26 July 23
Live on the homepage now!
Reader Supported News
THE SMALL DONORS HAVE NOT STOPPED — As is always the case the small donors do not give up, regardless. A few somewhat larger donations to match that effort would do wonders right about now. Sincere thanks to all.
Marc Ash • Founder, Reader Supported News
Sure, I'll make a donation!
Andy Borowitz | Unskilled Florida Man Regrets Missing Out on Being Enslaved
Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker
Borowitz writes: "An unskilled Florida man said that he deeply regrets having missed out on the opportunity to be a slave."
"The article below is satire. Andy Borowitz is an American comedian and New York Times-bestselling author who satirizes the news for his column, "The Borowitz Report.""
An unskilled Florida man said that he deeply regrets having missed out on the opportunity to be a slave.
The man said that his “lack of access to enslavement” had made his acquisition of essential skills “impossible.”
“Every day when I mess something up at work, I wonder to myself, would I be doing a better job if I’d been a slave?” he said. “There’s no question that it would have been a game-changer for me.”
He argued that being barred from forced servitude was a form of “white underprivilege,” and that Caucasians who suffer from a resulting skills deficit deserve reparations.
“Something must be done to compensate people like me who were unfairly denied the chance to be slaves,” he said. “When I think about the personal benefits I was prevented from obtaining, it makes me furious.”
READ MORE
Giuliani's acknowledgment came in a filing Tuesday related to the 2020 election workers' lawsuit about baseless claims of fraud that he made against them. (photo: Jeff Kowalsky/AFP)
Rudy Giuliani Concedes He Made False Statements About Two Georgia Election Workers
Sudiksha Kochi, USA Today
Kochi writes: "Former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani conceded that he made false statements about two Georgia election workers he accused of rigging the 2020 election and counting extra votes."
Former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani conceded that he made false statements about two Georgia election workers he accused of rigging the 2020 election and counting extra votes.
His latest court filing Tuesday is an attempt to resolve their litigation against him.
It also says he refuses to accept his statements caused damage to the plaintiffs, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, who said they faced harassment and death threats after former President Donald Trump accused them of election fraud.
Giuliani maintains his latest admission should not affect his argument that his statements about the 2020 election are “constitutionally protected" by the First Amendment.
The court document says Giuliani did not contest that "to the extent that the statements were statements of fact and otherwise actionable, such actionable factual statements were false," and that he published those statements to third parties.
Giuliani is continuing to fight to dismiss the lawsuit.
Ted Goodman, Giuliani's political adviser, said, “Giuliani did not acknowledge that the statements were false but did not contest it in order to move on to the portion of the case that will permit a motion to dismiss. This is a legal issue, not a factual issue. Those out to smear the mayor are ignoring the fact that this stipulation is designed to get to the legal issues of the case."
Michael J. Gottlieb, an attorney representing Freeman and Moss, said in a statement that the court filing shows his clients acted lawfully during the 2020 election.
"Giuliani’s stipulation concedes what we have always known to be true −Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss honorably performed their civic duties in the 2020 presidential election in full compliance with the law; and the allegations of election fraud he and former President Trump made against them have been false since day one,” Gottlieb said.
READ MORE
A Ukrainian mortar team fires on a Russian trench position from a frontline position in the eastern Donetsk region. (photo: Finbarr O'Reilly/The New York Times)
'They Shoot Without Stopping': Where Russia Is on the Attack in Ukraine
Marc Santora, The New York Times
Santora writes: "Along the vast 600-mile front line, Russia is mostly playing defense. In the northeast, it is once again mounting fierce offensive operations."
Three Russian attack helicopters swooped in low over the city of Kreminna, strafing Ukrainian frontline positions just outside the city. Russian drones circled overhead while Moscow’s ground forces fired heavy machine guns to flush out Ukrainians from foxholes hidden in the dappled light of the pine forest.
As exploding artillery shells shook the ground around him on Saturday morning, Vlad, a 27-year-old Ukrainian drone operator, spotted a Russian armored personnel carrier bringing more troops to the battle. It was a possible prelude, he said, to another assault.
“They are constantly attacking us,” said Lt. Col. Matviychuk Oleh, a 49-year-old battalion commander with Ukraine’s 100th Territorial Defense Brigade. “They are looking for a weak place and then they storm.”
READ MORE
No one was injured in the attack, although 30 appointments had to be canceled. (photo: Caroline Brehman/EPA)
Third Man Arrested in Firebombing of California Planned Parenthood Clinic
Guardian UK
Excerpt: "The suspects - including a US marine - face up to 31 years for a 2022 molotov cocktail attack on the Costa Mesa clinic."
Suspects – including a US marine – face up to 31 years for 2022 molotov cocktail attack on Costa Mesa clinic
US authorities have arrested a third man for his alleged involvement in the firebombing of a Planned Parenthood clinic in southern California last year.
Xavier Batten, 21, was arrested on federal charges on Friday in Florida, the US attorney’s office in Los Angeles said. Officials allege that Batten, along with two other men, including a US marine, conspired to attack a women’s health clinic because it had provided reproductive health services.
The other suspected perpetrators in the attack – Tibet Ergul, 21, of Irvine, and Chance Brannon, 23, of San Juan Capistrano, a marine stationed at Camp Pendleton – are expected to be arraigned in federal court in Santa Ana on Monday, prosecutors said in a statement.
Authorities have charged all three men with conspiracy and malicious destruction of property by fire and explosion, the statement said. Ergul and Brannon also face additional charges.
“The violent and reckless attack on a Planned Parenthood clinic alleged in the indictment is intolerable,” said US attorney Martin Estrada. “This indictment shows that federal law enforcement will work diligently to uncover and hold accountable those who plan and carry out violent extremist acts against others.”
