Under DeSantis, radical public health doctors find safe haven in Florida
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Editor's note: this article was originally published in April 2023.
The purveyors of dangerous, discredited medical quackery have a welcome mat in Florida.
Consider this. During the last week of July, two things happened to Dr. Simone Gold.
She reported to prison in Miami for her role in the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and she received a "clear/active" Florida Medical License from the state — even though the “criminal history” segment of her online profile says, “The practitioner did not provide this mandatory information.”
It’s not that surprising that Florida would be such a friendly and forgiving landing spot for Gold.
She's the physician who had lost her job as a California emergency room doctor for spreading COVID-19 misinformation with a political group she led called America’s Frontline Doctors.
One of those doctors in that group happens to be her anti-vax colleague, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, who was deep selected by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to be Florida's Surgeon General.
More: Florida's missing-in-action surgeon general surfaces, to say he's quitting
More: Gov. DeSantis chooses COVID vaccine disinformation in Florida surgeon general pick | Frank Cerabino
Florida's top doctor once led charge on discredited COVID treatment
Ladapo was standing with Gold when the Tea Party Patriots-backed group materialized out of thin air in the summer of 2020 and held a news conference dressed in white lab coats on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court.
The group had formed to provide then-President Donald Trump a counter-narrative to his administration’s own health officials by promoting dangerous and ineffective treatments for the virus while urging businesses to reopen and people to stop wearing masks.
On that day, Gold said that America’s Frontline Doctors was making the malaria drug, hydroxychloroquine, available nationwide, even though it lacked peer-reviewed research and regulatory approval.
“You can consult with a telemedicine doctor, and whether you have COVID or you don’t have COVID, or you’re just worried about getting COVID, you can get yourself a prescription and they mail it to you,” Gold said that day.
America’s Frontline Doctors would go on to make a fortune from people who would pay the group $90 for an over-the-phone referral to pharmacies selling the off-use medication at big markups.
Ladapo, a doctor and researcher at UCLA at the time, promoted hydroxychloroquine as a COVID treatment that day too, discounting randomized trials that found it ineffective.
“It’s also a fact that we are in an extraordinarily challenging time,” Ladapo said. “Given those considerations, how can the right answer be to limit physician’s use of the medication?”
The news conference, promoted by Trump, got millions of views on social media, before it was removed online for spreading medical misinformation.
Is it free speech or dangerous misinformation?
The Federation of State Medical Boards issued a warning, citing possible disciplinary actions.
“Due to their specialized knowledge and training, licensed physicians possess a high degree of public trust and therefore have a powerful platform in society, whether they recognize it or not,” the medical group said. “They also have an ethical and professional responsibility to practice medicine in the best interests of their patients and must share information that is factual, scientifically grounded and consensus-driven for the betterment of public health.”
Florida was one of the first states to jump on the hydroxychloroquine bandwagon. Even before America’s Frontline Doctors promoted it, Gov. Ron DeSantis ordered a million doses for the state, which dovetailed with Trump’s uninformed assertion that hydroxychloroquine was a “game changer” in conquering the virus.
When the COVID-19 vaccine arrived the following January, and proved to be the real game changer in fighting the virus, America’s Frontline Doctors became the leading source of vaccine misinformation. Gold referred to the COVID vaccine as “an experimental biological agent deceptively named a vaccine.”
For DeSantis, America’s Frontline Doctors dovetailed nicely with his “free Florida” political branding. DeSantis referred to COVID-19 vaccinations as “jabs.” And he promoted vaccine hesitancy, even offering $5,000 bonuses for unvaccinated police officers from other states to move to Florida.
To get Florida’s medical apparatus to play along, DeSantis installed vaccine-critic Ladapo in September of 2021 to be Florida Surgeon General.
“People are being forced to put something in their bodies that we don’t know all there is to know about yet,” Ladapo said.
Florida warned about hiring of radical doctor
Meanwhile, Dr. Carol Mangione, Ladapo’s former supervisor at UCLA, had warned Florida officials against hiring him.
“In my opinion, the people of Florida would be better served by a surgeon general who ground his policy decisions and recommendations in the best scientific evidence rather than opinions” Mangioni wrote.
Ladapo continues to promote misleading advice that overstates the harm of vaccines while underestimating the benefits.
Gold faced similar criticism in California, her home state, where she helped to inspire a new state law that subjects doctors to disciplinary action if they provide patients misinformation about COVID-19.
So, she moved to Florida, where radical public health policy is encouraged.
But not before she became embroiled in the Trump insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. During Trump’s speech, Gold was seated that day in the VIP section with John Strand, who triple-tasks as a paid spokesman for America’s Frontline Doctors, Gold’s boyfriend, and a men’s underwear model.
“We stormed the Capitol,” Strand texted that day. “Simone and I were with the first dozen patriots to breach the Capitol. We literally made history.”
Videos show Gold standing on a statue of Dwight Eisenhower in Statuary Hall while giving a speech through a megaphone.
She pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor trespassing charge in court, but online she began raising money on the America’s Frontline Doctors website by portraying herself as the victim of a great injustice.
Doctor turns a crime into a fundraising cause
She collected at least $433,000 from donors by calling her arrest “a political persecution of a law-abiding emergency physician designed to threaten and intimidate any American who dares to exercise their First Amendment rights.”
At her sentencing hearing, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, told her “it ain’t about free speech.”
“January 6 was about a lot of things, but it was not about the First Amendment, and it was certainly not about COVID treatments or vaccinations,” the judge told her.
When Gold served her two-month sentence, her fellow board members at America’s Frontline Doctors used her absence to do a forensic audit of the spending she was doing with the organization's funds.
It led to a lawsuit that accused Gold of raiding the operation for personal gain, and a countersuit by her, claiming that it was other people on the board, not her, who were to blame.
At issue was a $3.6 million home in Naples where she lived that was bought under the name of “Naples Freedom Headquarters.” There were also three vehicles, a bodyguard, a $5,000-per-month housekeeper, and tens of thousands of dollars in monthly credit card bills for her and her boyfriend.
Doctors group marred by money-grabbing allegations filed in court
A power struggle over control of America’s Frontline Doctors led to a move to oust her as director, and replace her with Joseph “Joey” Gilbert, a former middleweight regional boxing champ, and unsuccessful Republican candidate for governor in Nevada.
Gilbert paid himself $25,000-a-month from America’s Frontline Doctors funds.
Also in the mix of court filings are ones that allege that some $350,000 in donor contributions ended up going to America’s Frontline Doctors board member Richard Mack, who like Gilbert, is also not a doctor.
Mack is the founder of a right-wing, law-enforcement militia group that calls itself the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association. He is also a former lobbyist for the Gun Owners of America, and a board member for the Oath Keepers, an insurrectionist group heavily involved in the failed coup at the U.S. Capitol.
Since getting out of prison, Gold has been fighting the legal battle to maintain herself atop America’s Frontline Doctors.
Meanwhile, she is using her new Florida medical license to open up her own tele-health business in the state.
GoldCare Health & Wellness advertises itself as a “private membership association” where patients pay $1,000-per-year for access to a “freedom-oriented physician who will follow the facts, not Dr. Fauci or compromised agencies.”
Frank Cerabino is a columnist at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at fcerabino@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Simone Gold gets Florida medical license from Miami jail.
