A doctor spread COVID misinformation and renewed her license with a mouse click

For much of the pandemic, Dr. Lee Merritt has appeared on talk shows and in lecture halls to spread false information about COVID-19.

Among her claims: that the SARS-CoV2 virus is a genetically engineered bioweapon (the U.S. intelligence community says it's not). And that vaccination dramatically increases the risk of death from COVID (data show an enormous drop in risk for those who take the vaccine). The entire pandemic, she says in public lectures, is a vast global conspiracy to exert social control.

And yet, in October, she was able to renew her medical license in the state of Nebraska. Documents obtained through a public records request by NPR showed it took just a few clicks: 12 yes-or-no questions answered online allowed her to extend her license for another year.

Critics say that Merritt's renewal is another example of how the nation's state medical boards are failing to protect the public from a small minority of doctors spreading COVID falsehoods.

"State medical boards, for the main part, have been cozy clubs of people who feel their job is to protect the profession," says Imran Ahmed, the CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a group that tracks vaccine misinformation online.

In the past, that's meant a slow process that provided physicians every opportunity to defend themselves against a complaint, he claims. But in the current pandemic, Ahmed argues, medical boards need to move faster and with more force. "Speeches aren't enough, letters aren't enough, we need action now," he says.

A dangerous message

Few people have been more influential over the course of the pandemic than doctors. They have been at the front lines, battling COVID and facilitating the vaccine rollout. Public health officials also see doctors as a major tool in fighting misinformation. Officials encourage vaccine-hesitant individuals to talk to their physician, as a way of combatting the vortex of false claims and conspiracy theories online.

But a handful of doctors like Dr. Merritt have worked contrary to these efforts: spreading bad information about COVID-19. Their qualifications make their message especially dangerous, says Nick Sawyer, an emergency room doctor who headsNo License For Disinformation, a group seeking action against doctors who spread falsehoods.

"Physicians should be held to a higher standard because people are entrusting us with their lives," he says.

The licensing of physicians in the United States varies from state to state. Medical boards are typically set up under state law and populated with a mix of doctors, lawyers and citizens. The boards can receive complaints from any member of the public. They then investigate and carry out disciplinary action according to their own rules and the laws of the state.

License renewals are often automatic, and Sawyer says he wants that process to be as smooth as possible. But he is also frustrated by the lack of disciplinary action: "If you're a physician in good standing, then you should be able to continue your practice without having to jump through a bunch of hoops," he says. "But that is also assuming that the medical board is doing its job."

Spread of misinformation is not censured

So far, it appears that many physicians spreading bad information have escaped censure. In September, NPR looked at 16 doctors who have spread false claims about COVID, including Merritt. Records show that none have been disciplined, and all but one continue to hold an active medical license. And Dr. Merritt was not the only one who obtained a renewal.

Public records obtained by NPR show that Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, another prominent anti-vaccine physician who claims — among other things — that vaccines make people magnetic, renewed her license online. The Ohio Capitol Journal first reported Tenpenny's renewal in September.

Neither Dr. Merritt nor Nebraska's Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees its medical board, responded to NPR's request for comment. But Dr. Humayun Chaudhry, the president of the Federation of State Medical Boards, an umbrella group, says medical license renewals are designed to be simple for doctors.

"It's a procedural step that is usually automatic and not even deliberated upon by the board," he says. He says boards simply don't have the capacity to review many hundreds or thousands of renewals that come up each year, and that a failure to renew would be equivalent to a license suspension, which cannot be done without due process. But he also says the renewals do not prevent boards from taking action.

"A medical license that's automatically renewed does not mean that an investigation isn't ongoing, nor does it prevent a board from taking a disciplinary action against that licensee," he says.

In fact Chaudhry says a recent survey by the federation found that over half of the nation's medical boards have seen an increase in complaints about doctors disseminating false information about COVID-19. Among those who responded to the FSMB survey, he says 21% have already taken some kind of disciplinary action. Many others are now quietly investigating complaints, Chaudhry says. They just need more time to act.

In the meantime, Lee Merritt continues to travel the country, giving speeches filled with junk science.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit NPR.

The COVID-19 pandemic has now killed 5 million people around the world

Global deaths from COVID-19 have now surpassed 5 million, according to the data released Monday from Johns Hopkins University's coronavirus tracker.

The U.S. leads the world in the number of confirmed deaths from the virus with more than 745,800 people dead from COVID-19. Brazil (with more than 607,000 deaths) and India (with more than 450,000 deaths) follow the U.S. in the number of lives lost since the start of the pandemic.

Yet another tragic milestone of the pandemic comes just as the U.S. prepares to start vaccinating children between the ages of 5 and 11.

But in other parts of the world, health officials are seeing worrying signs of a coronavirus surge — just as some nations are relaxing measures to international travelers.

This official global tally only accounts for confirmed cases around the world, according to Amber D'Souza, professor of epidemiology at the university's Bloomberg School of Public Health, who spoke to National Geographic.

Prior to Johns Hopkins releasing the latest global data on Monday D'Souza told the outlet: "It's quite possible that the number of deaths is double what we see. But 5 million is such a staggering number on its own. No country has been able to escape it."

Europe and Southeast Asia report a surge in cases The World Health Organization recently reported a rise in cases in Europe during October.

As of Oct. 26, the European region experienced an 18% surge in new COVID-19 cases. Southeast Asia, a region experiencing a similar rise in new COVID cases, also reported a 13% increase in new COVID-19 deaths.

Globally, as of Oct. 26, the health organization reported more than 2.9 million cases and more than 49, 000 new deaths, a 4% and 5% increase respectively.

Last month, Russian officials registered the highest death toll in Europe: more than 235,000 deaths since the start of the pandemic. Due to skyrocketing infections from the delta strain, officials there launched a temporary lockdown in an attempt to defeat the virus.

But there is skepticism over whether the numbers being shared in Russia are actually the official count. Some believe the numbers may be higher.

On Friday, Reuters reported that Poland's total number of COVID-19 cases since the start of the pandemic passed 3 million. Daily cases are quickly gaining pace as the country is in the middle of the fourth wave of the virus.

In Singapore, where officials have decided to coexist with the coronavirus and cease lockdown measures, a jump in cases has been reported there, too.

More than 80% of Singapore's population has been immunized against COVID-19. Yet as of Oct. 30, cases jumped to well over 3,000 cases a day in about two months.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit NPR.

Pat Martino is dead, an American jazz guitarist and composer, a true legend

Martino was born Patrick Azara in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. After moving to New York City, he started playing professionally at the age of 15. He lived with Les Paul for a while and began to play in jazz clubs such as Smalls Paradise. He later moved into a suite at the President Hotel on 48th Street. He will play at Smalls for six months of the year, and then in the summer at the Harlem Club in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Martino played and recorded with Lloyd Price, Willis Jackson and Eric Klaus early in his career. He has also worked with jazz organists Charles Earland, Richard “Groove” Holmes, Jack McDuff, Don Patterson, Trudy Pitts, Jimmy Smith, Gene Ludwig and Joey DeFrancesco.

Martino continued to perform until 1980 when hemorrhagic arteriovenous malformations caused “near-fatal seizures.” This made him amnesia, and he has no memories or knowledge of his career or how to play the instruments that made him successful.

Martino said he was completely forgetful from the operation and learned to focus on the present rather than what may happen in the past or future. He was forced to learn to play guitar from scratch. This situation is essential to understand his career and his special way of thinking. Martino married Ayako Asahi Martino in Tokyo, Japan in 1995.

He was selected as the guitarist of the year in a 2004 Down Beat magazine reader vote. In 2006, Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab re-released his album East! On Ultradisc UHR SACD. In 2017, he shot a series of educational videos called “A Study of Opposites and Its Performance on the Guitar”. 

A true American hero and a living legend until today, now is a complete legend forever.

Rest in Peace, Maestro!

Supreme Court justices sound skeptical of Texas abortion law

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court's justices gave a skeptical hearing Monday to Texas and its strict abortion law, sounding as though they are ready to reverse course and allow abortion providers to sue and win a federal court order blocking its enforcement. Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett M. Kavanaugh, two of the conservatives who hold key votes, said the state appeared to have gone too far, first by adopting an unconstitutional limit on abortions and then by effectively preventing doctors and clinic owners from challenging it in court. Kavanaugh said Texas had exploited a "loophole" in the law to bar people from going to federal court — even when those people are targeted by an unconstitutional state law. He noted that in 1908, the Supreme Court in a landmark ruling said people or businesses who are targeted by an unconstitutional law could win relief from a federal judge by naming a state official who would enforce the law. But Texas steered around that decision by relying on private lawsuits against abortion doctors and clinics. In response, lawyers for Texas claimed the abortion doctors were free to defend themselves in state courts. But Barrett said that would not work either. She said the state law says a doctor could be sued by hundreds of people over a single abortion, yet state judges could rule on only one suit at a time. "You can't get a global relief" even if the abortion doctor wins in a state court, she said. "The statute can still be enforced against you." A Texas lawyer said state judges, not state officials, are enforcing the Texas abortion law. But Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Kavanaugh cited a landmark ruling on civil rights in which the high court struck down the use of racially restrictive covenants on deeds that prevented African Americans or Jews from buying house. Those deeds had been defended on the grounds they were private arrangements, not state laws. But as Kavanaugh noted, the high court in the case of Shelley vs. Kraemer in 1948 struck them down because state judges "enforced" those restrictions. He said the same principle should apply in this case. Based on their comments and questions during nearly three hours' argument, it appeared that six of the justices favored clearing the way for the federal courts to block enforcement of the Texas law. This was the third time the high court had considered the Texas law. The court was not focused on the constitutionality of abortion, but rather the procedural restrictions that have prevented abortion doctors and the Justice Department from challenging the Texas law in federal court. While the lawyers argued over procedure, the overriding question is whether the conservative court will stand in the way of a state's bid to stop abortions. So far, the answer has been no. The Texas Heartbeat Act, also known as Senate Bill 8, says it is illegal to perform an abortion after about six weeks of a pregnancy but gives the state no direct role in enforcing that ban. Instead, it authorizes private lawsuits in state courts against doctors or clinic owners who violate its provisions. On Sept. 1, four members of the high court, including Roberts, voted to block the Texas law before it took effect, but they were unable to win over at least one more conservative to form a majority. Two weeks ago, the justices weighed the issue again after the Justice Department entered the case, but they agreed only to hear arguments on the procedural questions. U.S. Solicitor Gen. Elizabeth B. Prelogar, who was confirmed last week by the Senate, called the Texas law an "affront to the Constitution, as well as to the Supreme Court's role in protecting the rights of Americans. "Texas’s various procedural objections do not withstand scrutiny once S.B. 8 is recognized for what it is: a brazen nullification of this court’s precedents," she wrote in a brief filed Friday. "Texas is responsible for S.B. 8. And it is subject to this suit by the United States and an injunction by the federal courts. "Prelogar's argument rests on the idea that federal law is, as the Constitution states, the "supreme law of the land." Yet throughout its history, the Supreme Court has shielded states from being sued directly. States are said to have "sovereign immunity" unless Congress has acted to waive it. After the Civil War, however, the Reconstruction Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1871, which authorized suits in federal court against any person who, acting "under color of" state law, deprives others of their rights protected by the Constitution. Typically, lawyers rely on this section of the 1871 act to sue state or local officials who are enforcing an unconstitutional law. But in this instance, the abortion rights advocates were not sure who to sue. They could not point to particular state officials or to the unknown private individuals who may sue an abortion doctor. As a fallback, they named state judges who might have to rule on a suit. But the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has twice rejected efforts to block the Texas law. The first appeal heard Monday arose from a coalition of abortion providers who sued in July seeking to stop the Texas law. The second comes from the Justice Department, which sued in September, a week after the law took effect. The Biden administration's attorney acknowledged that the procedural law is not clearly on her side. 

"To be sure, no state has ever attacked the supremacy of federal law through this mechanism before," Prelogar wrote. "But the novelty of Texas’s unprecedented scheme does not render the federal courts powerless to redress the state’s ongoing violation of the Constitution." In response, lawyers for Texas say the legal battle should be fought first in state courts. If abortion doctors are sued for violating S.B. 8, they can defend themselves by asserting that the state law violates Roe vs. Wade and is thereby unconstitutional, Texas Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton argued in his brief. "The Constitution does not guaranteed pre-enforcement review of state (or federal) laws in federal court. And there is nothing unprecedented about vindicating constitutional rights as a state-court defendant," he wrote. The two cases heard Monday are Whole Woman's Health vs. Jackson and United States vs. Texas. It is not clear whether the justices will rule quickly because the cases arrived as emergency appeals or will instead follow the usual procedure and spend weeks writing a decision accompanied by dissents.

Originally posted in Los Angeles Times by By David G. Savage