Fake Physician Group Platformed Disgraced, Fake Physician Allison Neitzel on Their Fake Medical Journal Website
How bad does this get? Tracking the rise and fall of Allison Neitzel led me to a weird world of bogus “disinformation” journalists and researchers who clamor to censor us.
7 minute read
NOTE TO READERS: Please read to the bottom to enter the Dorit Reiss Vaccine Photo Contest where contestants can win free subscriptions to The DisInformation Chronicle!
There’s a remarkable, haunting scene in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, one of my top ten movies you must watch if you want to make any pretense at understanding American culture.
Cut to the streets of the San Fernando Valley’s Canoga Park, where prizefighter Butch Coolidge and gangster Marsellus Wallace burst through the door of a Los Angeles pawnshop in a bloody brawl. Grappling on the floor, they struggle to kill each other when prizefighter Butch gains the advantage, grabs a pistol from Marsellus’s hand and braces to shoot the gangster in the face.
You then hear the distinctive sound of a cartridge racking into the chamber of a large shotgun.
“Hold it right there, goddamit!” the pawnshop owner says, pointing a 12 gauge at Butch’s bald head.
“This ain’t none of your business, mister!” Butch yells, spitting out blood.
“I’m making it my business.”
Both Butch and Marsellus are then knocked out, later waking up confused and frightened, tied up and ball-gagged in the pawnshop’s basement—a sex dungeon where the two rednecks who bound them will soon rip down Mr. Wallace’s pants, strap him to a bench, and begin sodomizing him to grunts, cheers, and moans.
“Bring out the gimp,” says one of their captors.
The scene is totally off-balance crazy— disconnected from any norms of reality or polite conversation—but captures exactly what I love and fear about my Los Angeles hometown: you never know what lurks on the other side of a door.
As I tracked the rise and apologetic fall of disgraced, fake physician Allison Neitzel, I passed through an equally disorienting door of unimagined horror where I discovered a circus-like reality where “journalists” in the disinformation genre platform as “experts” whatever colorful clown they run across on social media screaming “ANTI-VAXX!” the loudest.
As I explained two weeks ago, my journey with the Neitzel clown show ran me into a medical group called National Association of Medical Doctors (NAMD), which I promised to report on later. Readers also sent me tips linking Neitzel to other circus acts in academia.
fake, Fake, FAKE!
Neitzel first began calling herself a “physician” in 2021 when the NAMD posted her letter in their Journal of Medicine where she accused Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers of spreading vaccine misinformation.
Never mind that Rodgers had explained he was allergic to one of the vaccine ingredients and was already protected because he had been sick with COVID. This was months before the CDC admitted that prior infection was no different than being vaccinated, so the NAMD made “Neitzel the physician” out to be a medical savior guarding America from the anti-vaxx hordes coming to sicken and kill us all, while robbing Pfizer of a few billion dollars in COVID vaccine profit.
But here’s the funny thing.
When I contacted NAMD media relations officers Joan Diaz and Liz Cordoni to explain why NAMD platformed a physician who wasn’t really a physician, both messages bounced back stating the contact emails could not be found. I then called the NAMD media relations number for Diaz and Cordoni, and got this message.
“This is Michael, please leave me a message.”
The NAMD was founded in 1974 and claims to have 80,000 physician members, but when I looked up their nonprofit tax filings, I couldn’t find them. However, I did find the address for their office “suite” is actually a mailbox at a Ship N Mail in Sausalito, California.
I then noticed that the NAMD shares the same media contacts and the exact same names and titles for their executive leadership as another purported medical group: the American Society of Registered Nurses (ASR). The ASR’s address “suite” is also at the Ship N Mail in Sausalito, with another “suite” located at a UPS Store in San Francisco’s Marina District.
I then called a couple academic physicians and asked them to see if their medical school library carried the NAMD’s Journal of Medicine. But no dice.
To cut the story short: the NAMD is a fake physician society that platformed fake physician Allison Neitzel in their fake Journal of Medicine. It’s that crazy.
Almost everything touched by Neitzel is bogus.
M.D. - Misinformation Disinformation
Nonetheless Neitzel’s online persona as a physician-expert in misinformation got her into several articles at MedPage Today.
But when I contacted editor-in chief Dr. Jeremy Faust to ask if platforming a fake physician—forced to apologize for defaming real physicians—meets his editorial standards, he refused to explain.
“It’s very disturbing but I’m sad to say I’m not surprised,” said former MedPage Today editor-in chief Dr. Marty Makary, a surgeon and public policy researcher at John Hopkins University.
Dr. Makary says that, after serving two terms at MedPage Today, he now focuses on other editorial duties and is writing the book Blind Spots to examine the current lack of civil discourse and scientific objectivity in medicine, and the need to rebuild trust in public health.
What makes my Neitzel experience in the world of fake experts more disorienting is someone emailing me a tweet supporting Neitzel by researcher Angela Rasmussen. As I previously reported, much like Neitzel, Rasmussen had an equally awkward rise in scientific fame, tweeting her way past post-doc mediocrity in 2020 to COVID-19 fame and glory by labeling everyone she didn’t like a “conspiracy theorist.”
