In response to guest columnist Doug Gerard’s column “WY Board Of Medicine Has Done Blatant COVID Overreach” retired physician Dr. James McEvoy from Powell said Gerard is not qualified to discuss the matter.
The following is McEvoy’s Facebook comment in response to Gerard’s column:
Mr. Gerard. You said yourself that you are a layman and that the evidence for the use of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine in the treatment of Covid19 is “muddled.” You mention that “some doctors” feel it is useful including a doctor you “trust.”
This article should clarify your confusion. In addition, just because you invoke the Constitution (Wyoming’s or America’s) as justification for your declaration that the Wyoming Medical Board overstepped its bounds, doesn’t make you correct.
You are not a doctor. How do you know what is best to treat patients with Covid19?
I am a retired physician. Since it is clear you don’t understand the requirement of medical practice, I will spell them out for you.
As a licensed physician in any specialty, you have a legal duty to conduct your practice according to accepted guidelines and practice patterns based on science and clinical data.
That means that when authoritative medical organizations recommend that a certain type of treatment is or is not indicated in a given situation, you are required to follow those recommendations unless you have enough evidence beyond anecdotes to justify off label treatments.
Infectious and viral disease experts determined after experience with the emergency use of those drugs in Covid19 treatment that they were of no benefit and had potentially serious risks. Therefore, the emergency use was rescinded.
The Wyoming Medical Board was correct. Stop writing about things you are not qualified to discuss.
By the way, abortion is part of reproductive healthcare for half of the human population and is settled law. That you don’t like it is irrelevant. What an individual does with their own body is no concern of yours. Mind your own affairs.
