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Psychiatrist, internist, and addiction medicine specialist Muhamad Aly Rifai discusses his article, “Physician patriots: the forgotten founders who lit the torch of liberty.” Muhamad calls for a remembrance of the five physician-patriots—Dr. Benjamin Rush, Dr. Josiah Bartlett, Dr. Lyman Hall, Dr. Matthew Thornton, and Dr. Oliver Wolcott—who signed the Declaration of Independence, risking everything for the principles of equality and unalienable rights. He contrasts their revered role with the current plight of physicians who face persecution, silencing, and legal battles within a politicized health care system, citing violations of First, Fourth, and Sixth Amendment rights. Muhamad emphasizes Dr. Benjamin Rush’s profound influence beyond medicine, in shaping the nation’s moral and educational fabric. The conversation serves as a rallying cry for contemporary physicians to reclaim their heritage as defenders of liberty, to organize, speak out against injustice, and fight for the ability to practice medicine ethically and without political interference, much like their predecessors did. Muhamad asserts that this new revolution is just beginning, with doctors ready to defend life, liberty, and patient dignity on new battlefields like clinics, courtrooms, and the internet.

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Transcript

Kevin Pho: Hi, and welcome to the show. Subscribe at KevinMD.com/podcast. Today we welcome back Muhamad Aly Rifai, a psychiatrist and internal medicine physician. Today’s KevinMD article is “Physician patriots: The forgotten founders who lit the torch of liberty.” Muhamad, welcome back to the show.

Muhamad Aly Rifai: Thank you very much for having me today to talk about this timely topic about our forefathers, the physicians who lit the torch of liberty.

Kevin Pho: All right, what’s your article about?

Muhamad Aly Rifai: So, in a few weeks, this is 2025, we’re going to be celebrating the 249th Independence Day. Next year, it is going to be 250 years. Our country is going through a lot of turmoil. The Constitution at times is being ignored. We are finding that liberties are being encroached on, and people are just trying to figure out what is going to happen. Is the Constitution just a museum piece, or is it going to be something that is going to be continued to be honored? But people forget that we as physicians have a sacred role in being able to act on this.

Of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence, five were physicians: Dr. Benjamin Rush, Dr. Josiah Bartlett, Dr. Lyman Hall, Dr. Matthew Thornton, and Dr. Oliver Wolcott. So out of 56, there are five, almost 10 percent. And we know now that we as physicians are activists. We know that there are 21 members of Congress who are physicians also.

So this is our role for us as physicians, as practicing physicians, as men of science, as men of healing, men of vision: that we are going to help our nation in this turmoil that it is going through. And these physicians that signed the Declaration of Independence, it was not just the signature; it was not just signing this document.

They risked everything. They risked their name, their livelihood, because the British Monarch could have hung those who signed the Declaration of Independence for asking to secede from England. So this was a great risk for them. And we as physicians right now, we are risking everything in the practice of medicine.

Prosecution, persecution, insurance companies are curtailing the roles of physicians. Health systems have most physicians employed. Eighty percent of physicians are employed by health systems. So our independence is going, and I think it is our time to remind ourselves of our role and to continue to speak up.

Kevin Pho: Take us on a little history lesson. You mentioned that there were five physician signers of the Declaration of Independence. What are some of the significant ways these particular individuals shaped the republic? What were some of their contributions beyond signing the document?

Muhamad Aly Rifai: Sure. Dr. Benjamin Rush—I am a psychiatrist, so I speak specifically about Dr. Benjamin Rush. He is the father of American psychiatry. He established the American Journal of Psychiatry. He wrote the first book about the treatment of psychiatric illness, though a lot of the things that he proposed are not used anymore. They did not have a lot of things that they could use for treatment, but one of the things that he proposed is that psychiatric illness is related to diseases of the brain. So he was able to identify that the brain was the source of psychiatric illness. He was also a humanitarian.

Now, sometimes people argue that even though he was a physician, some of the things he proposed were worse than the disease. In his time, there was the yellow fever epidemic that happened in the Philadelphia area, and he proposed a treatment that was called bloodletting. Basically, they would cut the vein and let the person bleed out, which turned out to be worse than the illness itself. There are some parallels because we have had a pandemic. We had the COVID pandemic, and some people argue that the COVID vaccine may have been worse than the pandemic itself. But we propose treatments or talk about things or offer treatments that are the best that we can offer in our times. Dr. Benjamin Rush is known as the founder of American Psychiatry. He is actually buried in Philadelphia next to Benjamin Franklin.

Dr. Josiah Bartlett was a physician, and he was the governor of New Hampshire and practiced in New Hampshire. Dr. Lyman Hall was from Georgia. He established the University of Georgia. He practiced and was a healer in Georgia, and he signed the Declaration of Independence. Matthew Thornton was a surgeon in the Continental Army, and he was in Connecticut. And Oliver Wolcott was also a surgeon and a soldier in the Continental Army, and he was also a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

So these were practicing physicians that utilized their ability to work with patients. We call on physicians who are in active political roles because we may need some constitutional crisis counselors. This is how we can act. As our nation is facing this crisis, we as physicians can act and intervene and talk on behalf of our patients, on our behalf, and on behalf of the American population.

Kevin Pho: You make that connection between the risk that these physician signers took in the past and the fact that physicians today are being disempowered. Some are being silenced, and some are being indicted. I think that you have told your story in the past. What are some ways today that the physician members in Congress can keep physicians free to continue to practice medicine?

