“Consensus is the business of politics,” said late author Michael Crichton in 2003. “Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right.” While true, being right and doing actual science may get you arrested under a bill that just passed in France’s National Assembly — if your activities are deemed contrary to “medical knowledge.”
The problem is that “medical knowledge” has a history of fallibility, with bloodletting and lobotomies once having been standard practice based on “medical knowledge.” More recently, we heard Dr. Anthony Fauci say that “attacks on me quite frankly are attacks on science” as he claimed final-authority status on medical knowledge. Yet some of his pronouncements were very, very wrong.
As for the bill, it might apply only to those pressuring a particular individual or individuals to act contrary to establishment medicine. Yet critics fear it could mean imprisonment for criticizing Covid mRNA injections. Moreover, those skeptical about the “transgender” agenda could be victimized as well, as the measure also reportedly targets those deemed to be harming “psychological health.”
The World Council for Health (WCH) reports on the story:
On 14th February 2024, the French Parliament adopted amendments to an existing anti-cult law. The measures voted on by parliamentarians include the highly controversial Article 4 criminalizing medical dissent by criminalizing any individual criticizing or encouraging others to avoid mainstream medical practices or health policies, assuming such avoidance can be claimed by authorities to do harm. These include not only thousands of scientists and medical doctors but also people from all walks of life in towns and communities across France.
The motives driving this law were clearly stated in the Explanatory Memorandum by French Minister of the Interior, Mr Gérald Darmanin asserting, “The health crisis has provided an ideal breeding ground for … self-proclaimed ‘gurus’ or ‘masters of thought’ [who] operate online, taking advantage … of social networks to federate real communities around them.”
Coincidently [sic], the law has been introduced whilst the French government is suing one of France’s top virologists for publishing a study that found alternative Covid treatments resulted in better results than the government’s treatment protocol. The suit was filed against physician and infectious diseases specialist Dr Didier Raoult, even though the hospital he managed had one of the lowest Covid mortality rates of any hospital.
The bill … constitutes a clear and direct attack on civil rights, freedom of speech, and scientific inquiry and is a blatant attack on the practice of alternative and natural medicine. It establishes state-sponsored scientific truth — a single truth established by the State — in other terms, tyranny and fascism.
Now, in fairness, most of us should echo Substack writer William M. Briggs, who, showing humility, said, “My knowledge of French law rivals that of Fifteenth Century Congolese poetry” and that, consequently, making definitive comments about the bill is risky. But here’s what it says, according to the WCH:
Art. 223-1-2. — It is punishable by one year’s imprisonment and a fine of 15 000 (45 000 euros) euros to provoke, by means of repeated pressure or manoeuvres, any person suffering from a pathology to abandon or refrain from following a therapeutic or prophylactic medical treatment, when this abandonment or abstention is presented as beneficial for the health of the persons targeted when, given the state of medical knowledge, it is clearly likely to have particularly serious consequences for their physical or mental health, given the pathology they suffer from.
So what are the implications? The physician who tweeted the below certainly believes they’re dire.
On the other hand, one Dr. Adrian Wong brushes off the concerns, claiming that “if the bill passes and becomes law, it only endangers self-proclaimed ‘gurus’ and cults that use … the Internet to snare their victims.” He also points out that an amendment added to the bill states that “a crime would not be committed ‘when proof of the free and informed consent of the person is provided.’”
Is this reassuring? What would constitute “proof”? A notarized affidavit? And what establishes guru status? It’s doubtful it would require your saying, publicly and explicitly, “I am a guru.”
What I’m not clear on is whether this law would apply only to those who’ve interacted with a person or persons, either face-to-face or online, or if it could be applied to merely the act of passionately professing iconoclastic medical opinions. Either way, it’s troubling.
History is replete with stories of brilliant researchers persecuted for being right 30 years too soon. Examples are Ignaz Semmelweis and puerperal fever, Dr. Joseph Goldberger and pellagra, Edward Jenner and smallpox, and Louis Pasteur and germ theory.
In recent times, ivermectin was demonized as “horse medicine.” Yet two people close to me — who both reached a severity level with Covid where they had trouble breathing — achieved almost immediate relief upon taking it. Could I be arrested under a France-style law for facilitating the drug’s acquisition or, perhaps, even for just trumpeting it online?
Moreover, the bill could apparently be applied to counseling (reparative therapy) designed to help a person eliminate feelings of same-sex attraction or cross-sex identification (“transgenderism”). For who defines “psychological health”?
There for sure are “gurus” selling snake oil; then again, there’s also a history of establishment types selling what would ultimately prove to be snake oil. The latter reality is why the government should not be set up as an unassailable Ministry of Medical Truth.
So whatever the French bill dictates, two things are certain: We should worry about it because, unlike Vegas, what happens in Europe doesn’t stay in Europe in our now-small world.
Second, devout statists relish the ability to imprison those who disagree with them (and not just on medical matters). So of all the hazards to health, few are worse than entrusting those puppeteers with power.
