Medium banned me for life for making a statement that would save lives
People assume that any legit treatment would be top news that everyone would know about. So if you claim to have a treatment that has worked 100% of the time, then it is assumed you must be spreading fake news.
One of my friends, Mark Travis, shared my article with just 100 friends and it was removed 30 minutes later. Read what he wrote on December 9:
The very same day, Dec 9, Medium revoked my account, removed everything I've ever published over the past 6 years, and told me never to come back. Medium gave me no specific reason they did this (they only said I violated their terms of service). There was no remedy period where I could fix or defend what was objectionable because they never told me what I did wrong. I can only presume they ascertained with 100% certainty that I am a truly evil person and all of the content I've ever created on medium over the past 6 years should be removed.
There is an appeal process and I asked what evidence they had. Their response was this: "In stating that fluvoxamine is a cure for COVID that works 100% of the time, we find elevated risk." They also picked on 2 more statements they didn't like but provided no evidence to back up their statement.
They misquoted me. I never said the word "cure." I said "treatment." And I said it works 100% of the time because in two clinical trials it worked on 100% of the time on the patients who took it. There was no evidence from a randomized or pseudo-randomized trials that it works less than 100% of the time.
I should have been more precise. I should have said "has worked 100% of the time in the only two randomized clinical trials where it has been tested." I regret the imprecision of my statement.
Doctors sent notes to them saying the information was valuable and accurate. Patients sent notes saying they needed that information to help people with COVID. That made no difference.
I was an author on Medium for 6 years. In all those years, I never had a complaint.
Note to other Medium authors
If you make any statement that could be interpreted as not 100% accurate in the future, you can be banned for life too.
-steve
