Today’s blacklisted American: Licensing authorities use power to deny doctors freedom of speech
Blacklisted doctors Eric Hensen (l) and John Littell
They’re coming for you next: Two stories today illustrate how government medical licensing authorities have used their power inappropriately and very oppressively in the past three years to silence any dissent in the medical community.
If a doctor dared to question the now very clearly misguided medical policies of government during the Wuhan panic, state medical boards were quite willing to take away their license to practice.
Our first story began when Texas’s Republican governor Greg Abbot imposed a mask mandate in 2020. Dr. Eric Hensen refused to comply, recognizing that masks do nothing to prevent transmission and actually carry health risks in themselves.
Dr. Eric Hensen, an ear, nose, and throat doctor in Palestine, has been fighting the TMB [Texas Medical Board] for years over the mask mandate policy. In 2021, the TMB first sent him a letter stating he violated Abbott’s mask order in 2020 after a patient turned him in, and required him to produce medical records and office policies.
The board penalized Hensen with a “remediation plan” that involved a $500 fine, continuing medical education, a jurisprudence test, and other additional requirements that Hensen was unable to maintain, under threat of being reprimanded on a national database.
When they suspended his license last month, Hensen said he would sue the TMB.
Well, only a month later, the TMB backed down, reinstating Hensen’s license. Hensen however is not satisfied, and has not dropped his lawsuit. As his lawyer notes, they still plan to “sue the board members responsible for this outrageous tyranny.” As noted in his lawyer’s press release:
Dr. Hensen maintains that the Texas Medical Board lacked the authority to discipline him or
impose a remedial plan. … Governor Abbott and Attorney General Paxton made it explicitly clear in their respective executive orders and opinions that officials and jurisdictions could not exceed the civil or criminal penalties specified in the executive orders during the COVID-19 disaster. Dr. Hensen believes that his disciplinary action is in violation of this proclamation.
In other words, this board allowed its power to corrupt it, and Hensen now intends to make it pay for that corruption.
Our second story involves another doctor, John Littell, who has from the beginning of the Wuhan panic made an effort to publicize his success using ivermectin to treat more than 3,000 COVID patients.
On March 27, 2023 the American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM) stripped Littell of his medical license, claiming that
“[Littell’s] Public Channels contain false, inaccurate, and misleading statements constituting health misinformation and disinformation about COVID-19, the COVID-19 vaccine, and the effort of public health officials to address the COVID-19 pandemic through vaccination and other mitigation measures.”
Littell practices in Florida. On April 4, 2023 his lawyer filed an appeal of this decision, causing ABFM to reinstate his license while it considers his appeal.
In both cases, the doctors were not being punished for doing any real medical malpractice, but because they were either defying a foolish, unscientific, and unhealthy medical order from the government, or were simply speaking out against similar mistaken government policies. In the free America where I once lived, to try to rob a doctor of his livelihood over such disagreements would have been considered unthinkable. It is now common practice.
The broom has got to do some cleaning
Note too the locations of both these cases, Texas and Florida. Both states are considered very conservative, with their political leadership strongly dominated by Republicans. Yet, the health bureaucracies in both places are apparently very leftist, and quite willing to override the general policies of the lawmakers the public elected to rule, because these bureaucracies clearly are smarter and better and superior to those unwashed millions who stupidly voted for Republicans.
Clearly, both cases illustrate the desperate need for Republicans to mercilessly clean house in those bureaucracies. People who do such things need to be fired, immediately.
Whether Republican legislatures and governors have the courage to do such merciless housecleaning however remains very much in doubt. Many Republican lawmakers talk a great game, but once the clock starts they almost always fold like a house of cards, as we are seeing at present in Tennessee.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Blacklisted doctors Eric Hensen (l) and John Littell
They’re coming for you next: Two stories today illustrate how government medical licensing authorities have used their power inappropriately and very oppressively in the past three years to silence any dissent in the medical community.
If a doctor dared to question the now very clearly misguided medical policies of government during the Wuhan panic, state medical boards were quite willing to take away their license to practice.
Our first story began when Texas’s Republican governor Greg Abbot imposed a mask mandate in 2020. Dr. Eric Hensen refused to comply, recognizing that masks do nothing to prevent transmission and actually carry health risks in themselves.
Dr. Eric Hensen, an ear, nose, and throat doctor in Palestine, has been fighting the TMB [Texas Medical Board] for years over the mask mandate policy. In 2021, the TMB first sent him a letter stating he violated Abbott’s mask order in 2020 after a patient turned him in, and required him to produce medical records and office policies.
The board penalized Hensen with a “remediation plan” that involved a $500 fine, continuing medical education, a jurisprudence test, and other additional requirements that Hensen was unable to maintain, under threat of being reprimanded on a national database.
When they suspended his license last month, Hensen said he would sue the TMB.
Well, only a month later, the TMB backed down, reinstating Hensen’s license. Hensen however is not satisfied, and has not dropped his lawsuit. As his lawyer notes, they still plan to “sue the board members responsible for this outrageous tyranny.” As noted in his lawyer’s press release:
Dr. Hensen maintains that the Texas Medical Board lacked the authority to discipline him or
impose a remedial plan. … Governor Abbott and Attorney General Paxton made it explicitly clear in their respective executive orders and opinions that officials and jurisdictions could not exceed the civil or criminal penalties specified in the executive orders during the COVID-19 disaster. Dr. Hensen believes that his disciplinary action is in violation of this proclamation.
In other words, this board allowed its power to corrupt it, and Hensen now intends to make it pay for that corruption.
Our second story involves another doctor, John Littell, who has from the beginning of the Wuhan panic made an effort to publicize his success using ivermectin to treat more than 3,000 COVID patients.
On March 27, 2023 the American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM) stripped Littell of his medical license, claiming that
“[Littell’s] Public Channels contain false, inaccurate, and misleading statements constituting health misinformation and disinformation about COVID-19, the COVID-19 vaccine, and the effort of public health officials to address the COVID-19 pandemic through vaccination and other mitigation measures.”
Littell practices in Florida. On April 4, 2023 his lawyer filed an appeal of this decision, causing ABFM to reinstate his license while it considers his appeal.
In both cases, the doctors were not being punished for doing any real medical malpractice, but because they were either defying a foolish, unscientific, and unhealthy medical order from the government, or were simply speaking out against similar mistaken government policies. In the free America where I once lived, to try to rob a doctor of his livelihood over such disagreements would have been considered unthinkable. It is now common practice.
The broom has got to do some cleaning
Note too the locations of both these cases, Texas and Florida. Both states are considered very conservative, with their political leadership strongly dominated by Republicans. Yet, the health bureaucracies in both places are apparently very leftist, and quite willing to override the general policies of the lawmakers the public elected to rule, because these bureaucracies clearly are smarter and better and superior to those unwashed millions who stupidly voted for Republicans.
Clearly, both cases illustrate the desperate need for Republicans to mercilessly clean house in those bureaucracies. People who do such things need to be fired, immediately.
Whether Republican legislatures and governors have the courage to do such merciless housecleaning however remains very much in doubt. Many Republican lawmakers talk a great game, but once the clock starts they almost always fold like a house of cards, as we are seeing at present in Tennessee.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Dr. Littell & his daughter are my physicians & I can testify personally to their character, integrity and the guidance of their faith in living the Gospel & the continuing the work of the Divine Physician Himself!
Living in Texas, I am not thrilled with Gov Abbott’s commitment to freedom. Worse is the Texas Speaker of the House, Dade Phelan.