Brannon will plead not guilty, said Kate Corrigan, his attorney. Sheila Mojtehedi, Ergul’s attorney, declined to comment.
The charges are tied to an attack at the Costa Mesa Planned Parenthood clinic, authorities said. At around 1am on 13 March 2022, a Molotov cocktail was thrown at the front of the building and fire spread up a wall and across a ceiling.
Security video recorded two people in hooded sweatshirts and face masks carrying out the attack. No one was hurt but the clinic had to cancel about 30 appointments, authorities said.
“Those who deliberately put lives at risk and damage property by launching improvised explosive devices into public facilities will be sought and will be held accountable, as this case makes clear,” said Donald Alway, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office.
The men face up to 20 years in federal prison for the charges of conspiracy and malicious destruction, as well as up to a year in federal prison for the charge of intentional damage to a reproductive health facility. The count of possession of an unregistered destructive device carries a sentence of up to 10 years in federal prison, authorities said in a statement.
Abortion providers have faced increasing attacks in recent years. A report from the National Abortion Federation found that assaults against abortion clinic patients and staff increased by 128% in 2021.
READ MORE
Jelena Hatfield and her son Liam Parker, 9, outside their home in Sparks, Nevada. Hatfield's husband died in 2022 after taking hydroxychloroquine. (photo: Adriana Zehbrauskas/The Washington Post)
Doctors Who Put Lives at Risk With Covid Misinformation Rarely Punished
Lena H. Sun, Lauren Weber and Hayden Godfrey, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "A Wisconsin doctor in 2021 prescribed ivermectin, typically used to treat parasitic infections, to two covid-19 patients who later died of the disease. He was fined less than $4,000 - and was free to continue practicing."
AWisconsin doctor in 2021 prescribed ivermectin, typically used to treat parasitic infections, to two covid-19 patients who later died of the disease. He was fined less than $4,000 — and was free to continue practicing.
A Massachusetts doctor has continued practicing without restriction despite being under investigation for more than a year over allegations of “disseminating misinformation” and prescribing unapproved covid treatments, including ivermectin, to a patient who died in 2022, according to medical board records.
And in Idaho, a pathologist who falsely promoted the effectiveness of ivermectin over coronavirus vaccines on social media has not been disciplined despite complaints from fellow physicians that his “dangerous and troubling” statements and actions “significantly threatened the public health.”
Across the country, doctors who jeopardized patients’ lives by pushing medical misinformation during the pandemic and its aftermath have faced few repercussions, according to a Washington Post analysis of disciplinary records from medical boards in all 50 states.
State medical boards charged with protecting the American public often failed to stop doctors who went against medical consensus and prescribed unapproved treatments for covid or misled patients about vaccines and masks, the Post investigation found.
At least 20 doctors nationally were penalized for complaints related to covid misinformation between January 2020 and June 2023, according to board documents, which The Post obtained by filing requests with state medical boards and reviewing public records. Five of those doctors lost their medical licenses — one had his revoked, while four surrendered theirs. Discipline is typically connected to patient care, not just what doctors say.
It is impossible to know how many doctors were spreading misinformation because most states do not monitor or divulge those complaints. But The Post’s requests to the boards yielded at least 480 covid-misinformation-related complaints in the last three years — meaning only a tiny fraction of those led to disciplinary action.
The Post investigation, which included a review of more than 2,500 medical board documents, lawsuits and news stories as well as interviews with more than 130 current and former medical board staffers, physicians, patients, health officials and experts, is the most comprehensive national accounting of the consequences for doctors spreading medical misinformation related to the pandemic.
Many of the complaints relate to doctors promoting ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine, which have been disproved as effective covid treatments and are not recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or authorized by the Food and Drug Administration for covid. Health authorities caution that these treatments, which President Donald Trump and his allies frequently touted when he was in office, not only can have dangerous side effects but also may delay patients from seeking proper medical care.
The political polarization fueled by the pandemic spawned a torrent of medical misinformation and exposed the nation’s fragmented system of monitoring the more than 1 million physicians licensed in the United States. State medical boards — the professional licensing agencies composed mostly of doctors — are supposed to investigate complaints and discipline physicians who endanger public health.
But they are barely able to keep up with the more mundane task of issuing licenses, doctors say, let alone monitor social media, where many of the false claims proliferate. Critics say the system is not up to the task of overseeing the medical industry, and was particularly unable amid the explosion of misinformation that accompanied the pandemic.
“We allow the profession to police themselves. And when they fail to do that, even in the most egregious cases, what they are abetting is the erosion of trust and respect for doctors,” said Wendy Parmet, director of Northeastern University’s Center for Health Policy and Law, who has written about the harms of covid misinformation.
No organization monitors how many physicians have been penalized for spreading covid misinformation.
In addition to the doctors who have been disciplined, board documents show that as of June, at least 12 are under investigation for actions linked to the spread of misinformation, a costly and opaque legal process that can drag on for years. State medical boards flagged at least three other doctors on their websites, signaling that they had done something that regulators disagreed with but that didn’t warrant discipline.
Some of the doctors cited in the misinformation-related complaints have defended their actions by saying they adhered to covid-treatment guidelines recommended by organizations that promote alternative therapies — guidelines rejected by major medical societies and government agencies. They said patients died of covid — not because of misinformation or the therapies they provided.
Doctors don’t normally face discipline for promoting treatments that go against medical consensus because state boards are loath to tread on physicians’ medical judgment and First Amendment rights, according to doctors and members of medical boards. Physicians commonly prescribe drugs for conditions other than those they were approved for, a practice known as “off-label” use that boards do not want to curtail.
