a corner of Maine this afternoon. How will the evidence be weighed?
Dr. Meryl Nass, an internist with four decades of caring for patients came under national attention over a year ago when her license was suspended on allegations that she was spreading misinformation and using “unauthorized” strategies to treat Covid-19.
Eight months ago, the Maine Board of Medicine dropped their charges against her with regard to the spread of misinformation. Today the board sought to prove that her use of Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin was unsubstantiated and clinically irresponsible.
I cannot overstate the importance of this hearing. The implications here are far-reaching. Links to the live streaming of today’s hearing can be found in this article in Dr. Nass’s substack:
The idea that a State Medical Board can restrict a licensed physician from using fully licensed medications is not only absurd, it is unprecedented. Until the early days of the pandemic in 2020 a physician could, with informed consent from the patient, prescribe any licensed medication for any condition they see fit.
Neither the FDA nor the CDC can dictate the way a doctor practices medicine. They leave that to the State Medical Boards which have, for the most part, stayed out of the way until recently. We are witnessing an enormous power grab by what has been a bureaucracy for decades. It’s an assault on physicians' autonomy. Every doctor in this country should pay attention to what is happening to Dr. Nass.
The Board’s case rests entirely on the validity of the evidence that HCQ and Ivermectin would not only be ineffective in treating patients with Covid-19, but that they would be harmful.
Today’s hearing is the most important to date because the case is finally getting to the nitty-gritty of the science and the ethics of medical practice in this country. Expert witnesses from both sides have been called upon for their opinion.
The Maine Medical Board has called on Jeremy Faust, an Emergency Room Physician who obtained his Board Certification in Emergency Medicine five years ago. It begs the obvious question, why did they settle for a doc with a half-dozen years of experience in the ER and not an expert in epidemiology to make their case about data? Is it because he is the Editor-in-Chief of an on-line publication, Medpage Today, a verifiably pro-vaccine, pro-establishment daily? Here’s how his publication covered the story back in January, 2022
Faust believes that Dr. Nass, a physician with an impeccable record of safe patient care and an expert in Gulf-war syndrome, anthrax vaccines and bioterrorism who has been called upon more than once to give Congressional testimony around such matters, is ill-equipped to assess the data around Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine.
Harvey Risch, MD, PhD, testified in Nass’s defense.
Risch is Professor Emeritus of Epidemiology in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at the Yale School of Public Health and Yale School of Medicine.
He holds a PhD in mathematical modeling of infectious epidemics from the University of Chicago.
He was a faculty member in epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Toronto before coming to Yale.
Dr. Risch is Associate Editor of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Editor of the International Journal of Cancer, and for six years was a Member of the Board of Editors, the American Journal of Epidemiology.
Dr. Risch is an author of more than 400 original peer-reviewed research publications in the medical literature and those research papers have been cited by other scientific publications more than 49,000 times.
Whose opinion will the adjudicators choose to believe? On what grounds will they make their decision?
The Board finds themselves in a similar position that the world has been in for the last three years. What do you do when “experts” disagree? Go with the person with the most experience? Fall into confirmation bias and choose the one who agrees with you? Or do you listen to both openly and decide on the merits of their arguments?
I heard Risch’s analysis of the available data this afternoon. He was clear and convincing. Numerous studies have demonstrated benefit under varying circumstances. He explained in detail how to regard various studies individually and in totality, the danger of cherry-picking results and the unavoidability of uncertainty in proving causality. Although the magnitude of benefit offered by IVM and HCQ is debatable, taken as a whole, there is no way to claim that there are no benefits of these medicines in treating Covid-19.
Perhaps even more significant is that he has shown that the FDA has no evidence that these medications, when appropriately administered in an outpatient setting, carry any significant risk. The FDA’s claims of potential harm from these medications are false, and their decision to suppress the use of these drugs on these grounds cost tens of thousands of people their lives.
In the early days of the pandemic when no treatment or vaccine was officially recommended or authorized, Nass offered all her expertise at a total cost of $60 to Covid-19 patients for the entire course of their disease while the medical autocracy deemed it more appropriate to instruct people with Covid to return to ERs like Faust’s when they were hypoxic and at death’s door.
The Board of Medicine in Maine probably expected that Nass wouldn’t contest their decision over a year ago. Little did they know they were attempting to discredit and defrock a highly informed and prepared clinician who was supported by a legal team funded by Children's Health Defense and defended by renowned epidemiologists and physicians.
This is what happens when you try to make an example of someone who is willing to make a personal sacrifice for the good of the many.
The Board of Medicine now finds itself in a difficult position of having to maintain their position despite mounds of evidence and expert opinion that support Nass’s approach and her competency or dismiss the case against her and in doing so, admit that early treatment with Ivermectin and HCQ was clinically sound.
These hearings are more a cross-examination of public health policy than anything else. This hearing should be of interest to every medical professional in this country.
The board is acting out of purely stubborn hubris. If the reputation of medicine and the profession hasn’t been damaged enough in the last few years these clowns take disgrace to an entirely new level.
It's beyond outrageous that Dr. Nass has to even defend herself against this nonsense. Unfortunately, it is dangerous nonsense with the power to harm.