Freeze Peach

Michelle Mello, writing in the JAMA Health Forum, is frustrated that the Supreme Court considers vaccine disinformation to be protected under the first amendment.  As many as 12 million persons may have forgone COVID-19 vaccination in the US because of misinformation, resulting in anestimated 1200 excess hospitalizations and 300 deaths per day. If 5 fully loaded 747s crashed each week due to wrong information, regulators would be apoplectic. She points out that there are many circumstances in which potentially harmful falsehoods can be policed. This includes advertising -- an ad claiming that Ivermectin is safe and effective against Covid-19 can and would be banned. State medical licensing boards can suspend the licenses of physicians who convey false information to their patients. However, these same people can go on Faux news and make the same claims, and there is nothing to be done except to rebut them.While Mello seems to want the court to allow policing of harmful falsehoods, there are difficulties. Someone has to decide that a claim is indeed objectively false, and sufficiently harmful that it should be banned from public discourse. I can see why the courts are reluctant to allow this. Scientific conclusions can change with new evidence, and may have varying degrees of uncertainty in the first place. People who make false assertions may believe what they are saying and again, some regulatory authority has to conclude that their reasoning is unsound.&...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs