Speaker 1: The state of California has a new law known as
Speaker 1: Assembly Bill. Under the new law, the Medical Board of
Speaker 1: California could discipline physicians who disseminate information about COVID that's
Speaker 1: not in line with the quote unquote contemporary scientific consensus. Basically,
Speaker 1: in a nutshell, what this means is the Medical Board
Speaker 1: of California wants to muzzle doctors. If you question the authority,
Speaker 1: if you question the consensus, you could lose your license. Now,
Speaker 1: we've all been paying attention during COVID and we've seen
Speaker 1: how the consensus has been wrong about everything. The consensus
Speaker 1: has been wrong about masks, the consensus has been wrong
Speaker 1: about lockdowns, the consensus has been wrong about vaccines. Essentially,
Speaker 1: this is just government censorship, the silencing of dissidents, and
Speaker 1: isn't the point of science to question the broader narrative,
Speaker 1: to question the consensus. We're going to talk to one
Speaker 1: doctor who is part of a small group who's suing
Speaker 1: the state. Now so far they've successful. California judge issued
Speaker 1: a preliminary injunction against the law, so their case will
Speaker 1: continue to proceed. That doctor's name is Dr Aaron Karyat.
Speaker 1: He graduated from the University of Order Dame in philosophy
Speaker 1: and pre medical sciences. He earned his medical degree from
Speaker 1: Georgetown University and he completed his residency training in psychiatry
Speaker 1: at the University of California, Irvine. He he taught there
Speaker 1: for many many years, something like fifteen years before getting
Speaker 1: fired for speaking out against the quote unquote consensus, for
Speaker 1: not getting vaccinated, for questioning the authority, and now he's
Speaker 1: leading the charge on this lawsuit as well. So we're
Speaker 1: going to talk to Dr Aaron Karyati about why he's suing,
Speaker 1: what it means, and where this lawsuit is heading. He's next,
Speaker 1: Dr Aaron Karyati. I appreciate you coming on the show, sir,
Speaker 1: thank you for making the time. Oh. Absolutely, it's great
Speaker 1: to be with you. Losing. So, you're one of the
Speaker 1: five physicians who have filed a lawsuit against the state
Speaker 1: of California over a new law assembly built. What exactly
Speaker 1: does this law do? This law, which was introduced in
Speaker 1: the California state legislature last year, passed by the state legislatures,
Speaker 1: signed by the governor, is more or less a gag
Speaker 1: order on physicians. It specifies that a that a physician
Speaker 1: who contradicts what the law calls the quote unquote current
Speaker 1: scientific consensus, which is never defined in the law. Very
Speaker 1: difficult thing to define legally. Any doctor who contradicts this
Speaker 1: supposed consensus on things related to COVID may have hiss
Speaker 1: or medical license subject to disciplinary action by the medcal Board.
Speaker 1: So especially the law empowers the medical board to discipline
Speaker 1: physicians in California who contradict the really the preferred public
Speaker 1: health narrative on COVID. And I say that it's a
Speaker 1: gag order on physicians for a couple of reasons. One
Speaker 1: is it tries to control the speech that doctors engage
Speaker 1: in with their patients in the privacy of the consulting room.
Speaker 1: And they shouldn't be a political issue. That should not
Speaker 1: be a sort of left right liberal conservative debate. And
Speaker 1: the reason for that is I explained when I testified
Speaker 1: against this bill at the California State said it is
Speaker 1: that I don't know anyone in California left right, progressive
Speaker 1: conservative who wants to go to their doctor and ask
Speaker 1: our doctor a question about COVID treatment or COVID intervention
Speaker 1: and not have their doctor give them the doctor's honest opinion.
