09/12/2022    Leonard A. Levy, DPM, MPH

University of Chicago Medical School Offers Class on Misinformation

Especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, doctors’
voices have sometimes been drowned out by social
media users who blast misinformation across the
globe, leading patients to make questionable, and
sometimes dangerous, choices about their health.
(Diabetes ProSmart Brief, September 9, 2022).

The University of Chicago Pritzker School of
Medicine provides a new class to equip doctors and
other medical professionals to battle medical
misinformation. The medical school began offering
the class to medical students and residents last
year and has developed a condensed version for
others studying to be health professionals. Sara
Serritella, one of the instructors, who also serves
as director of communications for the UC Institute
for Translational Medicine said, “As we saw during
the pandemic, this whole crisis of having to
communicate science in a way that builds trust can
literally be life or death.” Dr. Vineet Arora, who
teaches the class with Serritella, said
misinformation in medicine extends far beyond
COVID-19.

The second half of the class is in small groups,
brainstorming which myths to address for each of
their projects. Dr. Eve Bloomgarden, an
endocrinologist at NorthUniversity of Chicago
Medical School Offers Class on Misinformation

Especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, doctors’
voices have sometimes been drowned out by social
media users who blast misinformation across the
globe, leading patients to make questionable, and
sometimes dangerous, choices about their health.
(Diabetes ProSmart Brief, September 9, 2022).
The University of Chicago Pritzker School of
Medicine provides a new class to equip doctors and
other medical professionals to battle medical
misinformation. The medical school began offering
the class to medical students and residents last
year and has developed a condensed version for
others studying to be health professionals. Sara
Serritella, one of the instructors, who also serves
as director of communications for the UC Institute
for Translational Medicine said, “As we saw during
the pandemic, this whole crisis of having to
communicate science in a way that builds trust can
literally be life or death.” Dr. Vineet Arora, who
teaches the class with Serritella, said
misinformation in medicine extends far beyond
COVID-19.

The second half of the class is in small groups,
brainstorming which myths to address for each of
their projects. Dr. Eve Bloomgarden, an
endocrinologist at North Shore University Health
System and a co-founder of the Illinois Medical
Professionals Action Collaborative Team (IMPACT),
an advocacy group of medical professionals, is also
working with the class, helped the students refine
their ideas. By the end of the course, students are
supposed to produce a presentation that they can
share with patients or online, dispelling a health
care myth. The first time the course was offered
last year, many of the students chose to tackle
myths related to COVID-19.

Dr. Andrea Anderson, a senior medical education
consultant with the Association of American Medical
Colleges (AAMC), hopes more medical schools offer
similar classes in the future. The University of
Chicago is receiving funding from the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It’s one of
five medical schools receiving grant money to
address medical misinformation. Anderson said.
“It’s our job as medical educators to make sure
those trainees are best equipped with the skills
they need to communicate with patients during these
very challenging times.”

Leonard A. Levy, DPM, MPH, Ft. Lauderdale, FL

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09/14/2022    Michael M. Rosenblatt, DPM

RE: University of Chicago Medical School Offers Class on Misinformation (Leonard A. Levy, DPM, MPH)

When it comes to so-called “medical
misinformation” there is always the same question:
“Who is the absolute authority?” During the years
of Dr. Ignatz Semmelweis, the ultimate authority
did not feel it necessary to wash your hands
between examining and treating female patients in
childbirth. Dr. Semmelweis was hounded into a
mental institution by greater powers who disagreed
with him. We now have political leaders who
believed in vaccines as the answer to Covid. As it
turned out, the Chinese product did not work very
well. So-called "natural immunity" was relegated
into "medical misinformation." We are still
dealing with issues of possible spike protein
damage (from mRNA vaccines) to a cadre’ of young
men who were not particularly at risk of death
from Covid in the first place.

This is not in a vacuum. Science is always in
flux. The new data from the James Webb Space
Telescope is throwing the standard cosmology model
into a frenzy of confusion. In the midst of Covid,
we were looking for anything that would allow us
to return to work and a quasi-status of “normal.”
Yet, there were a large group of experienced
professional virologists who were cowed and
threatened into silence by powerful Media and
people who wanted to replace a conservative
government above all else.

We are basically two separate countries. We have
been for years. Medical misinformation authority
apparently must come from one of those sides only.
In California, state Government now wants to
threaten medical licenses if the data does not
come from that one side. I don’t have an answer to
this. We were advised to “stay home in the dark”
and come to the hospital when we could no longer
breathe, and then be placed on respirators that
were tuned to the level of effluent of a parked
747. At least 88% of those people died connected
to those machines, their lungs blasted to fibrous
heaps.
I think we need more latitude. Let people make up
their own minds with a plethora of ideas, some of
which will turn out to be dead wrong. We encourage
our patients to sign documents of informed choice.
Why do we need to infantilize a new generation?

Michael M. Rosenblatt, DPM, Henderson, NV