“State boards can only do limited things,” said Humayun Chaudhry, president of the Federation of State Medical Boards, a nonprofit that represents the licensing agencies. “The most common refrain I hear from state licensing boards is they would like to have more resources — meaning more individuals who can investigate complaints, more attorneys, more people who can process these complaints sooner — to do their job better.”
Instead, the opposite is happening: The boards face new efforts, largely by Republican state legislators and attorneys general, to rein in their authority in ways that are “potentially dangerous and harmful to patient care,” Chaudhry said.
Florida legislators passed a law in May that effectively prevents professional boards from punishing doctors accused of spreading covid misinformation online.
Six other states have limited the power of medical boards to discipline physicians for prescribing ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine.
Ryan Stanton, an emergency room doctor in Lexington, Ky., said he has struggled to treat patients who took as gospel the ineffective treatments some doctors tout on social and right-wing media. One couple in their 60s with covid symptoms wanted only ivermectin in 2021, he recalled. He instead recommended approved treatments, such as steroids, monoclonal antibodies and the antiviral Remdesivir. The couple refused, ending up on respirators and dying of covid days later, he said.
“We can’t have physicians out there using their medical degrees to profess their own beliefs that are just wildly outside the accepted practice of medicine,” Stanton said. “Millions of people latched on to them tightly.”
Death by misinformation
Some doctors who provided patients with ivermectin have said they were following treatment protocols recommended by the Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance, a group of doctors promoting ivermectin as a covid panacea.
In Wisconsin, Edward Hagen prescribed ivermectin to a covid patient in his 50s during a virtual visit in October 2021, after the FDA and CDC had warned against prescribing the drug for covid. The patient, identified only as “G.N.,” died four days later of “probable COVID-19 infection,” according to state disciplinary records.
Hagen prescribed ivermectin to another patient, identified as “J.R.” in state records, who died of covid complications in 2022.
Hagen told The Post he could not force people to go to the hospital when they became sicker. “They didn’t pass away from ivermectin,” he said. “They passed away from covid.”
The Wisconsin medical board reprimanded Hagen in February 2023 for “failing to conform to the standard of minimally competent medical practice which creates an unacceptable risk of harm to a patient or the public,” according to the records. The board suspended his medical license, but the suspension was immediately set aside because Hagen had agreed to complete nine hours of education and pay $3,943 to cover the costs of the board investigation.
Hagen said he would still prescribe ivermectin today because he believes in its effectiveness, despite multiple scientific studies disputing that claim.
“It’s not uncommon to use things off-label,” he said. “It’s not illegal to use things off-label.”
Hagen stressed that he told patients he followed treatment guidelines promoted by the Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance. Unlike doctors, the alliance does not answer to state medical boards, which license only individuals.
Massachusetts physician John Diggs is under investigation for prescribing ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine to a patient with covid symptoms who died in 2022 after being intubated, according to state medical board documents and the board’s executive director. The board alleged that Diggs prescribed the medications despite “clear evidence for the lack of any clinical benefit of hydroxychloroquine” and the fact that “ivermectin has been proven ineffective.”
The medical board accused Diggs of providing treatment to two patients that fell “below the standard of care.” It also accused him of “disseminating misinformation” on a Worcester, Mass., radio program in December 2020 when he promoted unproven coronavirus treatments touted by the alliance. At least two physicians lodged complaints in 2021 accusing him of “physician misconduct related to egregious COVID-19 misinformation and medical care well outside of the standard of care” and alleging “significant risk of patient harm,” board records show.
“We fear that other patients may be at risk because of similar actions and ask the Board to investigate and act decisively,” wrote the physicians, whose identities were redacted by the board.
But Diggs’s patients would not know about the complaints, let alone that he has been under investigation since 2022, even if they knew to check the state database for disciplinary action. The Massachusetts medical board, like those in many states, discloses only final outcomes on its website — not complaints against doctors under investigation.
The Post obtained the information after asking the state medical board for records pertaining to all covid misinformation investigations.
Diggs declined to comment after consulting with his lawyer, who did not respond to questions about the case.
In documents detailing his response to board charges, Diggs denied disseminating misinformation on the radio program but admitted to prescribing ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine and advocating for treatment of covid based on “studies from recognized medical professional organizations.” His lawyer, in the documents, accused the board of violating Diggs’s free-speech rights by “attempting to inhibit the expression of his medical opinions.”
Paul Marik, co-founder and chief scientific officer of the Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance, declined to comment on Hagen’s or Diggs’s cases.
“We are not familiar with the case in Wisconsin or the investigation in Massachusetts and unable to comment on any specifics of either,” Marik said in a statement. He pointed to the “scientific and clinical evidence” cited by the alliance in its treatment protocol. Major scientific studies have disproved the effectiveness of ivermectin in treating covid.
Public trust in science and the expertise and authority of government health officials eroded during the pandemic as basic tools to prevent disease became politicized, allowing falsehoods about the virus to fill the void, said Richard Baron, chief executive of the American Board of Internal Medicine. The decline in trust is especially apparent among Republicans, according to polling by KFF, a nonprofit focused on national health issues, and Pew Research Center.
Much of the mistrust can be traced to confusing guidance about masks released by the CDC throughout the pandemic, according to clinicians and health officials. Politicization of the pandemic further undermined public confidence. Trump frequently promoted the benefits of unproven treatments from the White House podium despite the lack of evidence that they worked for covid. Doctors who espoused such treatments were given platforms on Fox News and invited by Republican legislators to testify in statehouses. A Fox News spokeswoman declined to comment.
U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy and FDA Commissioner Robert M. Califf have singled out misinformation as an urgent threat to public health given the lives that could have been saved by coronavirus vaccines and antivirals. Califf frequently refers to misinformation as a leading cause of preventable death.
“In many people we lost the ideological battle, and they died completely unnecessarily,” Califf said during an appearance at the Aspen Ideas Festival in June.
A widow and a lawsuit
In Nevada, Jelena Hatfield and her husband, Jeremy Parker, did not believe what federal health officials said about the safety or effectiveness of the coronavirus vaccines and refused to get a shot.
Instead, Hatfield said the couple sought what Trump had touted early in the pandemic as an alternative way to protect themselves: hydroxychloroquine. After Trump’s repeated promotion, the FDA issued an emergency-use authorization in March 2020 allowing the antimalarial drug to be used to treat covid. By early June of that year, however, virtually every published study reported that the medication was not effective in reducing death or illness, and the FDA revoked its authorization because of reports of serious side effects, including heart problems.
But a year later, Medina Culver, a family medicine physician in Henderson, Nev., prescribed hydroxychloroquine to Parker as a preventive treatment during a telehealth visit, Hatfield said. She said that Parker had connected with Culver through America’s Frontline Doctors, which shot to prominence in 2020 by challenging pandemic health guidance, and that the doctor never performed a physical exam of her husband.
In January 2022, Parker began having cold-like symptoms, assumed he had contracted covid and, unbeknown to his wife or Culver, took the medication that he had stashed away. The 52-year-old construction worker died within days, Hatfield said.
An autopsy uncovered a small abnormality in Parker’s heart, but the coroner’s office told Hatfield it wasn’t serious enough to kill him, she said. Her husband’s death certificate reads: “Sudden Death In The Setting Of Therapeutic Use Of Hydroxychloroquine.”
Hatfield and the couple’s three children — 9, 15 and 17 — filed a wrongful-death lawsuit in February 2023 against America’s Frontline Doctors and Culver. Hatfield blames the doctors’ group for promoting the disproven covid treatment and Culver for prescribing hydroxychloroquine without examining her husband in person or taking into account his history of high blood pressure, a condition that can lead to heart disease.
On June 12, a state judge denied separate motions by Culver and America’s Frontline Doctors to dismiss the lawsuit. Culver has denied causing Parker’s death. Judge Barry L. Breslow wrote that the evidence was sufficient for the lawsuit to proceed, including a physician expert who said that, “to a reasonable degree of medical probability, Mr. Parker’s ingestion of hydroxychloroquine caused his death.”
Culver did not respond to requests for comment. One of her lawyers, in an email, declined to comment because of “on-going litigation.”
Jose Jimenez, an attorney for America’s Frontline Doctors, in an email to The Post, claimed the safety and efficacy of hydroxychloroquine for covid, citing “389 studies.” Jimenez said the questions asked by The Post show an “egregiously incorrect premise and conclusion based on a random lawsuit in Nevada that attempts a random and erroneous connection” to the doctors’ group.
Culver has not been disciplined, according to state records. In Nevada, as in most states, the medical board disciplinary process is usually triggered only when someone files a complaint, action that Hatfield said she is still considering against Culver. Hatfield said she chose to first file a lawsuit — one way to hold physician groups such as America’s Frontline Doctors accountable for spreading medical misinformation — because she is seeking financial compensation after losing the family’s sole breadwinner. State medical boards do not provide wrongful-death compensation.
“How many families are out there like me, and they still have that hydroxychloroquine in their cabinet waiting for a rainy day,” Hatfield said, “and then that actually be the thing that kills them?”
Neutered medical boards
Following the rise in online covid misinformation, the Federation of State Medical Boards warned in July 2021 that doctors who engaged in the spread of misinformation risked losing their medical licenses.
Two-thirds of state medical boards reported increased complaints “related to licensee dissemination of false or misleading information,” according to a 2021 federation survey of the boards.
But the amplification of medical misinformation on social media “has not been accompanied by any increase in accountability for those who disseminate the misinformation and disinformation,” the federation noted in a 2022 report.
As of June, medical boards in at least 14 states had taken disciplinary action against one or more physicians for misinformation-related causes, The Post’s analysis shows. Nine of those states have Democratic governors, leaving more-conservative swaths of the country unprotected given that board members are usually appointed by the governor, subjecting them to political head winds.
Polls show that Americans who trust conservative news sources are more likely to believe covid misinformation. Many GOP leaders have framed the right of physicians to prescribe unapproved covid treatments as part of the larger battle over “medical freedom.”
And state medical boards face growing barriers to holding doctors accountable.
In the last two years, Missouri, North Dakota and Tennessee have passed laws that would protect doctors from disciplinary actions for prescribing ivermectin, according to The Post’s review of more than 80 bills, including those identified by the Federation of State Medical Boards, the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials and the Center for Public Health Law Research at Temple University.
Republican state Sen. Rick Brattin, who added the provision to the Missouri bill on professional licensing, told The Post that much of what doctors do in their day-to-day practice is either “off-label” or “not based on definitive randomized controlled clinical trials.”
“This is how medicine is practiced,” Brattin said in an email. The fact that some in the medical establishment want to punish doctors for doing what they believe is in the best interest of their patients shows “ideological bias and a desire to suppress dissent from the prevailing orthodoxy,” he said.
In addition, attorneys general in six states — Indiana, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Tennessee and South Carolina — have issued opinions saying doctors can prescribe ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, with four of them determining doctors cannot be disciplined for off-label prescription to treat covid.
Medical boards’ ability to determine unprofessional conduct and mete out discipline varies widely by state, with boards typically requiring punishment for misinformation to be linked to patient harm — not merely espousing treatments debunked by science.
In Maine, the medical board temporarily suspended the license of Meryl Nass, an internal medicine doctor, in January 2022 as it launched an investigation of complaints against her. The board alleged that Nass spread “misinformation” about covid online, including scientifically disproven claims that coronavirus vaccines increase the risk of miscarriage and that drugs such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine are effective in killing the virus, according to the suspension order.
