California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday signed a bill that subjects the state’s doctors to discipline, including the suspension of their medical licenses, for sharing “misinformation” or “disinformation” about COVID-19 with their patients.

California Assembly Bill 2098 (AB 2098) defines “misinformation” as “false information that is contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus contrary to the standard of care” and “disinformation” as “misinformation that the licensee deliberately disseminated with malicious intent or an intent to mislead.”

Newsom said the law applies only to physicians’ speech with patients during discussions directly related to COVID-19 treatment.

Language in the bill points out that the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) has warned that physicians who spread misinformation or disinformation “risk losing their medical license, and … have a duty to provide their patients with accurate, science-based information.”

The FSMB, as previously reported by The Defender, takes money from Big Pharma and has a history of challenging and attacking non-pharmaceutical medical approaches used by integrative doctors as falling outside the “standard of care” as they define it.