Speaker 1: Right nobody wants their doctor reading from a government approved
Speaker 1: script written by the California Department of Public Health. Otherwise
Speaker 1: you would just go on the government's website and read
Speaker 1: what the government wanted you to know about COVID. The
Speaker 1: reason you ask your physicians you want your physicians opinion. Now,
Speaker 1: you may decline to follow the physicians recommendation, you may
Speaker 1: be skeptical of the physicians judgment, go seek a second
Speaker 1: opinion whatever. As a patient, obviously you're free in that
Speaker 1: regard as well. But I don't know anyone who doesn't
Speaker 1: want to hear what their doctor actually thinks. And so
Speaker 1: as soon as you intervene in that and try to
Speaker 1: control with physicians, say the patients, you've undermined the trust
Speaker 1: that's necessary for the doctor patient relationship to work in
Speaker 1: the first place. And ultimately this this is a problem
Speaker 1: for physicians who may be unjustly disciplined or unjustly constrained
Speaker 1: from practicing medicine according to their best judgment. But more importantly,
Speaker 1: at least it's harmful to patients who need to be
Speaker 1: able to trust that what their physician is telling them
Speaker 1: is actually in the in accord with the doctor's own
Speaker 1: clinical judgment and the doctor's own personalized and individualized recommendation
Speaker 1: for the patients. So this is a very serious, um
Speaker 1: and egregious sort of insertion of the government into the
Speaker 1: private realm of the doctor patient relationship where the government
Speaker 1: does not belong. But it's also harmful to the practice
Speaker 1: of medicine as a whole that is sort of institutional level,
Speaker 1: because it's going to undermine the trust that patients in
Speaker 1: general have of medical professionals if they think that, you know,
Speaker 1: the medical professionals are constrained by laws like this. Um.
Speaker 1: I think one of one of the reasons that the
Speaker 1: law is vague and its definitions. This is one of
Speaker 1: the constantitutional problems with the law that we're challenging. Is
Speaker 1: even if the medical board only takes disciplinary action against
Speaker 1: one or two physicians, or maybe it never, it never
Speaker 1: applies to this law to specific cases. Nevertheless, the law
Speaker 1: is going to have a chilling effect on this speech
Speaker 1: of physicians right because precisely because it's difficult to know
Speaker 1: whether or not whatever I'm saying may run a foul
Speaker 1: of the law, or may run a foul of the
Speaker 1: medical boards interpretational law. I'm just not going to say anything,
Speaker 1: or I'm just going to air on the side of
Speaker 1: only uh, you know, saying what has been approved again
Speaker 1: by some government agency or some public health bureaucrat because
Speaker 1: the potential consequences for me as a physician or so severe. Right,
Speaker 1: it's I mean, it's one thing to lose your job,
Speaker 1: it's another thing to lose your license, which is your
Speaker 1: ability to practice medicine at all. When did science become
Speaker 1: about the consensus? Isn't the whole point of science to
Speaker 1: be able to challenge the consensus? You get new data,
Speaker 1: you do new research, you come up with different you know,
Speaker 1: a set of facts. So when has it ever been
Speaker 1: about the consensus to begin with? Precisely right, it's never
Speaker 1: been about the consensus. In fact, the the idea of
Speaker 1: that the science capital key capitals, delivers ready made conclusions
Speaker 1: that are unassailable and can never be challenged. This is
Speaker 1: a this is a totally mistaken view of science. Sciences
Speaker 1: is a method or it's a set of methods, or
Speaker 1: trying to answer really difficult, really complicated questions about the
Speaker 1: natural world, about the workings of the human body, about
Speaker 1: a rapidly evolving virus, whatever, and science advances precisely by hypothesis,
Speaker 1: by conjecture, by the gay aring of evidence, by refutation,
Speaker 1: by argumentation. If you take a group of credible scientists
Speaker 1: that that actually practice science, you put them in a
Speaker 1: room together, they're going to argue endlessly. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: what scientists do. That they're going to debate about, you know,
Speaker 1: the nuances of this or that study, or that, you know,
Speaker 1: the upshot of the research as a whole, or you know,
Speaker 1: this theory versus that theory of viral evolution or of
Speaker 1: treatment of a respiratory illness. That's a good thing, and
Speaker 1: that's precisely how science advances. So if you actually understand
Speaker 1: how medical science works, it's very clear immediately that science
Speaker 1: and censorship are totally incompatible. So that that's precisely another
Speaker 1: problem with the laws, not just what it does to
Speaker 1: the doctor patient relationship in a consulting room, but what
Speaker 1: it does to the advance of medical science. Trying to
Speaker 1: fix a any conclusion that any given point of time
Speaker 1: as the final truth and it cannot be challenged and
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's unassailable. That will guarantee that you're
Speaker 1: going to bring the scientific enterprise to a grinding halt um.
Speaker 1: So it's it's clearly a misguided law and unjust law
Speaker 1: in terms of suppressing the physicians free speech rights uh
Speaker 1: and the patient's rights to receive certain forms of information,
Speaker 1: which is another key aspect of free speech. But it
Speaker 1: will also have this downstream consequence of halting the progress
Speaker 1: of medical science and of you know, chasing out of
Speaker 1: the state good physician scientists who are on the front
Speaker 1: lines asking good questions, um, exploring novel treatments, trying to
Speaker 1: improve treatment protocols. Doctors like that precisely the kind of
Speaker 1: doctors that tend to advance the field. They're they're not
Speaker 1: going to want to practice medicine in California. They're gonna
Speaker 1: they're gonna jump ship. And you know, the physician shortage
Speaker 1: shortage that we already have in this state is only
Speaker 1: going to get worse, and in fact, it will be
Speaker 1: some of the some of the best, most forward thinking,
Speaker 1: most most creative or innovative physicians that will be the
Speaker 1: first to leave well. And it's also what's scary about
Speaker 1: this is, you know, if thunder the interpretation of the
Speaker 1: Medical Board of California, we've seen how the CDC has
Speaker 1: gotten things wrong how the you know FDC, how all
Speaker 1: these are CDC rather f d A, How all these
Speaker 1: public health organizations have gotten things wrong consistently throughout COVID.
Speaker 1: So then you have the people who are essentially setting
Speaker 1: the precedent setting you know what the consensus is that
Speaker 1: have been wrong throughout all of It's exactly right about
Speaker 1: our public health agencies. And by comparison, I mean at
Speaker 1: least the public health agencies are populated by people with
Speaker 1: pH d s and people with supposedly some level of expertise. Um.
Speaker 1: There may be a bunch of incompetent pH d s,
Speaker 1: or they may have become politicized or weaponized in various ways.
Speaker 1: But if you look at the Medical Board, UM, less
Speaker 1: than half of the members of the Medical Board are physicians.
Speaker 1: Most of the non physicians are lawyers. The the chair
Speaker 1: of the Medical Board is a professional life coach, um,
Speaker 1: you know, not someone that is competent at judging the
Speaker 1: current state of science on any given medical question. And
Speaker 1: the members of the Medical Board are directly appointed by
Speaker 1: the governor. So this is a This is an entity
Speaker 1: that can very easily and I would argue, has become
Speaker 1: weaponized and politicized. UM and tasked with doing things that
Speaker 1: the Medical Board was never set up to do. The
Speaker 1: Medical Board was set up to, you know, basically get
Speaker 1: rid of physician cracks and quacks and cranks who are
Speaker 1: clearly doing engaged in unethical, fraudulent, harmful behavior, you know,
Speaker 1: abusing the doctor patient relationship in various ways, or defrauding
Speaker 1: the insurance companies this sort of thing. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: what to do about those doctors who received multiple complaints
Speaker 1: from from patients about clearly substandard care, clearly unethical or
Speaker 1: illegal practices. That's that's what the Medical Board was set
Speaker 1: up for. The Medical Board is should never be empowered
Speaker 1: to a judy adjudicate complicated scientific questions. Um, they don't
Speaker 1: possess the competence to do that. And they will be
Speaker 1: operating under pressure from the state, which sets them up
Speaker 1: and empowers them to do the state's bidding and to
Speaker 1: become the long arm of a kind of state censorship regime.
Speaker 1: And that's a that's very very dangerous for UH, an
Speaker 1: agency that had, you know, had really modest task of
Speaker 1: you know, monitoring the most egregious violations that you know,
Speaker 1: a few bad apples within the profession which are always
Speaker 1: going to have you know, are are engaged in and
Speaker 1: you know now they're being asked to take sides in
Speaker 1: complicated debates about you know, a novel virus, and you know,
Speaker 1: the the idea that they would they would do any
Speaker 1: better than our public health agencies have done. Um is
Speaker 1: you know it's very far fetched. You obviously you've eloquently
Speaker 1: laid out the justification against this law. I wholeheartedly agree
Speaker 1: with you. Quick commercial break more with Dr Aaron Karyat
Speaker 1: why did you decide that, you know what, I'm stepping up,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be a part of this lawsuit. I've
Speaker 1: got to do more here. Number One, I thought that
Speaker 1: I could be among the physicians that was targeted by
Speaker 1: such a law. So if I wanted to continue to
Speaker 1: live and practice medicine in California, I ought to do
Speaker 1: something about this uma. From from early on in the pandemic,
Speaker 1: I was one of the doctors that would publicly challenge
Speaker 1: the current scientific consensus, and very often I was. I
Speaker 1: was smeared or punished simply for being six months nine
Speaker 1: ahead of the curve and for seeing what was coming
Speaker 1: down the pike before it was widely acknowledged by the public.
Speaker 1: Health agencies or by the profession as a whole. And so,
Speaker 1: you know, I could imagine that once a lot like
Speaker 1: this was in place, that you know, it may they
Speaker 1: have a chilling effect on my own ability to continue
Speaker 1: to comment on public health policy related to COVID. So
Speaker 1: my own personal story. I was at the University of California,
Speaker 1: Irvine for fifteen years, where I was a full professor
Speaker 1: in the School of Medicine and directed the medical ethics
Speaker 1: program there. And when the university institute of their vaccine mandate,
Speaker 1: I had already published a piece in the Wall Street
Speaker 1: Journal arguing that the university of a university of actually
Speaker 1: mandates were unethical. They violated the principle of informed consent,
Speaker 1: enshrined first into Nuremberg Code and then throughout twentieth century
Speaker 1: medical ethics and federal law. And so I challenged the
Speaker 1: vaccine mandate in federal court, and the university fired me
Speaker 1: as a consequence of that. About a year after I
Speaker 1: was fired, the CDC finally came around and publicly acknowledged
Speaker 1: the central argument that I was making in that case,
Speaker 1: which was that, uh, you know, we shouldn't be discriminated
Speaker 1: between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. CDC gave two reasons,
Speaker 1: which were first articulated in my lawsuit a year prior.
Speaker 1: Number one, natural immunity after infection, which I had, was
Speaker 1: at least as robust, indeed more robust than the vaccine
Speaker 1: induced community. And number two, um, the vaccines did not
Speaker 1: stop in fact and and transmission um. And both of
Speaker 1: these facts were known if you were paying close attention
Speaker 1: to the research literature. We're known when I was trying
Speaker 1: to make this case publicly end in the federal courts,
Speaker 1: But it took the CDC a year to publicly acknowledge them.
Speaker 1: Didn't happen until So, I mean, that's just one example
Speaker 1: I could I could name others, other examples where I
Speaker 1: and other quote unquote dissident physicians who are challenging the
Speaker 1: COVID narrative that was being pushed were censored or silenced,
Speaker 1: were punished simply for articulating things that that you know,
Speaker 1: a year later, six months later, we're widely acknowledged by
Speaker 1: everyone to be true. So that that's just that's isn't
Speaker 1: you know? My own personal story which you could be
Speaker 1: repeated many many times over by other doctors and nurses
Speaker 1: and citizens. Just paying close attention is a good illustration
Speaker 1: of precisely what we talked about a few minutes ago
Speaker 1: with how science proceeds. You you challenge science advance is
Speaker 1: precisely when it when a consensus, when what everyone thinks
Speaker 1: they know is challenged, and then uh, you know, subjected
Speaker 1: to critical scrutiny and um and subjected to further investigation
Speaker 1: and the gathering of evidence and so forth. UM. And
Speaker 1: so you know, the law like this is in my view,
Speaker 1: essentially a power grab, right because it's if there if
Speaker 1: there are public health officials or if there are medical
Speaker 1: institutions who simply don't like the or supposed authority questioned, um,
Speaker 1: and that if they declare something to be the case,
Speaker 1: and you know, mandate that everyone fall in line, that
Speaker 1: people should just shut up and listen. Um. Well, you
Speaker 1: know these are people that um, that may realize, look,
Speaker 1: my my arguments may not succeed on their own merits.
Speaker 1: They may not succeed if they're subjected to scientific scrutiny.
Speaker 1: And you know, for a real doctor, real scientist, that's okay,
Speaker 1: you welcome that. You know, I'm open to revising my
Speaker 1: opinion in the face of new evidence. There's nothing wrong
Speaker 1: with that. In fact, that's a good thing. But for
Speaker 1: people who will who will never publicly admit that they
Speaker 1: may have been wrong. Uh, the censorship option, or to
Speaker 1: punish my adversaries option seems like a you know, a
Speaker 1: good way, maybe a shortcut, to maintain their power and
Speaker 1: maintain their stance of a kind of authority that can't
Speaker 1: be questioned. And this, you know, this is this is uh,
Speaker 1: you know, this starts to smell of a of a
Speaker 1: kind of Orwellian sort of totalitarian flavor to it. I
Speaker 1: faced this and in the media a little bit because
Speaker 1: I was very outspoken about not getting the vaccine. But
Speaker 1: I can't imagine someone like you, who you know, as
Speaker 1: you you talked about you were at the University of California,
Speaker 1: Irvine for for fifteen years. My understanding is that the
Speaker 1: school Medicine deans had asked you at one point to
Speaker 1: give the white coat ceremony keynote addressed incoming medical students.
Speaker 1: They told you that you're the best lecture in the
Speaker 1: medical school. You're leaned on heavily for a variety of
Speaker 1: leadership roles at the school. So how crazy, because I
Speaker 1: can't imagine experiencing what I did in the media, which
Speaker 1: isn't even close to to what you went through. And
Speaker 1: then also being a medical professional that you are, how
Speaker 1: wild has this been to see probably people that you know,
Speaker 1: you previously respected, you, you thought were critical thinkers, to
Speaker 1: just turn into you know, like these programmed bots almost yeah,
Speaker 1: programmed bots and informants, uh, you know, on their colleagues.
Speaker 1: It was surreal. It was demoralizing. Medicine at its best
Speaker 1: has a tradition of self scrutiny and internal criticism can
Speaker 1: try to make ourselves better. There's a there's a tradition
Speaker 1: in academic medicine. We call it the eminem conference Morbidity
Speaker 1: and Mortality conference. It's, you know, I take a case
Speaker 1: that I've treated where maybe the outcome wasn't as good
Speaker 1: as I would have hoped for, maybe there was a
Speaker 1: bad outcome in the case the patient diet or something
Speaker 1: like that, and I present the case in detail to
Speaker 1: my colleagues. You know, I stand up in front of
Speaker 1: the other doctors in my department and they then are
Speaker 1: permitted to play Monday morning quarterback and second, guess, you know,
Speaker 1: everything I did well, Maybe the case would have gone
Speaker 1: better if you did this or maybe you could have
Speaker 1: spotted that earlier, Maybe you should have run this test.
