Carlat vs Medscape: Escalation

I posted this at Daniel Carlat’s website:

Daniel – I certainly appreciate your interest in protecting physicians from hidden messaging and bias. But I must let you know that George Lundberg is not your enemy but your friend in this battle.

I used to work with George at the Medscape Journal, and I can tell you that there was no industry influence on what I did whatsoever. I worked meticulously to disclose any author’s conflicts of interest, and we never received a penny of direct funding for any content in the journal. Also note that the majority of Medscape’s CME is unsponsored.

If there are indeed sponsored CME articles on Medscape that demonstrate clear bias – then I’m sure that George would be the first to agree to correct and/or remove them from the site.

George is a thoughtful and ethical person – he is transparent, and understands where conflicts lie on many fronts. Let’s engage him in a positive way to move medical education forward in as objective a manner as possible.

One has to be kind to Carlat. He correctly has to face total defeat. The CEJA proposal against industry sponsorships was roundly and humiliatingly defeated. If the AMA holds true to form, this proposal ain’t never coming back.

The AMA received an intent to sue letter if it passed this rule. They would have committed suicide in the face of protracted, massive class action claims.

The AMA must immediately remove Dr. Levine from all AMA positions. This biased, left wing, clinician hater nearly destroyed the AMA by his irresponsible crusade to attack the clinician.

You and I may speak, think, or associate as we please. So may private clubs.

The AMA is not a private club. It is a quasi-governmental organization: 1) it can put doctors on trial, with lawyers, advocacy, rules of procedure, deliberations; 2) its sanctions carry the same hassles as ones by a licensing board; 3) many licensing boards choose to not write hundreds of regs, they just say, follow AMA Ethics guidelines.

As a quasi-governmental organization, it must obey the Constitution: 1) free speech; 2) the right to listen to speech; 3) interstate Commerce Clause precludes interference; 4) Supremacy Clause imposes these rights. The proposal would have violated the Constitution. A plaintiff, seeking a class action declaration, would get an injunction to stop the proposal. The violation of civil rights would carry damages and attorney fees under Section 1983 actions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1871

So, it goes beyond a constitutional tort and punitive damages, and this claim seeks all plaintiff attorney fees.

The content of speech cannot be punished ahead of some proven harm (planning a crime, alleging a false fact in defamation). None of the left wing ideologues can cite an example of harm from sponsored CME or sponsored anything else. When they say, influence to prescribe more expensive drugs, they get asked what drugs they would ingest themselves for the same condition. So patients get what the left wing hypocrites would prescribe for themselves.

Doctors have contracts with speakers bureaus. The proposal would have interfered with these contracts. This is another intentional tort subject to punitive damages.

The AMA is a CME provider. It competes for the $1.2 bil in sponsorships. This ethics proposal is to its economic advantage by limiting the competition. It should stop making CME or stop taking drug company ads or payments. Otherwise, the foreclosed payments would have gone to the AMA, med schools, inferior providers of CME. JAMA CME would have violated the ethics rule by the subsidy of its price by drug company ads.

Also, the AMA would have been referred to the Justice Department Anti-trust Division for its anti-competitive, self-serving regulation.

It would have been referred to the DOJ for a review of the elements of civil RICO. These are vague and elusive, so the AMA had exposure.

If someone could show an injury and these elements, damages treble, even for a class.

Your guess is as good as any on these elements:

http://www.lectlaw.com/files/lit08.htm

Lawyers would have loved the spectacle of doctors attacking doctors. One has to refrain from hitting back the AMA, however, offensive to the clinician it gets. However, the AMA has been on a rampage against the clinician. This was the last straw in its campaign of oppression and left wing PC bashing of the doctor.
Playtime would have been over had they not tabled the proposal. Even if the AMA could get these claims dismissed on first pleading, the defense costs would have been in the $millions. Of course, these are not frivolous claims. They would not have been dismissed on first pleading. At the very least, the judge would have allowed discovery to proceed, a catastrophe for the AMA.The sky is the limit on any settlement offers.

Kevin has reported on another plan to bash clinician, the false, secret patient visiting and rating the doctor management of false symptoms. Stay tuned for the massive legal actions awaiting the AMA if undertakes sting operations against its own members.