The American Medical Association (AMA) President Jesse Ehrenfeld is arguing in favor of more censorship, supposedly targeting those “spreading misinformation.”
Ehrenfeld is happy with how Google/YouTube is doing that, via the controversial “medical misinformation” policy which he says “landed a solid punch” (against suspected medical information, not free speech, according to him). And, Ehrenfeld is urging other platforms to adopt similar rules.
YouTube mandates that its users must strictly adhere to whatever local health authorities or the World Health Organization say about health-related matters.
Interestingly, Ehrenfeld unwittingly provides an example of the notorious “revolving door” practice between the US government and private tech companies when he quotes from a blog post co-written by Garth Graham, whom he identifies as “a former US deputy assistant secretary for health who now leads YouTube Health.”
In a blog post of his own, Ehrenfeld now writes that US federal officials, including the surgeon general, have an obligation to “actively counter voices” that are deemed to be deliberately spreading misinformation about (Covid) vaccines and other issues.
Ehrenfeld then goes into the Murthy v. Missouri case, currently in the US Supreme Court, and how to “balance” the need to suppress those voices with the First Amendment speech protections.
The case accuses the Biden White House of colluding with private companies to censor speech, but Ehrenfeld’s organization, along with four other medical associations, doesn’t appear to see anything wrong in that.
The reason, the AMA president reveals, citing from an amicus brief the five associations filed with the Supreme Court, is that the government “clearly” has what they say is a compelling interest in “combating vaccine misinformation.”
Ehrenfeld goes into the benefits of vaccines, slams Covid vaccine hesitancy, claims there have been some 17,000 “hydroxychloroquine-related” deaths in six countries – and asserts that censorship (in his words, “combating vaccine misinformation”) saves lives.
Then there’s the question of what to do with medical professionals who fail to toe the line supported by AMA, YouTube, et al. Ehrenfeld wants licensing boards to be given the right to launch disciplinary action against those found to be “spreading health-related disinformation.”
Seemingly in a bid to justify the government/Big Tech collusion or such concepts, Ehrenfeld writes that “stopping the spread of medical misinformation and disinformation online is an enormous task” which cannot be accomplished by “any single entity.”
