This is a brief case update and some good news about the AB 2098, the California Physician Misinformation Act.

Case Update: The Fall 2023 wave is on a downslope, with cases going down in the US, California, and San Diego County. As discussed before, there was legitimately an increase in cases, but the number of new cases was tiny in comparison to previous waves. Given the large amount of pre-existing natural immunity, I never considered the current wave to be a serious threat to public health.

The Repeal of the California Physician Misinformation Act: Last October, I wrote about a new California law which made “misinformation” a cause for physicians in California to lose their medical license. Misinformation was defined as “false information that is contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus contrary to the standard of care.” As I argued, it is common for new scientific ideas to be opposed by the majority of scientists before gaining acceptance.

The new law immediately became a target of legal action, one case being Høeg vs Newsom. On September 29th, 2023, Høeg’s attorney filed a request that the law be permanently barred from enforcement. Just a few days later, on October 1st, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a repeal of the law. This is great news for California physicians and patients. California physicians are again free to communicate to their patients without fear of losing their license. This is also great news for the cause of freedom of speech in the US.

The fascinating yet tragic case of Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis: Ignaz Semmelweis was a physician at Vienna General Hospital in 1847. One of his jobs was to deliver babies in the maternity ward. Unfortunately, in his ward, the rate of fatality for new mothers was high, an average of 18.3%. Women were afraid to deliver in his hospital, and begged to deliver somewhere else!

Then one day, a colleague of Dr. Semmelweis died of Puerperal Fever, with symptoms very similar to the women in the maternity ward. His colleague had nicked himself with a scalpel while performing an autopsy on a cadaver. Dr. Semmelweis thought that maybe the fatalities in the maternity ward had something to do with the fact that Doctors where going straight from performing autopsies to delivering babies!

At this point, you’re probably holding your head and saying “What!?”, perhaps with some other colorful words added in. It’s obvious to us now that this was a terrible idea, but the Germ Theory of Disease had not yet been accepted in medicine. The field at that time had no idea that microscopic organisms could transmit disease.

Dr. Semmelweis started having physicians wash their hands in a chlorine solution after performing autopsies. The maternal death rate fell immediately to below 5%, some months having zero deaths. Dr. Semmelweis tried to tell others of his findings, but no one believed him. After increasingly passionate and ultimately embarrassing behavior, his friends and family had him committed to a mental institution. He was abused by guards and died in 1865.

That same decade, Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch were producing evidence supporting the Germ Theory, and Joseph Lister began popularizing the use of anti-septic procedures in surgery, greatly improving outcomes for surgical patients. Semmelweis’ ideas would be vindicated, but not until after his tragic death.

Semmelweis is now considered a hero of modern medicine, having a university, several hospitals, and even an asteroid named after him.

Why did I tell this story? Under a law similar to the California Physician Misinformation Act, people like Semmelweis would have lost their licenses. Semmelweis’ story underscores the need for strict adherence to the Scientific Method, not the suppression of “misinformation.” We suppress unpopular ideas at our peril.

Don’t fear, but be smart,
Erik