The board also cited complaints from two clinicians that Nass had prescribed ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine to patients without examining them, including one who was later hospitalized and a 28-year-old woman who was six months pregnant, according to board documents and interviews. The board said Nass also admitted to regulators that she had lied to a pharmacist about why she had prescribed hydroxychloroquine to another patient.
Renata Moise, a certified nurse-midwife in Ellsworth, Maine, said she alerted the board that one of her pregnant patients was taking hydroxychloroquine prescribed by Nass. The woman had contracted covid amid the 2021 omicron surge overwhelming hospitals, and Moise feared she would get sicker without proper care.
“It was this feeling of helplessness, a feeling of horror,” Moise recalled. She said most pregnant women in the rural Maine counties she serves hold inaccurate beliefs about coronavirus vaccines, illness and treatment.
In an email to the board, a copy of which she shared with The Post, Moise wrote: “When Dr. Nass promotes, prescribes, or advises treatments for Covid-19 which are not among the approved or recommended treatments, it hampers our ability here … to promote the public health factors necessary for controlling the pandemic.”
But ahead of Nass’s first hearing in October 2022, the board withdrew its misinformation allegations for reasons it would not disclose, leaving multiple charges related to patient care, competency, record-keeping and honesty. Nass, in an interview, called misinformation a “fake crime.” Board officials declined to comment on a pending case.
Nass told The Post she prescribed ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine because she believes in their effectiveness in combating covid. She said two of the patients mentioned in the complaints against her eventually got better and plan to testify in her behalf.
She said she believes the covid-misinformation charges were part of the board’s strategy to pressure her to give up her medical license. Nass said she has never had a malpractice case filed against her. Despite racking up what she said is nearly half a million dollars in legal expenses, she vows not to back down.
“They wanted me to be a poster child to scare other doctors, to stop them from telling their patients what they felt was the truth about hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, the covid vaccines,” Nass said. “I have not pledged allegiance to the FDA, CDC or [National Institutes of Health] guidelines. Medicine is not one-size-fits-all.”
The board has held five hearings on Nass’s case, with the next scheduled for Friday. Her license suspension will continue until the disciplinary process concludes.
Inconsistent, infrequent discipline
When they are handed out, punishments differ drastically by state — even for the same physician accused of misconduct.
Ryan Cole, an Idaho pathologist also licensed in Washington state, has publicly disparaged the coronavirus vaccines as “needle rape” and falsely claimed that ivermectin decreases the chances of severe illness from covid by up to 90 percent, according to allegations in Washington board documents.
The Washington medical board accused Cole of spreading “medical disinformation” by making 19 “false and misleading” statements that “generate mistrust in the medical profession and in public health, and have a wide-spread negative impact on the health and well-being of our communities.” The board accused him in January of multiple instances of unprofessional conduct. His Washington license remains active, pending a September disciplinary hearing.
In a March response to the medical board, Cole, through his lawyer, denied allegations of unprofessional conduct and causing injury or “unreasonable risk of patient harm” to those he treated with ivermectin. The filing says no patients have lodged complaints against him. Cole said any attempt to impose sanctions violated his First Amendment rights and accused the board of “viewpoint discrimination.”
In Idaho, fellow physicians in the state medical association took the rare step of filing a complaint against Cole with the state medical board in October 2021. Many of Cole’s public statements are “profoundly wrong, unsupported by medical research and collected knowledge, and dangerous if followed by patients or members of the public,” according to the complaint, first reported by local media and obtained by The Post. Cole’s prescribing of ivermectin “likely has violated” a doctor’s ethical obligation to “first do no harm,” the complaint said.
But the Idaho medical board has not launched an investigation against him in his home state, Cole said in an interview last year with a prominent anti-vaccine doctor.
Idaho medical board spokesman Bob McLaughlin would not confirm whether Cole is under investigation. Only formal discipline, such as a reprimand or license restriction, is public, McLaughlin said — not information about complaints or the existence or closing of an investigation. Cole’s Idaho medical license remains active, board records show.
Neither Cole, who the Federation of State Medical Boards says is licensed in at least half a dozen states, nor his lawyer responded to requests for comment.
It is extremely rare for physicians to receive the harshest punishment: losing their license to practice.
The Post found just one doctor whose medical license has been revoked for spreading covid misinformation or misleading patients.
Oregon’s state medical board revoked the license of Steven LaTulippe, a family medicine doctor, in September 2021 and fined him $10,000 for refusing to follow covid guidelines in his office and endangering public health and patient safety. The board also cited what it characterized as his professional negligence in treating chronic opioid patients, an accusation he disputed during the board hearing.
At the height of the pandemic, before vaccines were available, LaTulippe and his staff did not wear masks. Patients said they were told to take off their masks when they entered his clinic in Dallas, Ore. Wearing a mask was dangerous, he told them erroneously, because it could contribute to strokes, carbon dioxide poisoning and collapsed lungs, according to disciplinary records and interviews with patients.
Margret Murphy, 60, a longtime patient, said LaTulippe told her in spring 2020 that wearing a mask could be causing her high blood pressure. She found another doctor who changed her medications, and she said her blood pressure went down.
Kathy Ellis-Kelemen brought her 95-year-old mother in for an annual physical that same spring. LaTulippe’s wife, who worked in the office, asked them to remove their masks, saying it would build up carbon dioxide and make her mother faint.
Ellis-Kelemen said LaTulippe did not wear a mask when he examined her mother. She was so worried about the risk of infection that they left.
“I called a few doctor friends. One said, ‘If you don’t report him, nothing will happen, and he’ll just keep doing this,’” Ellis-Kelemen said. She decided to file a complaint only after LaTulippe’s office called to schedule a follow-up appointment and informed her the staff was still not wearing masks.
During his March 2021 board hearing, LaTulippe testified that there was “a tremendous amount of fearmongering with the masks and a lot of confusion about who do I believe.” He cited his affiliation with America’s Frontline Doctors to set his views apart from those of mainstream medicine. The board concluded that LaTulippe had engaged in “unprofessional and dishonorable” conduct in refusing to mask and providing information about masks that was “counter to basic principles of epidemiology and physiology.”
LaTulippe sued the board, but the Oregon Court of Appeals this spring upheld the board’s revocation of his license.
Reached by phone, LaTulippe said he was not going to address any questions about his case. “I am appealing to the Oregon Supreme Court,” he said.
READ MORE
Concertina wire encompasses a temporary barrier near the Expeditionary Legal Complex within Naval Station Guantánamo Bay, June 27, 2023. (photo: Elise Swain/The Intercept)
Despite US Guarantee, Guantánamo Prisoner Released to Algeria Immediately Imprisoned and Abused
Elise Swain, The Intercept
Swain writes: "In emails obtained by The Intercept, the State Department made repeated assurances about Saeed Bakhouch's 'appropriate and humane treatment.'"
In emails obtained by The Intercept, the State Department made repeated assurances about Saeed Bakhouch’s “appropriate and humane treatment.”
When Saeed Bakhouch was repatriated to Algeria in late April from the U.S. prison at Guantánamo Bay after 21 years of detention without charge, his lawyer was assured by the State Department that he would be treated humanely. Still, his longtime lawyer, H. Candace Gorman, worried about her client’s upcoming release. Bakhouch’s mental health had deteriorated in the last five years; he had stopped meeting with her and retreated into himself. She feared that her client might be arrested after being returned to Algeria unless given real help and resources.
That’s exactly what happened. Almost immediately after Bakhouch landed in Algiers, he passed through the usual interrogation process for former Guantánamo detainees in Algeria. After a two-week period of detention and interrogation, he appeared before a judge in early May. The judge told Bakhouch that his story did not match what the information the U.S. provided, Gorman explained to The Intercept.
“He was being stripped of all of his rights,” Gorman said. Bakhouch was sent into pretrial detention and, for nearly three months, he has been held under brutal conditions. His hair and beard were forcibly shaved; he has been physically assaulted; and he has been deprived of his Guantánamo-issued medications to treat his injured heel. Now, human rights groups are alleging that Bakhouch is facing severe abuses in detention.
As the Biden administration works to end America’s “forever wars” abroad, the State Department ramped up efforts to release the remaining 16 Guantánamo prisoners who were never charged with any crime and have been cleared to leave the prison. (In total, 30 detainees are still at Guantánamo.) Since Joe Biden assumed office, a slow but steady stream of these prisoners have quietly left the prison’s infamous gates. Like Bakhouch, they are all followed by a vexing question with few answers: Who, ultimately, is responsible for deciding what their freedom means?
Re-imprisoned in Algeria, Bakhouch is only the latest in a string of former Guantánamo detainees facing rights abuses after repatriation or placement in third countries. The question of responsibility over his well-being has pitted the State Department against human rights advocates who contend that his condition meets no viable definition of freedom.
“If anyone had ever given me any hint at the State Department that they have no authority once he steps off the plane, I would have put the brakes on because I know Saeed trusted that I wouldn’t let him go unless I was assured that he would be treated right,” Gorman told The Intercept. “And so the fact that they are now claiming that there’s nothing they can do and that this is a different country and we have no control over that — then why the fuck are you telling me you have their assurances.” (The State Department did not provide comment on this story by publication time.)
In June, the United Nations special rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, published a detailed report on rights violations related to the U.S. detention at Guantánamo. Among other abuses, Ní Aoláin found that transfers of detainees to foreign countries had resulted in their own human rights violations. Among other complaints — torture, arbitrary detention, and disappearances, in some cases — she found in 30 percent of documented cases, the released detainees were not given proper legal status by the recipient countries.
“In these harmful transfers, facilitated and supported by the United States,” the U.N. report said, “there is a legal and moral obligation for the U.S. Government to use all of its diplomatic and legal resources to facilitate (re)transfer of these men, with meaningful assurance and support to other countries.”
As men continue to be released from the prison at Guantánamo, Ní Aoláin told The Intercept that she “continues to be deeply concerned about the robustness of the U.S. Government’s non-refoulement assessment and the protection of human rights for those who have been transferred from Guantanamo Bay to countries of nationality or third countries.”
Human Rights Letter
In a desperate effort to draw attention to Bakhouch’s enduring incarceration, the Center for Constitutional Rights, or CCR, published an open letter with signatories from the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, and other nongovernmental groups, urgently pressuring the State Department to intervene. The letter, published Wednesday and shared exclusively in advance with The Intercept, alleges that the U.S. provided the Algerian government with harmful and unfounded allegations about Bakhouch’s past — information that led to his detention — and that Bakhouch is imprisoned under severe conditions which violate international law. (The Algerian embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.)
“Despite being transferred out of Guantánamo on the basis that he no longer posed a significant risk to the United States,” the letter says, “Mr. Bakhouch was told by the Algerian lawyer assigned to represent him in trial that the United States provided the information to the Algerian government that led to them charging him with having sworn allegiance to Osama Bin Laden.”
“This allegation is woefully unfounded,” the letter continues, “and we are deeply troubled by the fact that Mr. Bakhouch is being detained on this basis and enduring abuse in Algerian custody, purportedly in part because of false or incomplete intelligence information from the United States.”
