WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — Doctors who have dedicated their lives over the past three years to fighting for medical freedom spoke out Thursday against censorship and the use of government power against critics of the COVID-19 narrative at the 2023 White Coat Summit held in Washington, D.C. by America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLDS).
“Defending our right to speak freely is critical,” said former emergency room doctor Dr. Simone Gold, an early opponent of draconian COVID-19 lockdowns and mandates and founder of AFLDS.
“This threat of censorship cannot be overstated,” said Gold, who had been sentenced to solitary confinement for entering the U.S. Capitol building during the January 6 disturbance, where she spoke out against government mandates and COVID lockdowns. “It is the foundation of America, but it is also the foundation of all human liberty that we can be able to speak freely.”
Doctors who spoke at the Thursday event included mRNA pioneer and prominent COVID jab critic Dr. Robert Malone, Missouri-based chiropractor and subject of a massive FTC lawsuit Dr. Eric Nepute, and Dr. James Todaro, an ophthalmology specialist with a medical degree from Columbia University in New York City.
Dr. Todaro noted in his remarks that frontline doctors received backlash and were harshly censored after they spoke out in 2020 about a range of then-verboten topics pertaining to COVID-19, including the inefficacy of masks and the massively disastrous effects of lockdowns.
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Despite being suppressed and attacked in the media, Todaro said the “self-evident truths” the doctors expressed have since been borne out.
Dr. Scott Jensen, a family physician and former Republican member of the Minnesota State Senate, told the audience that the “the lynchpin of all that has gone on over the last three years has been the ability to suppress, squash, or, if you will, censor.”
According to Jensen, the censorship practiced during the COVID response was a type of “cancer” that began at the policy level and continually metastasized as researchers failed to push back against pharmaceutical companies and doctors were threatened with job loss for refusal to accept prevailing narrative.
He recounted that private citizens took on the role of “tattletales” to report neighbors or churches that were bucking lockdown orders while governments tracked people’s movements by tracing their cell phones.
The last layer of the “cancer,” according to Dr. Jensen, was the rotting away of “informed consent,” robbing individuals of the ability to thoroughly examine and assess all relevant information.
“Informed consent was a casualty of this metastatic cancer called censorship,” he said.
Jensen also highlighted what he called “sins of omission,” the decision not to report or emphasize vital information.
“We had fact-checking bullies who knew not what they were fact-checking,” he said, remarking that “natural immunity [was] kicked to the side like some stray dog” while opposing opinions about the durability of natural immunity, the safety of ventilators, and the efficacy of PCR tests were not heeded.
“Individual rights, one by one, were taken away from us,” Jensen said. “And that’s where I got ticked off.”
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“When they told me that I couldn’t speak freely on the Senate floor and express my concerns; that, when I decided to run for governor in Minnesota, I couldn’t speak about this or that,” he said. “When I was investigated six times, with 18 to 20 allegations, from people who had never seen me once for healthcare service but they didn’t like my politics.”
“They wanted to shut me up. They wanted me to go away, they wanted to make my life miserable,” the physician said. “That ticked me off. And they didn’t realize that they had picked on the wrong person.”
Jensen said he fought back and was recently exonerated by the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice with all allegations dismissed. But, he said, he’s not stopping there. Instead, he’s filing suit against the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice and the Attorney General of Minnesota, alleging the violation of his first amendment rights since “the best defense is a good offense.”
And Jensen isn’t the only doctor to argue that his freedom of speech was violated when he pushed back against COVID ideology.
Dr. Nepute, a Missouri-based chiropractor who also owns a company that sells vitamins and supplements, argued during the summit that he has been targeted by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for offering alternatives to the experimental COVID jabs.
The FTC has filed a massive lawsuit against Nepute, alleging that he engaged in deceptive advertising practices by publicly and repeatedly encouraging people to take vitamin supplements to guard against COVID-19 while arguing against the efficacy of the shots. Nepute allegedly violated the COVID-19 Consumer Protection Act a total of 10,175,234 times, though the FTC has not explained where the massive number came from, the River Front Times reported.
Despite the government action against him, Nepute said he believes the truth will ultimately come out.
“The day of reckoning is coming upon all of them, and the truth will prevail,” he said.