In late 2021, Ramussen finally landed a full-time position as a Research Scientist at a vaccine developer associated with the University of Saskatchewan.
“Nobody moves to Canada to be a pipettor in a lab, when they are a successful scientist,” a professor who works on pandemic policies told me when I was looking into Rasmussen’s background. “I’m sure she hates it there.” Because Rasmussen’s policy is to attack scientists who disagree with her, he said he did not want to be named and then sucked into her social media drama.
To read further examples of Rasmussen shooting at others she deems beneath her, see here.
Another “expert” rubbing shoulders with fake physician Neitzel is Dorit Reiss, according to a tweet on BlueSky sent to me by a reader.
Reiss is a professor at UC Law San Francisco and, like Neitzel, an ardent vaccine cheerleader. If you Google her name, you will find Dorit Reiss has likely posted more photos of herself getting vaccinated, than anyone in the history of the Internet.
I found five.
When not posing for vaccine photos, Reiss can sometimes be found online denying vaccine side effects.
When the European Medicines Agency found in early 2021 that unusual blood clots should be listed as a very rare side effect for AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine, Reiss tweeted that the regulator was not following the facts..
The UK government eventually ceased offering the AstraZeneca vaccine. Last year, The BMJ reported that dozens of patients had started legal action against AstraZeneca after suffering the same vaccine side effects that Reiss stated were not a fact.
To read further examples of Reiss downplaying documented vaccine side effects, see here.
Finally, another reader sent me this tweet off BlueSky (I get lots of DMs!) by Dr. Nick Sawyer, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at UC Davis and—surprise!—a super duper ardent cheerleader for vaccines. (I’ve sometimes wondered why Pfizer spends even a nickel on ads when they get so much free marketing from doctors.)
Sawyer tweeted a story attacking me from “WhoWhatWhy” whose title states that I’m an “anti-vaxxer” and part of some “movement strategy” after I reported that Allison Neitzel doesn’t meet the legal requirements to call herself a physician.
I sent WhoWhatWhy’s Russ Baker several questions that he didn’t answer, so I’m not interested in this article he posted on his website. But Dr. Sawyer promoting Neitzel is another matter.
Again, how do all these keep people finding each other? Second, who funds this crap?
Dr. Sawyer rode the COVID pandemic to national notoriety when he formed a group in 2021 with the ironic name No License for Disinformation (NLFD). Like everyone calling themselves disinformation experts, NLFD’s mission was labeling people they didn’t like “conspiracy theorists” who were spreading “misinformation.”
The NLFD deleted their Twitter account and website after California attorney Laura Powell exposed some of their more egregious examples of disinformation in an article at Brownstone, but I found some old links and tweets.
For over a year, Dr. Sawyer’s NFLD harassed and disparaged multiple physicians who he accused of “spreading deadly Covid-19 related disinformation” sometimes accusing these physicians of “fraud.” Sawyer even set up a snitch line, that walked people through an automated process of finding which state a doctor is licensed in, how to find their license number, and how to then report the doctor to the state medical board.
NFLD then asked complainants to report back on their victory.
Once you have filed an submitted a complaint, let us know! Click here and let us know who you reported and and a brief description why you reported them in the “Additional Information” box. Thank you!
For physicians Dr. Sawyer obviously hated, NFLD even created specific webpages, including one for Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo. These pages provided all the information needed to goad readers into mass filing professional complaints to cause a physician to lose their license at the click of a hyperlink.
Sawyer’s NFLD was also one of the primary promoters of California AB 2098, and he testified in its support. The law allowed California’s state medical board to sanction or revoke the license of physicians who shared COVID information with patients that the medical board didn’t like. When a group of physicians filed suit against the law, they included several NFLD tweets documenting the group’s threats against doctors who opposed the law because it violated the First Amendment and censored physicians.
After considering the lawsuit, a California judge then blocked the law for violating physicians’ constitutional rights to free speech. Having signed the bill that created the censorship law, Governor Newsom then repealed it.
I’m not really certain how people like Allison Neitzel, Angela Rasmussen, Dorit Reiss, and Dr. Nick Sawyer keep finding each other. But I’m guessing it has something to do with a group of funders who keep throwing money at groups claiming to tackle disinformation, while actually promoting censorship. If you have any ideas, please put them in the comments below.
DORIT REISS VACCINE PHOTO CONTEST: I found five photos Dorit Reiss posted online where she was getting a vaccine. We are running a contest for readers who can find “COVID experts” posting six or more photos of themselves getting a vaccine.
There are two entry categories:
RANDO ONLINE EXPERT: Find six or more photos anyone—even your nutty aunt—has posted online of themselves getting a vaccine, and get a free six-month subscription to The DisInformation Chronicle.
ACADEMIC EXPERT: Find six or more photos an academic has posted online of themselves getting a vaccine, and get a free year’s subscription to The DisInformation Chronicle.
To Enter: send email with title “DORIT REISS VACCINE PHOTO CONTEST” and include the 6 photos and your name to my personal email: thackerpd@gmail.com. Multiple entries cannot win for the same “rando online expert” or “academic expert” although multiple contestants can win in each category.
No comments:
Post a Comment