The CCR-led letter is addressed to Ambassador Tina Kaidanow, who heads the State Department office responsible for transferring men out of Guantánamo Bay. Kaidanow was appointed in August 2022 and has been repeatedly criticized in the past for failure to respond to botched resettlement deals. Most of the deals were not of her own making; she inherited a mess of released detainees in crisis — some have been re-incarcerated and tortured, forcibly repatriated, or denied legal asylum status.
With only her office to appeal to for assistance, lawyers and human rights advocates are growing increasingly concerned that, irrespective of the deals’ authorship, the struggling former prisoners have no diplomatic support from the State Department.
Now, with Bakhouch’s immediate and brutal re-incarceration, Kaidanow appears to be helming her own botched deal.
State Department Assurances
Emails from Kaidanow and her staff at the State Department’s Bureau of Counterterrorism to Gorman, which were obtained by The Intercept, show a pattern of vague reassurances, incompetence, and general disregard.
After Bakhouch’s release was approved but before he was transferred out of Guantánamo, he languished simply because the staffer who needed to sign his papers was unaware that was a part of their job responsibilities, Gorman learned from a phone call with Anand Prakash, a policy adviser to the Office of the Special Representative for Guantánamo Affairs. Prakash, she said, apparently found the mishap funny, leading Gorman to become more concerned that the State Department staff wasn’t taking her concerns for Bakhouch’s well-being seriously.
“With no family to help Mr. Bakhouch this will be a very difficult transition and I fear my client might become homeless — or worse — locked up,” Gorman wrote to Prakash. “Please let me know what you can about assistance that will be offered to Mr. Bakhouch.”
Prakash, who was unable to provide details of the diplomatic agreement with Algeria, replied, “I can assure you we will work to ensure that he is given appropriate and humane treatment upon return.”
On May 7, Gorman informed the State Department’s Guantánamo desk that her client had not been released as she had expected; instead, he had been re-imprisoned. “This is very distressing for us to hear – it’s not the outcome we expected when we repatriated Saeed to Algeria, and we are taking steps to find out exactly what happened,” Jessica Heinz, a staffer in the Guantánamo Affairs office, replied a day later. “I assure you we are looking into this and will take the steps necessary to ensure Saeed is in a good place post-release.”
As the month of May unfolded and Bakhouch sat in prison, Gorman repeatedly emailed asking for updates and more information — missives that went largely unanswered. By the end of the month, the veteran lawyer had received no updates or new information on the circumstances of her client’s imprisonment from Prakash or Heinz.
Fed up with the apparent inattention to the issue, Gorman eventually escalated and fired off a heated email to Kaidanow herself. Gorman pleaded for immediate help, pointing to Bakhouch’s severe mental health struggles with PTSD and depression. “I recognize your concern,” Kaidanow wrote back. “We and our colleagues in Algeria are doing everything we can to ascertain what the status of Mr. Bakhouch currently is and what his ultimate disposition will be. We take every precaution possible to ensure that detainees will be effectively rehabilitated once they are returned, but we cannot prevent the receiving country from acting according to their own laws and procedures.”
Bakhouch’s Mental Health
The letter from CCR to Kadainow raised the State Department failure to fully reckon with Bakhouch’s mental health issues. It was a point Gorman repeatedly emphasized prior to her client’s release from Guantánamo. The State Department staff writing the emails obtained by The Intercept at no point specifically acknowledge Gorman’s repeated concerns over Bakhouch’s mental well-being.
“Before his transfer, the State Department was made aware of a medical opinion about Mr. Bakhouch’s mental trauma and diagnosis of PTSD and depression related to his torture and detention, and that his U.S. attorney communicated concerns about his reintegration in Algeria to your office several times,” the letter says. “Unfortunately and alarmingly, these concerns seemed to have been disregarded at best and weaponized at worst now that Mr. Bakhouch is in custody in Algeria.”
Concerned that Bakhouch had no family support in Algeria, Gorman continually asked about adequate resources to make sure he did not become homeless after repatriation. In one email, Prakash suggested Gorman reach out to Reprieve and the International Committee of the Red Cross — two nongovernmental groups that work with former detainees and human rights issues — to help Bakhouch readjust to life in Algeria.
At one point before Bakhouch’s release to Algeria, Gorman requests information on what assistance the State Department planned to give her client. “Could you please tell me if our government has made any arrangements with the Algerian government to help settle Mr. Bakhouch when he arrives back in Algiers?” she asked.
“There’s not a whole lot I can share re the specifics of our bilateral arrangements,” Prakash wrote in an email, “but I can say we are working to ascertain what the host gov can provide after transfer, and I can assure you we will work to ensure that he is given appropriate and humane treatment upon return. As you likely know, our standard agreements include reference to humane treatment.”
In the emails reviewed by The Intercept, Kaidanow invokes her commitments to personally ensure that each transfer goes smoothly with a focus on “reintegration and rehabilitation.”
Sufyian Barhoumi, another former Guantánamo detainee who was repatriated to Algeria in early April 2022, said those words mean “nothing at all.” Barhoumi and his lawyer, CCR’s Shayana Kadidal, said they have not been contacted by either the U.S. or Algerian governments. Barhoumi said nongovernmental organizations too, including the ICRC and Reprieve, had been unable to offer him assistance.
“In the course of Reprieve’s Life After Guantánamo work,” Reprieve’s U.S. joint executive director Maya Foa wrote to The Intercept, “we have consistently seen how hard it is for men subjected to this appalling mistreatment over many years to escape further persecution — whether repatriated or transferred to host countries. For many men, the abuse follows them forever; the stain of Guantánamo does not disappear once they are transferred.” (The ICRC did not meet the deadline to comment prior to publication.)
