The state’s new COVID-19 misinformation law will impact holistic and homeopathic doctors the most because they are the physicians who are more likely to recommend against being injected with the coronavirus vaccine, according to the leader of an Orange County medical freedom organization.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 2098 into law on Sept. 30 despite opposition from the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) after the California General Assembly approved the measure 56-20 on Aug. 30.
“There are many different pathways of medical intervention and doctors in the osteopathic community tend to look at that and might know of a different approach to protecting their patients,” said Laura Sextro, CEO of the Unity Project, a corporation formed more than a year ago to challenge vaccine mandates.
Sextro was reacting to the news that attorneys for Children’s Health Defense (CHD) on Thursday filed a lawsuit challenging AB 2098.
As of Jan. 1, 2023, AB 2098 will classify perceived disinformation as unprofessional conduct as well as strip physicians of their license to practice for prescribing treatments with off-label drugs that are unapproved by the state.
“The state of California, the CDC, and the NIH are very, very anchored into the pharmaceutical industry,” Sextro told the Southern California Record at AmericaFest 2022 in Phoenix this week. “The pharmaceutical companies have a real vested interest to drive and make sure that these vaccines are going far and wide into the human population. So, any narrative that goes against that could be very damaging.”
AmericaFest 2022 is a conservative political conference staged annually by Turning Point USA. Sextro was a featured speaker on the COVID and the Rise of Medical Facism panel.
Dr. Letrinh Hoang, Physicians for Informed Consent and CHD sued Attorney General Rob Bonta and California’s Osteopathic Medical Board in the Eastern District of California on Dec. 1 alleging that the First Amendment rights of osteopaths under the U.S. Constitution will be violated once AB 2098 becomes effective in the new year.
“The most critical flaw in this statutory provision is in the statutorily unanswered connection between ‘false information’ and the other two components, ‘contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus’ and ‘contrary to the standard of care,’ wrote Sacramento attorney Richard Jaffe in the complaint. “These terms are too vague to be applied with constitutional definiteness to free speech.”
In the lawsuit, Dr. Letrinh Hoang, an osteopath, alleges that providing information to her male patients between the ages of 17 and 39 about the increased risks of cardiomyopathy and other heart conditions of the COVID vaccine could lead to her violating Section 2270 of the new law.
“If you have male patients of a doctor who tells them their percentage of risk for myocarditis and pericarditis, they are now at risk of losing their license under AB 2098,” Sextro told the Southern California Record. “That’s the heart of the issue and that is the destruction of informed consent.”