Doctors Fighting Back Against State Medical Boards
Updated
We all know the stories by now. The pandemic kicked off a purge of those within the medical community who believed in and practiced informed consent for not only themselves but their patients.
To understand what happened during the pandemic, the road must first start at the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB). Longtime critic Bruce Dooley describes the FSMB as a private, unaccountable corporation with hidden funding that wields outsized, behind-the-scenes power over public medical boards and uses that influence to target and discipline dissenting doctors.
He’s been sounding the alarm for decades, testifying about FSMB’s undue influence as early as the Clinton-era White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) Policy when the federation mounted a full-court press against CAM physicians.
The COVID-era persecution against the medical community can be traced back to one document originating from the FSMB.
The expectations handed down to each state’s medical boards read like this from FSMB’s mothership:
“Legal Grounds for Disciplinary Action: As state medical boards screen and triage complaints about misinformation and disinformation and adjudicate cases, they may have concerns about facing challenges on First Amendment grounds for disciplinary action that restricts a physician’s right to speech. In the face of such concerns, the following section outlines several considerations for boards as they consider appropriate regulatory decisions.”
In other words, don’t worry about the First Amendment; just go get those doctors at all costs.
From there, state medical boards were emboldened to strike.
Pierre Kory and Paul Marik were among the first punished for founding the now-infamous FLCCC, promoting early treatment protocols, along with their wrong-speak speech violations.
Around the same time, then- Minnesota family physician and state senator Dr. Scott Jensen became a whistleblower, alerting the public about CDC guidance directing physicians to list COVID-19 on death certificates as “probable” or “suspected” even without a positive lab test.
The Minnesota Board of Medical Practice received its first complaints about him in June 2020, along with additional complaints and investigations about his comments on vaccines, ivermectin prescribing, and public-health policy
In December 2020, Dr. Mark Brody was investigated for a newsletter/email to patients advising against COVID vaccines.
His letter stated that he would not administer the vaccine to anyone. He advised patients (and his own family) to wait at least one year before considering it, calling it an “experimental vaccine,” so that more time could pass to evaluate safety and efficacy. He wrote that they should only get it later “if the evidence conclusively demonstrates safety and efficacy”
Dr. Mary Talley Bowden’s turn came in 2021 for ivermectin prescribing and public tweets. Shortly after came Dr. Meryl Nass also in 2021 for calling the COVID vaccines experimental, arguing they did not prevent infection or transmission, promoting ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine as effective early treatments, and criticizing public-health agencies.
In retrospect, all reasonable and accurate stances.
Pushing the dystopian limit, the Maine medical board ordered Dr. Nass to undergo two psychiatric evaluations, which she declined.
All of these doctors fought back against the medical board’s actions.
As it stands, the momentum appears to be shifting.
A senior U.S. District Judge has just granted a preliminary injunction stopping California AG Rob Bonta, the Medical Board of California, and the Osteopathic Medical Board from investigating, prosecuting, harassing, or threatening the licenses of Kory and co-plaintiffs over their professional opinions on COVID-19, vaccines, ivermectin, and related topics.
Dr. Jensen sued, and a court of appeals has just revived his free speech lawsuit against the medical licensing board.
In 2025, Dr. Bowden, Dr. Brody (along with Drs. Mary Kelly Sutton and John Humiston) sued the FSMB plus the medical boards (and certain officials) of California, Rhode Island, Texas, Massachusetts, New York, and Indiana alleging First and Fourteenth Amendment violations over discipline tied to dissenting views on COVID-19 vaccines, treatments, and related speech.
The case remains in the early discovery stage.
Late last month, a judge ruled the federal lawsuit brought by Dr. Meryl Nass against Maine’s medical licensing board can proceed.
In the ruling, the judge wrote
“…the Board considered Dr. Nass’s opinions to be the product of not independent thought but a mental illness or mental condition. Alternatively, the imposition of this sanction would suggest that the Board was making an example out of Dr. Nass.”
Each of these cases is now bound by a certain unexplainable momentum and perhaps fate. A pulse-check signaling a growing public appetite towards justice in favor of the medical professionals as a symbolic, moral, and professional victory.
Meanwhile, the pandemic response has overshadowed the FSMB and state medical board actions still happening against good physicians whether they reside in clinics or corporate hospital systems. With the public now awakened to the value of health professionals who think and act outside The Science™hopefully unjust medical board actions will be spotlighted quicker and gain greater support at their inception.