“Arbitrarily detaining so many men without trial has indelibly stained the USA’s reputation as a country founded on the rule of law,” Foa said. “Rehabilitation, reintegration, and reparation for all the men is the direct responsibility of the U.S. Government.” (Reprieve U.S. is a signatory on the letter sent Wednesday to Kaidanow.)
With no income or resources, Barhoumi said he feels stuck and alone: “I just need to start my life.”
State Shirking Responsibility
Gorman has continued to try to spur the State Department into action on Bakhouch’s behalf. Nearly two full months after Bakhouch was imprisoned in Algeria, Kadainow finally replied with specifics, saying she had “a chance” to speak with relevant diplomatic colleagues.
“Our Ambassador in Algiers was informed that Mr. Bakhouch is being charged under Algerian law for membership/affiliation with a foreign terrorist organization, which is a serious crime under Algerian law,” Kaidanow wrote. “He is currently under pre-trial detention while his case is under review by the Court d’Instruction, which will ultimately decide whether to bring him to trial or dismiss the charges and release him. The information regarding his case is still sealed.”
Kaidanow added, “We continue to assert our interest in his humane treatment and legal rights in a variety of high-level settings.”
The U.S. — and Kaidanow’s — position seems clear: Algeria is responsible for what they now intend to do with their citizen. The U.S. has no further responsibility beyond asking them to honor their commitment to human rights.
For CCR, the lack of direct intervention is unacceptable, but there is little to do but continue to advocate for more care.
“Closing Guantanamo is not just about policy, it’s about people — the people who’ve been detained and tortured by the United States, and the obligations that the U.S. government has to them because of this,” said Aliya Hussain, CCR’s advocacy program manager. “These international law obligations continue even after the men are transferred to other countries, and they are unequivocal, which the Special Rapporteur makes clear in her recent report.”
If the State Department doesn’t follow up and enforce diplomatic assurances, the assurances are worthless, Hussain explained. “How they respond to Mr. Bakhouch’s situation in Algeria will signal how much oversight and advocacy they are willing and committed to undertaking to ensure the success of future transfers.”
READ MORE
Val Martin and Ashford Joseph rehydrate after climbing stairs in Eleanor Tinsley Park in Houston, Texas, July 12, 2023. (photo: Adrees Latif/Reuters)
More Than 40 Million People in the US Live in Urban Heat Islands, Climate Group Finds
Nidhi Sharma, NBC News
Sharma writes: "About 41 million people in the U.S. live in urban heat islands, where city topography elevates temperatures by at least 8 degrees Fahrenheit, according to an analysis published Wednesday by Climate Central, a nonprofit research group."
Urban heat islands occur when cities replace land cover such as forest, open water and greenery with buildings, pavement and other materials that absorb and retain heat.
About 41 million people in the U.S. live in urban heat islands, where city topography elevates temperatures by at least 8 degrees Fahrenheit, according to an analysis published Wednesday by Climate Central, a nonprofit research group.
Urban heat islands occur when cities replace land cover such as forest, open water and greenery with buildings, pavement and other materials that absorb and retain heat. While the heat effect is most noticeable during summertime, urban heat islands are warmer all year-round.
The Climate Central analysis covers 44 cities and highlights how certain populations are affected more acutely by global warming, in which global surface temperatures have risen at rates unprecedented in 2,000 years, according to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
“We’re basically talking about a phenomenon where there’s a measurable increase in urban air temperatures that’s caused by the way the city is built,” said Kaitlyn Trudeau, a climate scientist with Climate Central. “It’s additional warming that is caused by dark building materials, dark pavement, building heights, population density and lack of green space.”
The report comes as a separate group of climate scientists said Tuesday that the heat waves simultaneously baking parts of the U.S. and Europe were “virtually impossible” if not for climate change.
The analysis relies on a database that classifies census tracts into 16 different land types. A city census tract can be dominated by compact high-rise buildings, large low-rise buildings, dense trees or a combination of several land types.
Different land types correspond to changes in temperatures, according to a methodology developed by researchers in 2020. Using this method, Climate Central researchers were able to calculate temperature increases for different cities, said Jen Brady, a researcher with the nonprofit.
Climate Central researchers found that nine major cities — New York, Houston, Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago, San Antonio, San Diego, Phoenix and Detroit — each housed at least 1 million people currently affected by the urban heat island effect.
In New York City, the group reported that almost 80% of the population experiences temperatures at least 8 F warmer than a nonurban environment, followed by Houston, where 73% of city residents live in such urban heat islands.
Some smaller areas in each city see even higher temperatures. In Miami, 2% of the city’s population experiences temperatures 12 F warmer than nonurban areas.
Experts studying urban heat islands say the issue has important implications for both health and equity. Higher temperatures for people living in urban areas means a greater risk of exacerbating medical conditions and even heat-related deaths, said Jeffrey Schlegelmilch, the director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia Climate School.
“The urban heat island effect tends to impact poorer neighborhoods, majority-minority neighborhoods,” Schlegelmilch said. “The areas that tend to get hotter don’t have the resources to invest in well-insulated housing or tree cover. They’re more vulnerable to the effects of climate change.”
Evan Mallen, a senior analyst for the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Urban Climate Lab, said the Climate Central analysis is an important launchpad for sparking more research on urban heat islands, though more work needs to be done to understand how to address the issue.
Trudeau said some potential solutions include planting more green spaces in cities, painting city roofs and buildings white to help reflect heat, and using alternative cooling materials for pavement and sidewalks — even small actions, like planting trees locally, help cool cities down.
READ MORE
Contribute to RSN
Follow us on facebook and twitter!
Update My Monthly Donation
PO Box 2043 / Citrus Heights, CA 95611
