Miss a day, miss a lot. Subscribe to The Defender's Top News of the Day. It's free.
Dr. Emanuel Garcia, a New Zealand doctor who said he believes he lost his medical license for questioning and speaking out against the official COVID-19 narrative, also believes that the U.S.-based Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) played a role.
“We desperately need a real and deep investigation into this private entity that is pulling strings worldwide,” Garcia told The Defender.
Garcia — a psychoanalyst and psychotherapist who received his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1986 — is board-certified in psychiatry and neurology by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. He has lived in New Zealand since 2006.
Garcia was a public health consultant psychiatrist until the end of October 2021, when he resigned from his position at the Hutt Valley District Health Board rather than get a COVID-19 vaccine, he said.
His medical license came up for renewal with the Medical Council of New Zealand at that same time.
Garcia reapplied for his license to keep it — but instead of receiving a successful renewal notice from the country’s medical council, Oct. 29, 2021, he received a letter stating that the council had “resolved” to suspend him from practicing because, “Dr. Garcia’s conduct raises one or more questions about the appropriateness of his conduct or the safety of his practice.”
In an interview with The Defender, Garcia said:
“Apparently, the chief psychiatrist of my hospital reported me to the medical council because I made these videos wherein I spoke about natural immunity, the early treatment, how ridiculous it was to try to eliminate a respiratory environment.”
The council found fault with Garcia’s lack of “adherence” to the council’s May 6, 2021, guidance statement, “COVID-19 Vaccine and Your Professional Responsibility,” and his lack of “adherence” to other statements made by the council.
Council Chair Dr. Curtis Walker said there was no place for “anti-vaccine messages” in a medical professional’s practice — or on their social media.
In its letter, the council listed complaints about Garcia’s behavior, including that he wrote an open letter to the prime minister titled, “Another Disastrous National Lockdown,” posted videos about COVID-19 on Voices For Freedom, YouTube and Odysee, and voiced opinions about the handling of COVID-19 on social media that did not align with the council’s statements.
Garcia called the letter “a farce.” He said none of the things he did were “great” or “revolutionary” — in his mind, he was pointing out “basic things” to the public as he witnessed the unfolding of the COVID-19 pandemic and the New Zealand government’s response to it.
Garcia didn’t fight the suspension because he was “sick of their duplicity” and “wanted out.”
“My lawyers were advising me to fight and to sign a so-called ‘voluntary undertaking’ which would have muzzled me,” he said.
If he had signed the voluntary undertaking, Garcia would have agreed to not say anything that ran counter to the council’s statements on COVID-19. The idea was, he said, that doctors who signed a voluntary undertaking were signaling to the council that they were willing to “play by their rules” and that the council, therefore, would “be more lenient with the punishment they dole out” — such as fines or suspension of the doctors’ license.
“I refused,” Garcia said. “I gave a lot of talks at parliament during the protests here in New Zealand, and I spoke freely — unfettered.”
Garcia said he chose to retain his freedom of speech and was able to “fully disengage” from the council through the use of common law, or equity law, to legally sever his professional ties to the council.
“According to the rules and principles of equity, I exercised my equitable right to annul, abrogate and cancel my registration with the Medical Council of New Zealand,” Garcia said.
Soon afterward, Garcia learned about the council’s connection with the International Association of Medical Regulatory Authorities (IAMRA), which is the international arm of the FSMB.
“The Chair-Elect of the IAMRA, Joan Simeon, just happens to be the CEO of the Medical Council of New Zealand, and the Secretary of the IAMRA, Dr. Humayun Chaudhry, just happens to be the President and CEO of the FSMB,” Garcia said.
Doctors worldwide who have “questioned things” have come under attack by their medical boards — and these medical boards “all come under the aegis of the FSMB,” Garcia said.
Garcia told The Defender:
“We have to do something different. We have to create an entirely new medical system that is out of the grip of these board-run matrices, one that honors basic medical precepts and practices rather than following algorithmic guideline-driven procedures engineered by bureaucrats.
“There is an opportunity for a magnificent renaissance of healthcare and it WON’T happen within the existing totalitarian system, it has to come from us.”
FSMB report targets practitioners of alternative medicine
Most doctors have not heard of the FSMB and are unaware of its influence, according to Garcia. He, himself, was unaware until his colleague, Dr. Bruce Dooley, a U.S.-trained medical practitioner who also lives in New Zealand, told him about it.
Dooley recently spoke out publicly about his knowledge of the FSMB.
In an “explosive” Sept. 24 interview with FreeNZ’s Liz Gunn, Dooley explained that the FSMB and IAMRA are private “registered charities with ‘hidden and anonymous’ donors who oversee disciplinary action of licensed medical doctors.”
Dooley — who trained at Jefferson Medical College (now called Sidney Kimmel Medical College) in Philadelphia, has a master’s in immunology and virus research from Villanova University and is a medical practitioner licensed in Hawaii, Florida and New Zealand — said the FSMB and IAMRA particularly target clinicians working beyond the Big Pharma paradigm, whom they label as “fringe” or “quack.”
“Big money must not be allowed to beat integrity and experience,” said a New Zealand Doctors Speaking Out With Science spokesperson in a Sept. 28 press release about Dooley’s interview with Liz Gunn.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, while he was the president of the Florida chapter of the American College for Advancement in Medicine (ACAM), Dooley witnessed first-hand the FSMB’s attack on doctors who practice complementary and alternative medicine (CAM).
