This story was originally published on July 29, 2020. As part of 麻豆传媒's review of the past year's top stories, we are republishing it along with an update on the group's activity since.
The latest features a newly formed group called America's Frontline Doctors. About 10 physicians, dressed in white coats with an embroidered America's Frontline Doctors logo, spoke for 45 minutes in front of the Supreme Court on Monday on a range of COVID-19 talking points, from hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) being curative to the mental health effects of lockdown outweighing the toll of the virus itself.
But none of the most vocal members have practices that would place them on the actual front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some don't currently practice at all.
Two of those appearing at the Monday event are ophthalmologists, one of whom is no longer licensed.
The group's website, which according to internet records was created on July 16, was de-activated on Tuesday (though past versions can be seen on . Major social media platforms have sought to remove the video from their pages.
Late Tuesday, the group was delivering a second press conference as part of a two-day "summit."
U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) opened the first briefing by calling for schools to reopen. Austin Livingston, a spokesperson for Norman, said the congressman was invited to speak by the -- which organized the event on the Supreme Court steps -- in order to "encourage state officials to open schools."
The that the Tea Party Patriots are a part of the Save Our Country Coalition, an alliance of conservative groups formed earlier this year to end regional lockdowns. That report also said the Trump campaign tried to recruit doctors to publicly support the president in his push to reopen economies.
Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder and national coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots, spoke as part of the America's Frontline Doctors press briefing. It is not clear what relationship, if any, exists between the two groups beyond the Washington event.
So who are some of these doctors involved in this group, and what involvement have they had in the pandemic?
Simone Gold, MD, JD
In her Twitter profile, Gold describes herself as a "doctor, lawyer, writer, mom," and links to her website, , which promotes libertarian political viewpoints.
Gold earned a medical degree in 1989 from what is now the Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science in Chicago. Her website bio identifies her as a board-certified emergency physician in the Los Angeles area.
Her California medical license includes her unverified claim that she is involved in patient care 30-39 hours per week and indicates a practice location in , a bedroom community of about 100,000 at the edge of the Mojave Desert. Efforts to determine where specifically she may practice were unsuccessful.
She did not respond to a message seeking clarification and comment.
Gold has been a frequent contributor to conservative media, including Fox News, where she advocates for HCQ as a treatment for COVID-19 and fast economic reopening.
Stella Immanuel, MD
Immanuel is a pediatrician and minister in Houston, , with a clinic in a strip mall. During Monday's briefing, she claimed she has treated 350 COVID-19 patients with HCQ and none have died.
She said she is working on publishing her own data, then added that her data would not matter because right now people are dying when not treated with the drug.
"Everybody get on hydroxychloroquine!" she said, calling the large randomized trials that debunked the drug "fake science." She also declared that people did not need to wear masks.
Immanuel could not be reached for comment Tuesday. Her ministry's website was not operational Tuesday afternoon and a GoFundMe page that she called her "legal team" has been removed from the site. A cached version of the ministry site still stands.
Earlier during the pandemic, Immanuel made news for challenging Anthony Fauci, MD, and CNN correspondents to share urine samples to prove they were not secretly taking HCQ.
James Todaro, MD
Todaro, an ophthalmologist based in Michigan who is no longer practicing, graduated from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 2014. His medical license, which was classified as "educational limited" in Michigan, expired in 2019.
, Todaro has not practiced medicine since 2018. He co-founded an investment fund called Blocktown Capital.
that was among the first to expose flaws in the infamous Lancet study concluding that HCQ was associated with higher death rates in COVID-19 patients. Todaro's exposé, written on his website Medicine Uncensored, ultimately contributed to the study's retraction.
Previously, Todaro wrote a "white paper" in mid-March on chloroquine as prophylaxis and treatment for COVID-19, based on published information and . Twitter has since marked it as "potentially spammy or unsafe."
Todaro did not respond to multiple requests for comment from 麻豆传媒.
Bob Hamilton, MD
Hamilton, a pediatrician and schools liaison with America's Frontline Doctors, has been practicing in Santa Monica, California -- home to his private practice, Pacific Ocean Pediatrics -- for more than 30 years. He has hospital privileges at Providence-St. John's Health Center and UCLA-Santa Monica Medical Center.
His practice is involved with Lighthouse Medical Missions, which organizes faith-based medical service trips in developing countries. Hamilton also , and authored a 2018 resource guide called .
The pediatrician became an internet sensation when he created "," a four-step technique to quiet crying babies instantly. His technique attracted global media attention, and has been viewed more than 44 million times on YouTube.
Hamilton has advocated for getting children back in schools this fall. "Our kids are not really the ones who are driving the infection, it is the older individuals," Hamilton said at the Monday press conference. "We need to not act out of fear, we need to act out of science."
He did not respond to requests for comment from 麻豆传媒.
Dan Erickson, DO
Erickson is the co-owner of in Bakersfield, California. He is a former emergency physician, , who was featured on national television in late April after he claimed data his center had collected showed that COVID was more widespread and less harmful than reported in medical journals.
The American College of Emergency Physicians and American Academy of Emergency Medicine , calling them "reckless and untested musings" that are "inconsistent with current science and epidemiology regarding COVID-19."
Erickson could not be reached for comment Tuesday afternoon. One physician directory lists him as affiliated with Adventist Health Bakersfield, but the system told 麻豆传媒 he is not.
Richard Urso, MD
Urso is an ophthalmologist at in Bellaire, Texas, who has been touting HCQ for COVID-19. He earlier this month that he has been working with the drug for 30 years and has never had a patient with a heart issue.
He also said during that interview that HCQ was "safer than Tylenol, aspirin, Motrin."
Urso has one : In 2003, he paid a $1,500 fine to resolve allegations that he didn't provide a narrative of medical records to an attorney for a patient's personal injury lawsuit.
Joseph Ladapo, MD, PhD
Ladapo is a physician and health policy researcher at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine, according to his . His primary research interests include diagnostic technology cost effectiveness and decreasing cardiovascular disease population burden. He is also an adjunct professor of population health at New York University-Langone, a spokesperson confirmed, and sees patients at Langone Medical Center.
He has cared for COVID patients at UCLA, he wrote in a Wall Street Journal editorial , though that could not be confirmed (a UCLA Medicine spokesperson declined to answer questions Friday and said Ladapo declined comment). On the Supreme Court steps, he said nothing about treating COVID-19 patients himself.
Ladapo has publicly called for public health and political leaders to focus on protecting hospital capacity, at the expense of making decisions based on "less meaningful metrics" such as case counts and deaths, as he wrote in a , which omitted mention of personal experience in COVID patient care.
He has supported keeping the economy open: "If political leaders and health experts want to restore their credibility and the public's confidence, they need to begin by acknowledging that politics rather than science has influenced important public-health decisions and by making accommodations for dissenting perspectives," he wrote in the later Journal editorial. "Let [citizens] enter bars, enjoy the beach, exercise at the gym, and learn in school if they choose."
In his remarks Monday, Ladapo defended the use of HCQ for COVID patients, though he did not say he personally had given it to patients. Rather, he summarized the published literature and anecdotal experience of other physicians with the drug.
While randomized control trials have not shown significant health benefits, he said observational studies have shown the drug can be effective. So he cautioned against limiting physician use of the drug: "That can't possibly be the right answer," he said.
"COVID-19 is not a moral issue," he added. "COVID-19 is a challenging, complex issue that we benefit from having multiple perspectives on."
Ladapo earned his medical degree at Harvard, according to his UCLA and NYU profiles, and completed his residency in internal medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
Cheryl Clark contributed reporting for this story.