We need more doctors to stand up for their patients, and true science, as forthrightly as she’s doing in Maine.
(Scroll down for Sarasota Vaccine Choice’s salute to Dr. Nass for her honesty and intrepidity.)
First Comment: The state created an irresolvable conflict of ethical vs legal obligations that would be regarded as ‘inducement’ in other contexts – i.e. they’re motivating the act that they’re penalizing, have eliminated alternative options, and based the violation on an otherwise conventional and riskless behavior.
Friday, January 14, 2022
https://anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com/2022/01/my-lie-or-how-federal-and-state.html
In early December, I had a very high risk patient for whom I had already prescribed ivermectin pre-COVID, but I had suggested getting him hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) when he got COVID, because he was at such high risk of an adverse outcome. According to Maine’s emergency rules, doctors can prescribe hydroxychloroquine for COVID only after a patient gets sick.
I had also prescribed supplements and vitamins. When the patient called me with COVID, I wanted to get him HCQ as quickly as possible, as it only works at the beginning of the illness.
In early 2020 any pharmacist would dispense the drug without asking for a diagnosis, but by late March 2020 controls were quietly placed on the drug in most US states. In Maine, you had to attest that a patient had “active COVID” to get it dispensed, per our emergency rules, which were never voted on by a legislature.
However, in late August 2021, a concerted effort was made by state and federal agencies to stop patients accessing both ivermectin and hydroxychloroqine. CDC sent out an urgent warning about potential overdoses, citing only one person who used an animal product and one who got it on the internet. There was no evidence anyone had suffered as a result of the prescribed drug. Doctors in several states suddenly lost their licenses for prescribing ivermectin, and they made the national news. It became obvious to me then that a campaign was afoot to terrorize prescribers to stop issuing prescriptions.
I wrote about this on September 5, and then Dr. Justus Hope (pseudonym for a real physician) wrote about ivermectin heresy in California’s Desert Review.
At the same time, the supply was suspiciously drying up. Wholesalers or drug middlemen began saying they were unable to access ivermectin to supply pharmacies. I contacted the US’ largest manufacturer of ivermectin, Edenbridge, and their head of sales said they were producing it in normal amounts. But it wasn’t getting to the drugstores. She sugggested I try some of the smaller distributors to obtain some for my patients.
Only a few small compounding pharmacies, which had a larger choice of wholesalers, were still able to obtain sufficient quantitities, but they too sometimes ran out.
Then in late September, Maine’s Pharmacy Board (an arm of state government) contacted all of Maine’s pharmacists with a threatening letter, demanding they review all prescriptions and only dispense ivermectin for “legitimate” purposes.
Maine’s pharmacists know how to read between the lines, and so nearly all of them stopped dispensing both ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. They suspected if they didn’t, they could be inspected and potentially closed down or lose their license. The harrassment of me by the board no doubt clinches their suspicions.
By the way, these actions are unprecedented. Both drugs remain licensed and doctors and other medical providers can legally prescribe them off label for any indication which the patient and doctor feel will be beneficial. FDA has not restricted their licenses. The Board of Medicine in Maine has not restricted their use–yet. So what is the legal and scientific basis for this medical terrorism?
FDA did restrict the use of free, donated hydroxychloroquine which was put into the Strategic National Stockpile (and left to rot there) in March 2020, after Trump sang its prasises. But this restriction was never issued for ordinary hydroxychloroquine that Americans buy from pharmacies. However, a huge number of other impediments were imposed on hydroxychloroquine to prevent patients obtaining the drug. I wrote the seminal article about that in June 2020.
Back to my high risk patient. He lived 2.5 hours away from a pharmacy that I knew was willing to dispense the drug. The other drug stores were dispensing it for all other off-label and label diagnoses, but not for COVID. It was late. He and his wife were sick. I knew I was taking a risk, but I felt I had to do the right thing. So I called in the medicine to the local pharmacy of their choice, warning them that it might not fill the scripts: hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin.
The pharmacist called me up, asking for the reason I had prescribed the drugs. They are often used together for Lyme disease, so I said Lyme disease, and the pharmacist dispensed the drugs. I then informed the patient what I had done, and I immediately informed the Board of Licensure in Medicine what I had done as well.
Since it should have been unnecessary for me to have to lie (the drugs are licensed without restriction, Maine’s Governor and HHS says hydroxychloroquine can be used for acute COVID, and I was a licensed physician) I told the Medicine board that the Boards of Medicine and Pharmacy had created a situation in which I was forced to lie to protect a patient. I told them this was unacceptable and they needed to fix this. Their threats to pharmacists appear to me to against the law, interfering with the normal practice of medicine, restricting the use of drugs in the absence of citing any medical evidence to support this interference.
Even the AMA Code of Ethics says duty to the patient is the doctor’s primary responsibility. But I am not sure the Board would understand an ethical code if it tripped over one. I think it tripped over this one.
And so that was my lie, which I freely admitted to the Board, and it seems to be the linchpin on which I am to be hung.
[SVC: Meryl Nass, M.D., is a brave and ethical internal medicine physician in Maine. Sarasota for Vaccination Choice has followed her excellent work for many years. In 2009, she helped expose corruption and fraud surrounding the “swine flu” hysteria.
Dr. Nass has given 6 Congressional testimonies and testified for legislatures in Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and New Brunswick, Canada on bioterrorism, Gulf War syndrome and vaccine safety.
Simply for honoring her Hippocratic Oath, in the context of a Medical Police State (Maine) and for trying to save a Mainer’s life, Dr. Nass is now facing “de-licensure” by the Branch Covidian medical tyrants in Maine.
Dr. Nass’s excellent website, which she maintained for many years, is https://anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com/
Dr. Nass has also set up a mirror site with easier navigation. It also makes subscribing possible. See: https://merylnassmd.com/
Articles about medical censorship are here: https://merylnassmd.com/category/censorship-tactics/
Please subscribe to receive her updates, and please support Dr. Nass in her fight against the totalitarian medical Thought Police.]