“We cannot allow physicians or our patients to become pawns,” said American Medical Association President Jack Resneck Jr., as he gave a somber address to AMA policymakers earlier this month. Meanwhile, he was conscripting them into a host of ideological battles.
Despite his assurances that “the AMA is fiercely nonpartisan,” Resneck vilified those who oppose COVID-19 mandates, gun restrictions, abortion access , affirmative action in medical schools, and granting minors access to sex changes, framing them as dangerous individuals.
Although Resneck insisted that the AMA “isn’t on any political team,” he seemed to declare his organization’s allegiance to the Left’s positions on such matters and tighten the reins on any wayward doctors failing to toe the party line.
According to Resneck, those who openly express disagreement are attempting to “undermine the work of organized medicine” and seeking “to divide” through the weaponization of disinformation.
In his address, which also touched upon growing physician burnout and more standard healthcare policy, Resneck voiced his anger over those who would dare challenge the “fiercely nonpartisan” AMA on the aforementioned partisan issues.
“I’m angry about how science and medicine have been politicized, about the flood of disinformation that seeks to discredit data and evidence, undermine public health, and misrepresent the wise policy of this [House of Delegates] and our AMA’s work to implement it,” Resneck said, before appearing to mock those who questioned the necessity of masks, the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines, and the integrity of public health officials.
Given the recent track record of Resneck and the AMA, however, none of this should be surprising.
Back in June, the AMA announced in a press release the organization’s endorsement of efforts similar to those codified by California’s COVID misinformation bill, AB2098 , to empower licensing boards to “take disciplinary action against health professionals for spreading health-related disinformation.”
In an Oct. 5 statement posted to the AMA website, Resneck indicted those who dissent on many of these coronavirus-related matters as engaged in something called “anti-science aggression,” which he claimed “undermined confidence in the COVID-19 vaccines” and “widen existing divisions on far-ranging issues such as access to safe reproductive care, achieving health equity, and discrimination against transgender patients.”
Two days earlier, in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, the AMA urged the investigation and prosecution of those allegedly making threats of violence against hospitals and physicians involved in gender-affirming care while attempting to tie such individuals to those simply sharing information critical of doctors or hospitals involved in these controversial procedures.
In these various AMA documents, however, Resneck and the AMA largely seem to ignore the possibility that some individuals, including the organization’s own physicians, may hold legitimate moral, philosophical, or evidence-based objections to the AMA’s stances on the policies for which Resneck and the AMA are advocating.
Numerous studies have called into question the utility of most masks and the effectiveness of the COVID vaccines at stopping COVID infection and transmission . Experienced doctors have questioned what health equity is doing to healthcare. Research has suggested gender-affirming care may ultimately harm more patients than it supposedly helps.
Yet, rather than engage those that have come to different conclusions than him or who disagree with his organization, Resneck instead seeks to silence them, while sowing further division by dismissing and belittling ideological opponents. He revealed all he needed to when he told his audience in his recent address, “[W]e are the grown-ups in the room. We follow the evidence. Science is our North Star.”
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Daniel Nuccio is a Ph.D. student in biology and a regular contributor to the College Fix and the Brownstone Institute.
