Who owns my voice? Canada & California, October 2022: an opinion

and the related topic "who owns my body?" Reflective intro/update added April 4, 2023

April 4, 2023: This piece is more opinion-based than others. This is perhaps due to difficulty in defining the topic in a narrow enough fashion to permit chasing down supportive references. It may also be because this opinion strays into matters which do not have a research base. Turning this opinion piece into a fact-based piece would take some work.

The legal challenge to California’s misinformation law was successful, and the law has been suspended for the time being. Meanwhile in Ontario, the case of Professor Jordan Peterson versus College of Psychologists of Ontario has arisen.

PART ONE: WHO OWNS DOCTORS’ VOICES?

California is easier to understand than Canada these days, when it comes to what doctors are allowed to say, and what the consequences may be for what they say. Last week, the California legislature voted into law a “disinformation penalty” for physicians: the California government can now pull doctors’ licenses if they speak out of turn.

There are refinements to the law, of course. However, those are the broad strokes.

Many provinces in Canada enacted the same “law” during covid - medical boards in Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia have disciplined or suspended physicians during covid for crimes such as prescribing ivermectin or saying that covid vaccines might be dangerous. Perhaps there is a province or two that has not put the hammer down on a wayward physician during covid?

Note that none of these provinces went to the trouble that California did, actually voting on the creation of a disinformation law. Instead, through their actions, Canada’s medical colleges created de facto laws of silence for physicians on covid-related subjects.

And since Canadian medical colleges are relatively unaccountable to other levels of government - seldom are their decisions are contested by provincial legislatures or judiciaries - we have had California-style restrictions on freedom of speech for physicians since 2020.

We may pause to consider how few physicians or other health care professionals spoke up about problems related to covid lockdowns, mask policies, enforced vaccination etc., even prior to the rollout of physician censorship in Canada - precious few. The vast majority of physicians were silent regarding government overreach into medical decisions during covid.

Was this because the majority of physicians agreed with the government’s covid policies and thus saw no need to speak up? Or because the majority of physicians disagreed but understood the consequences of speaking up?

An elder physician observed how doctors have increasingly lost professional autonomy, increasingly becoming civil servants, their voices and actions controlled by bureaucracies. Becoming oriented to political/commercial goals, and away from patient-centred goals. Part of this comes from who is officially paying the medical bills: provincial health plans, insurance companies.

How much independence can a doctor lose, before s/he becomes a drone?

(This is without getting into the recent push to force Canadian doctors to participate in the act of medically-assisted suicide, whether they agree with the practice or not.

PART TWO: WHO OWNS MY BODY?

I do, of course. That’s obvious, isn’t it?

We can explore the converse - of people who do not fully own their bodies: slaves, prisoners, military conscripts, prostitutes, children, mental patients, nursing home residents, ICU patients, professional athletes etc.

However, the rest of us own our bodies, right? No one can tell me where to stand or what to eat, right?

Erosion of the natural right of self-ownership was pushed to new limits during covid, most blatantly via vaccine mandates - although in many other ways besides.

It seems that the extreme loss of self/body-ownership during covid has subsided in Canada and the United States. We have reasserted the right to say yes or no to vaccines, without penalty…

(…except in California, and many universities and hospitals, but anyhow…)

An interesting phenomenon that would have otherwise been missed has become obvious, meanwhile: patients who surrender bodily autonomy.

“Doctor, is it ok if I take this pill every second day?”

Within the medical world, “patient compliance” means the adherence of a patient to a treatment plan, such as “take this pill every day for the rest of your life.” It is not uncommon for patients to feel embarassed, unworthy, or otherwise concerned if they are not completely on-board with a course of action suggested by a doctor. This is all well and good, so long as the doctor’s plan is tremendously helpful and not a burden.

However, the downside to “patient compliance” is inappropriate surrender of bodily autonomy.

(I suspect that many of my readers do not follow this pattern of subordination to their doctors.)

To the frequent paraphrase from patients “you’ve said that I’m allowed to eat x, and not allowed to eat y” my reply is “you are allowed to do whatever you want. It is your body, not mine. However, if you follow my guidance, your health will probably improve.”

Some patients defer overly to doctors on health matters. At times, this deference leads to a loss of self-autonomy and potential harm. Covid vaccine mandates made this problem glaringly obvious. As a result, its more subtle manifestations of excessive surrender of self-autonomy are more obvious - at least to me.

SYNTHESIS: OWNERSHIP OF DOCTORS’ MINDS, OWNERSHIP OF PATIENTS’ BODIES

Doctors lose ownership of speech, patients lose ownership their bodies.

Or perhaps come to realize that they were not the owners to begin with.