Speaker 1: It's hard to subject yourself to that kind of critical scrutiny,
Speaker 1: especially you know, from people who have the benefit of hindsight,
Speaker 1: which is usually but doctors do that. We do that willingly, because,
Speaker 1: you know, because we had a huge responsibility, because we
Speaker 1: want to get better, and ultimately, you know, for the
Speaker 1: sake of our patients, so that you know, if we've
Speaker 1: made mistakes or done things that are suboptimal, we can
Speaker 1: we can try to avoid that in the future. All
Speaker 1: of that seemed to come to a grinding hall when
Speaker 1: it came to COVID. There was none of that um
Speaker 1: There was none of that self scrutiny and sort of
Speaker 1: internal critique. There was none of the back and forth
Speaker 1: parsing out of data and arguing about data that that
Speaker 1: again is a central feature of academic medicine at its best.
Speaker 1: Another monthly conference we have his journal club. You just
Speaker 1: take one article and you've parted it out, and you
Speaker 1: talk about the strengths and weaknesses and the methods, and
Speaker 1: you know, just just one study can be subjected to
Speaker 1: a lot of debate because science is complicated. But suddenly
Speaker 1: COVID comes out, and there are these sort of anointed
Speaker 1: public health talking heads on TV that we are supposed
Speaker 1: to take as infallible. And never mind that Anthony Fauci,
Speaker 1: for example, is probably not treated a patient since he
Speaker 1: was in residency many many decades ago. He has not
Speaker 1: run an experiment at the bench for many decades. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, he's an administrator, he's a bureaucrat. But if
Speaker 1: you were to challenge his public health recommendations, who were
Speaker 1: immediately accused of killing Grandma or being selfish or you know,
Speaker 1: putting the economy ahead of saving the times or whatever.
Speaker 1: So in a climate of fear, we were suddenly subjected
Speaker 1: to a situation in which everyone was afraid to say
Speaker 1: what they actually thought. Um. Everyone was afraid even internally
Speaker 1: to ask critical questions. UM. And it was it was
Speaker 1: shocking to me to see how quickly medicine fell in
Speaker 1: line with that UM, and how even when some doctors
Speaker 1: started asking questions and started to once again I think
Speaker 1: more critically, many of them did not feel empowered to
Speaker 1: speak out publicly out of fear of losing their jobs.
Speaker 1: So I had many doctors reaching out to me privately saying, hey,
Speaker 1: love what you're doing. Thanks for speaking out. You know,
Speaker 1: sorry you got sacked by the unit versity. But keep
Speaker 1: doing what you're doing, you know, cheerleading. Um. Because I
Speaker 1: feel like I can't I feel like I can't speak out,
Speaker 1: or I can't ask questions, or all suffer the same
Speaker 1: thing that you suffer. Then you know, I understand that.
Speaker 1: I understand that it's kind of self protective um um
Speaker 1: uh strategy to try to maintain your career or your job.
Speaker 1: Those consequences are very real, and you know, doctors have
Speaker 1: responsibilities to their family and so forth. But nevertheless, you know,
Speaker 1: at a certain point, uh, you know, I think any
Speaker 1: professional has to draw a line in the sand and say,
Speaker 1: you know, as a position, if I'm if I'm doing
Speaker 1: things that I think are harmful to patients, then you know,
Speaker 1: then I have to speak up, even if it's going
Speaker 1: to cost me as a journalist, if if I feel
Speaker 1: like I'm just parenting lives that I'm being told to repeat. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, for the state of my own integrity, even
Speaker 1: if I may lose my position at the at the media,
Speaker 1: I have to speak out. I have to do something.
Speaker 1: I think all professionals should ask themselves. You know, where
Speaker 1: is my line? If you don't have one, you should
Speaker 1: probably ask yourself, you know, why you're doing what you're doing,
Speaker 1: and you know what, uh, what is it all about
Speaker 1: for you? Professionally? Quick commercial breaks? Stay with us? Having
Speaker 1: these conversations with my parents and they're like, well, you
Speaker 1: could get fired, you know, have you thought about that?
Speaker 1: And I'm like, I just you know, I gotta do
Speaker 1: it and just see, you know, like pray to God.
Speaker 1: I don't. But you know, it's it's this is wrong,
Speaker 1: And what's the point of me in this role doing
Speaker 1: this job. If I don't speak out and I don't
Speaker 1: have conviction, you know, and I'm not rooted anything, then
Speaker 1: why why am I? I don't deserve this job? Then,
Speaker 1: you know, to your to your point, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: a California judge issued a preliminary injunction against this law.
Speaker 1: Where do you think this case is heading? You know,
Speaker 1: what's the timeline? What should people look for as this
Speaker 1: moves forward? So the preliminary injunction is essentially the court
Speaker 1: saying that we are going to halt the implementation and
Speaker 1: application of the law while the case is being heard.
Speaker 1: So the law went into effect January one, Unfortunately, we
Speaker 1: couldn't get our hearing scheduled before January one, but we
Speaker 1: managed a couple of weeks into January to get that
Speaker 1: hearing for the preliminary injunction and the court granted it.
Speaker 1: So the law went into effect for a few weeks. Um.
Speaker 1: It was never applied to my knowledge, to any specific cases. Uh.
Speaker 1: And now the law is is on hold until the
Speaker 1: court makes a final ruling. That's a very very good
Speaker 1: first step for a couple of reasons. Number one, there
Speaker 1: were other physicians in California that high lawsuits to challenge
Speaker 1: this lawn federal court on constitutional grounds similar to what
Speaker 1: we did, and the court found that those physicians did
Speaker 1: not have legal standing to challenge the law or is technicalities.
Speaker 1: And you know, uh, reasons why the court did that. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't think those reasons were justified, but we certainly
Speaker 1: were worried that this judge might do the same thing.
Speaker 1: So we got past that hurdle. The judge in the
Speaker 1: preliminary injunction ruling found that all five of us physician
Speaker 1: plaintiffs did have standing to challenge the law, even if
Speaker 1: in our clinical practice we were not necessarily treating patients
Speaker 1: with COVID directly, we were engaged in other conversations related
Speaker 1: to COVID in my own case as a psychiatrist, for example, UM,
Speaker 1: I sometimes have to deal with the issue of masks
Speaker 1: with people that have anxiety disorders. Masks can actually increase
Speaker 1: their anxiety. UM. If someone is subjected to panic attacks,
Speaker 1: did the rebreathing of the air with a mask can
Speaker 1: sometimes trigger panic symptoms. So, even though I'm not an
Speaker 1: infectious disease specialist, I am sometimes giving advice on COVID
Speaker 1: related matters. And the court recognized that, so that was good.
Speaker 1: That's a big hurdle. The second really important aspect of
Speaker 1: this preliminary injunction is that for a court to grant this,
Speaker 1: it's essentially the judge saying that, even before you go
Speaker 1: to trial, the plaintiffs likelihood of prevailing, in other words,
Speaker 1: that the likelihood that the court is going to declare
Speaker 1: this law unconstitutional and strike it down is very plausible,
Speaker 1: just on the basis of the written documentation that we've submitted,
Speaker 1: in the written arguments that we've made in our complaint,
Speaker 1: in our declaration so far, so not to get too
Speaker 1: far ahead of ourselves, Lisa, UM, we still need to
Speaker 1: win the case. But this is an indication from the
Speaker 1: court that the judge thinks we have a good chance
Speaker 1: of winning the case. So the next step is that
Speaker 1: we go we go to trial, and you know, we
Speaker 1: have the back and forth of the fact finding in
Speaker 1: the legal arguments and the testimony given by the plaintiffs
Speaker 1: if the court asked for that or requires that, and
Speaker 1: then the judge is going to have to make a ruling.
Speaker 1: We don't have the date yet set for that trial
Speaker 1: to my knowledge, unless that happened today and I just
Speaker 1: haven't been notified. But the judge acted fairly swiftly in
Speaker 1: our case to issue the preliminary injunction, and I think
Speaker 1: the court will move pretty quickly to the next phase.
