4 ms·
Censorship is not inherently bad. The USA has never extended the general principle of freedom of speech to the subject of medical information, for good reason.
by DarylZero 5y ago
Censorship is not inherently bad. The USA has never extended the general principle of freedom of speech to the subject of medical information, for good reason. Medical speech must be censored or else the snake oil salesmen will take over. Organized medical societies must retain a monopoly on medical speech.
In the pandemic, speech about public health was censored less than treatment advice or drug facts would have been. Tens of thousands died as a result. A disastrous experiment in granting a freedom that no one responsible needs or wants.
- jimbob45 5y ago>Medical speech must be censored or else the snake oil salesmen will take over. Organized medical societies must retain a monopoly on medical speech. Instead of censorship like you're advocating for (an approach that absolutely will not work within the framework of the US constitution), we usually solve this by exclusively allowing the organized medical societies to have and show medical credentials. Those who fraudulently claim to have these credentials are viciously prosecuted. The fraudsters are free to push whatever medical advice they like, provided that they do not mislead others into thinking that they are credentialed.
- DarylZero 5y agoThe FDA censors medical speech. There is no constitutional issue.
- jimbob45 5y agoTo my knowledge, the FDA only gets involved when you try to sell things because that may qualify as false advertisement. However, Facebook posts like the ones in question here don't fall under that umbrella. Disclaimer: I'm fully vaxxed and am happy with the way the FDA is run. My only dog in this conversation is censorship.
- hunter2_ 5y agoIt would be very interesting if the outcome of Facebook's contracted checking was to prominently indicate such credential or lack thereof, rather than trying to indicate true/false.
- nradov 5y agoThat is not legally correct. The FDA has some limited authority over commercial speech by companies selling drugs, supplements, and medical devices. However there is no legal basis for the government to censor medical speech. It is perfectly legal for a physician (or anyone else) to make bullshit claims like "5G radiation causes COVID" or whatever. Organized medical societies have no special legal standing when it comes to speech. Of course Facebook has a legal right to censor anything they want for any reason, or no reason at all.
- DarylZero 5y agoI didn't mean to say that that was the status quo. Just that it would be OK.
- AnthonyMouse 5y ago> Medical speech must be censored or else the snake oil salesmen will take over. Everybody talks about snake oil salesmen in the 19th century, but do you know what doctors were hawking back then? You can find plenty of examples of garbage products not because of the lack of regulation but because of the lack of contemporary science. Even medical professionals at the time didn't know any better -- or else anyone could have asked their doctor about Snake Oil(TM) and known not to try it. Today nobody is going to believe that you can cure a disease with "Indian blood" or any of that nonsense, because the information on its harms or ineffectiveness is widely available and not seriously in contention. The problem comes when you get to the medical information which is still in contention today. That's when censorship is the most harmful because when something is still actively unfolding and it's poorly understood with limited data, there is no basis for anyone to authoritatively declare something to be definitively true. And if the thing authorities are telling everyone is false, censoring the people challenging them is the harm.