ACAM is a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating physicians and other healthcare professionals on the safe and effective application of integrative medicine.
At the rate ACAM was growing during the late 1990s, the “world’s medical scene” would have become a “totally different thing” if the FSMB had not attacked integrative doctors 25 years ago, Dooley told The Defender.
“We had 1,200 members,” Dooley said, as doctors from New Zealand, Australia and Europe who were exploring integrative medicine were joining ACAM in large numbers and bringing with them their financial resources.
“We had a million dollars in the bank,” he added.
As a leading CAM practitioner, Dooley testified about the value of CAM during the Clinton administration for the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy.
During this time, Dooley also investigated the FSMB by attending its annual meetings as a paying conference participant. He noted how during conference sessions, FSMB leaders encouraged doctors to harass their fellow doctors who were offering natural health treatments.
Moreover, Dooley obtained a report produced by the Special Committee on Health Care Fraud (later renamed the Special Committee on Questionable and Deceptive Health Care Practices) showing that the FSMB perceived CAM and doctors who practiced it to be a “risk to public health.”
The FSMB’s governing body in April 1997 accepted the committee’s report as policy.
The report — which is no longer available on the FSMB website but which Dooley shared with The Defender — negatively labeled CAM as “questionable” practices that could constitute “health care fraud.”
The report said:
“In April 1995, Federation President Robert E. Porter, MD, established a special committee on health care fraud. The need for such a committee arose from the proliferation of unconventional and unproven medical practices and promotions in the United States, some of which may be questionable and thereby pose a risk to public health, safety and welfare.”
But according to Dooley, the committee’s motivation was not to ensure public well-being but to ensure that Big Pharma continued to get money. Natural and integrative medicine treatments, such as CAM, were getting in the way of profits for pharmaceutical companies.
The committee’s report said, “It has been estimated that up to $100 billion is lost to health care fraud in the United States annually.”
The committee members added:
“Medical interventions that do not conform to prevailing scientific standards are becoming increasingly popular.
“It is estimated that in 1990, Americans made 425 million visits to providers of ‘unconventional’ medicine, exceeding the number of visits to all U.S. primary care physicians, at a cost of approximately $13.7 billion.”
According to Dooley, the committee’s statements are essentially anti-competitive. “It’s such an anti-competitive piece,” he told The Defender, adding:
“Basically, the end says to the medical councils, ‘Look, we’ve got to stop this. This questionable medicine stuff is growing too fast. You need to get on board with us to pretty much slap down these doctors.’”
Now, 25 years later, Dooley said, the FSMB is employing a similar tactic against doctors who share what the FSMB calls “misinformation” or “disinformation” about COVID-19.
Some doctors, like Garcia, who questioned the pharma-driven global response to the COVID-19 pandemic had their licenses suspended.
Moreover, the FSMB actively seeks to influence federal and state legal policies, thus suggesting it may have played a direct role in generating California’s new law, signed last week, that punishes doctors who share “misinformation” or “disinformation” about COVID-19 with their patients.
The FSMB’s report obtained by Dooley openly stated:
“Through its Legislative Services Department and government relations firm, the Federation monitors federal legislative initiatives to identify proposals that could impact state medical boards.
“Upon the identification of such measures, the Federation develops strategies to intervene and oppose measures that could negatively affect state medical boards. The committee supports and encourages the Federation in its legislative efforts to protect the authority of state medical boards to regulate the practice of medicine, both conventional and unconventional.”
Indeed, the FSMB’s current website says it plays a “crucial role” in advocating for federal and state policies that “positively impact the health and safety of patients and the medical regulatory system.”
Could Sherman Anti-Trust Act be key to exposing FSMB?
Dooley agreed with Garcia that there needs to be a full and transparent investigation into who exactly funds the FSMB.
An effective way to accomplish that, he said, would be for a group of doctors who practice CAM or who have lost their licenses due to sharing COVID-19 “misinformation” to form a class-action lawsuit against FSMB for violating the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.
Dooley said he voiced this idea in the late 1990s, to a class-action law firm. “After I went to two of their [FSMB’s] meetings, I actually took tapes and everything they had given out.”
“They’re quite arrogant, and they just tape everything. People are talking about ‘quack this’ and ‘how to get the quack’ in your area,’” he said.
Dooley said he told the law firm:
“Look at this. This is anti-competitive. I can get 100 doctors together who have all been ‘beaten up’ by their medical boards, all in the same way. Then we can, under discovery, find out who supports this ‘monster.’
“Because that’s the only way you’re going to get their books.”
Garcia and Dooley participate in New Zealand Doctors Speaking Out With Science, a group that has written letters to the New Zealand government expressing concern about the Pfizer COVID-19 shot, “as well as the implication from our regulatory bodies that we would be considered incompetent in our duties if we provided fully informed consent about this procedure.”
Garcia told The Defender that New Zealand Doctors Speaking Out With Science steering committee member, Dr. Matt Shelton — a primary care medical doctor since 1985 and a lecturer and examiner in integrative medicine — has had his license suspended twice.
The Defender contacted Shelton, but he was unable to give an interview by deadline.
In a Sept. 28 press release for Dooley’s interview with Liz Gunn of FreeNZ, New Zealand Doctors Speaking Out With Science said it “agrees with Ontario Supreme Court Judge Pazaratz,” who asked if “misinformation is even a real word … or has it become a crass, self-serving tool to pre-empt scrutiny and discredit your opponent?”
Watch Dooley’s interview with Liz Gunn on FreeNZ here:
