TUCSON, Ariz., Dec. 12, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- During the COVID pandemic, the practice of medicine was usurped by mainstream media, politicians, and bureaucrats, who weaponized and politicized medicine and public health and imposed biomedical tyranny, writes San Antonio ophthalmologist Jane L. Hughes, M.D., in the winter issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. Dr. Hughes serves as president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS).
“Heretofore, untested extreme measures had not been instituted for entire populations for viral pandemics. Tragically, these measures not only failed to stop the viral infection, but they caused incalculable harm, especially to our children. Furthermore, safe and effective early treatments were vigorously denigrated, and physicians were blocked from prescribing FDA-approved safe medications for off-label COVID-19 use, another unprecedented action against physicians,” she writes.
We need to explore how this happened, she states, to avoid a future reprise.
The pandemic at the outset was treated as a national security issue, not a public health issue, Dr. Hughes observes. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was in charge, using a plan designed to counter bioterrorism attacks. The Task Force had no public health policy experts and no experts with medical knowledge who also analyzed the economic, social, and other broad health impacts of the response.
It is difficult to assign accountability, she notes, because the National Security Council had classified the pandemic response meetings beginning in January 2020.
The response drove a massive increase in central command and control by nonelected officials, she observes.
“Media censorship played a huge role in fomenting mass COVID hysteria, which resulted in an almost unquestioning acceptance of tyrannical measures…. [T]he single most important pillar of preserving a Constitutionally based republic, an honest and vigilant media, became instead an echo chamber of orthodoxy,” she writes.
Physicians largely stood by, even as patients died alone, and dehumanizing and ineffective mandates were imposed on the population. Physicians must wake up and become activists for our profession, patients, families, and our country, Dr. Hughes concludes.
The Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons is published by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), a national organization representing physicians in all specialties since 1943.
Contact: Jane L. Hughes, M.D., (210) 393-6162, janehughesmd@gmail.com, or Jane M. Orient, M.D., (520) 323-3110, janeorientmd@gmail.com