Speaker 1: So hopefully, hopefully we'll be able to get a ruling
Speaker 1: sometime in the next month or two. But at least
Speaker 1: in the meantime, we're not going to be subjected to
Speaker 1: this bad law in California. I anticipate that will prevail,
Speaker 1: but um, you know, I'm also aware that I don't
Speaker 1: have the crystal ball. The two the two constitutional issues
Speaker 1: at stake in our case. Number one, free speech of
Speaker 1: physicians is the first Amendment right, but the other one,
Speaker 1: and actually the one that the court paid more attention
Speaker 1: to in its recent ruling, was we're arguing that our
Speaker 1: rights are being violated under the equal protection clause of
Speaker 1: the fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. One of the one
Speaker 1: of the things that that that aspect of the Constitution
Speaker 1: requires is that the law itself, any law that's passed,
Speaker 1: be sufficiently clear in its wording, in its definitions, that
Speaker 1: a citizen can know whether or not they're violating the
Speaker 1: law right Otherwise you're you're subducted to an arbitrary law
Speaker 1: of taking over your head and you're not sure you
Speaker 1: know just what I'm doing right now constitute stealing or
Speaker 1: fraud or whatever. Well, in this case, the judge said
Speaker 1: that the wording of the law first of all grammatically unintelligible,
Speaker 1: and second of all, the current scientific consensus was was
Speaker 1: too vaguely defined in the law. Precisely, are concerned that
Speaker 1: the law was going to have a chilling effect because
Speaker 1: doctors didn't know if you know, a piece of advice
Speaker 1: that they wanted to give would or would not get
Speaker 1: them into trouble with the medical board. So we may
Speaker 1: we may prevail on that issue alone. Aside from the
Speaker 1: fact that this law also violates First Amendment free speech rights. Well,
Speaker 1: Dr Aaron Katty, before we go, where can people help out?
Speaker 1: Is our way for people to help out. So our
Speaker 1: case is being supported by the New Civil Liberties Alliance.
Speaker 1: Our lawyer there, Jennie Units, has been really excellent. So
Speaker 1: if you want to contribute to the case itself, you can.
Speaker 1: You can give some money to the n c l A.
Speaker 1: If you want to follow the case, I post regularly
Speaker 1: on it and on some other legal cases that I'm
Speaker 1: involved in on free speech issues on my Substack newsletter,
Speaker 1: So Aaron karyat dot substack dot com. You can follow
Speaker 1: me on Twitter, and I've written about these issues as
Speaker 1: well in a recent book I published called The New Abnormal.
Speaker 1: That is a great title for where we are today
Speaker 1: for a book. Dr Aaron Karyati, You're a hero in
Speaker 1: my book. We really I think we're going to look
Speaker 1: back and see folks like you as heroes and standing
Speaker 1: up against this because it's one thing for media types
Speaker 1: or anything else, it's another for people like you have
Speaker 1: earned your degrees and uh, you know, have a different
Speaker 1: level of credibility on these issues. So I appreciate what
Speaker 1: you're doing, praying that you guys are successful in California,
Speaker 1: and just thank you, thank you, thank you for standing
Speaker 1: strong and for allowing voices like mine to to have
Speaker 1: a microphone and to speak uh, and to standing by
Speaker 1: your own convictions in this regard as well. Very much
Speaker 1: admire that. Thanksly so. That was Dr Aaron Karotti obviously
Speaker 1: leading the charge on this lawsuit in California. Good for him.
Speaker 1: Really interesting conversation, Such a smart guy. Obviously. I sat
Speaker 1: there and all during most of the conversation, just really
Speaker 1: kind of taking in what he had to say. I
Speaker 1: appreciate you guys for listening to the show every Monday
Speaker 1: and Thursday, but you can listen throughout the week. Please
Speaker 1: leave us review, We leave us a rating on Apple Podcast.
Speaker 1: What make my producer John Cassio for putting the show together.
Speaker 1: Until next time,