Muhamad Aly Rifai: We have to speak up. You are lauded. You have this blog where you talk about physician issues. You bring that up to the public, but we need to continue to speak about it. I give an example: this surgeon resident, Dr. Eithan Haim, we have talked about him. He was actually prosecuted and indicted by the Department of Justice for speaking up about gender-affirming care and his wanting to ensure that it was medically appropriate and being applied appropriately. His charges were later dismissed, but he was ordered by his judge not to speak about his case, even though he took his case to Twitter, wanted to talk about his case, wanted to advocate for his patients, and wanted to protect those young patients who had unnecessary gender-affirming care.

We also know that, for example, there is a surgeon, Dr. Potter, who spoke about her interactions with insurance companies. She recorded on Twitter and Instagram where she talked about being called from a surgery by an insurance company to be told that the surgery was denied. The patient was a survivor of breast cancer, and she was going to be having reconstructive surgery. Before she was put to sleep, the surgeon was called by an insurance company and was told that the insurance company was denying the surgery.

So speaking up for our patients is very important. We also have the responsibility to continue to point to areas where the justice system or other institutions are not being fair with physicians. For example, another physician, Dr. Christopher Russo, goes on Twitter and pinpoints the injustices that are being applied to other physicians. He puts up memes of the justice department and different U.S. attorney’s offices about the injustice and about some of their actions that are unjust with physicians. That has been effective because I have just learned that they have cited his memes and his tweets in a briefing to one of the courts.

So it is being effective. We are being heard, and continuing to talk about it is very important because that is how we affect change.

Kevin Pho: You write in your article that today the metaphorical battlefield is not Lexington or Concord; it is the clinic, the hospital, and, of course, out on the internet addressing the public and in the courtroom. Physicians normally are not trained in terms of this communication battlefield, so to speak. So what are some ways that they can speak out when that is not something that they are likely to do or something that comes naturally to them?

Muhamad Aly Rifai: We have to seek training. We have to seek training in public speaking, and we have to start somewhere. People could start with blogs or with recording small, short videos on YouTube, for example. LinkedIn, as a platform, now sees that 30 to 50 percent of the messages being conveyed by participants are through video. So we can record video, we can practice, we can refine our message.

Media training. For example, 15 years ago, I went to the Discovery Channel and took some media training, two days of intense media training about how to talk to the public, how to talk to patients, and how to talk to politicians. So that is very important.

And so we as physicians should be seeking media training, understanding how do we speak to the public, how do we speak on behalf of ourselves as a community of physicians? And practice, practice, practice. We are seeing that there are some changes. We are seeing a lot of physicians that are talking on behalf of themselves and on behalf of their patients. There are multiple communities. Your blog is wonderful. Physicians on Social Media (SoMe) Docs is speaking. So there are multiple avenues for physicians to speak up, to advocate for their patients, to advocate for themselves, for their independence, and for their ability to continue to be a source of information.

Because of the significant amount of misinformation that is out there, the public is looking for us to be able to provide that role. Unless we are on social media and talking to the public, we are not going to be effective.

Kevin Pho: I think the last point really resonates because if physicians are not the ones on the internet or on social media, there are going to be others who may not be physicians or others who do not have physicians’ best interests at heart taking up that space. Now, there are some doctors who say that they may not feel like one person makes a difference. So tell us some success stories where physicians got online and really made a difference in preserving our rights.

Muhamad Aly Rifai: Sure. For example, we talk about Dr. Eithan Haim. If he had not brought his case up to the media and talked about it continuously on Twitter, it would not have gotten the attention of the Department of Justice, and he would have actually been prosecuted. He would have ended up not being exonerated from the fact that they accused him of having a criminal HIPAA violation, which was not the case. But he was exonerated; his case was dismissed. So actually, his speaking up—he is a younger physician.

He is a resident, so he actually proved that you can make a difference. I go on the airwaves on Twitter and YouTube, and I talk about the unjust prosecution of physicians on a regular basis. In fact, by me speaking about it, the Department of Justice recently quoted some of my YouTube talks. In fact, they specifically quoted your YouTube podcast in a legal brief. So we are making a difference. They are noticing, and they know that we are making a difference.

And sometimes this is very positive because the justice system is hearing that we are talking about these issues, pointing out the injustices that are happening to physicians, and we are hoping that the public is going to notice that. The private physicians are disappearing. It is only physicians who are employed by venture capitalists or physicians who are employed by health systems. The private physician is nowhere to be found anymore.

And unless we speak about that phenomenon and draw attention to it, the hospital conglomerates, rightfully so, and the venture capitalists, rightfully so, are just going to eat all of our rights and they are going to speak on our behalf. Unless we speak, nobody is going to hear about us.

Kevin Pho: Well, you are the one physician who has actually stood up to the Justice Department. But can we expect physicians in general to have that same gumption to do what you did?

Muhamad Aly Rifai: This is why I am bringing you the stories of these patriot founder physicians. They stood up to the British king at the risk of being hung. For signing that parchment that was read around the United States, they were risking everything: their family being arrested or being hung.

So sometimes people have to risk grave things just to speak up and be able to portray the truth. I hope to speak about my case in front of Congress, hopefully in the next few months, to talk about how the rules are being flexed in a way to prosecute physicians unjustly and how the laws and regulations have become so ensnaring that it is very difficult to practice. Sometimes even normal things that you do in regular practice may put you at legal risk of being prosecuted.

By speaking about it, we are going to get the message to Congress, to the legislators, and hopefully to the American public to draw their attention and to get sympathy for our plight as physicians trying to serve the community.

Kevin Pho: We are talking to Muhamad Aly Rifai, a psychiatrist and internal medicine physician. Today’s KevinMD article is “Physician patriots: The forgotten founders who lit the torch of liberty.” Muhamad, as always, let’s end with some take-home messages for the KevinMD audience.

Muhamad Aly Rifai: Absolutely. We physicians, we are still here. The Constitution is not dead. The Declaration of Independence is not obsolete. They live in us, in our hands, in our clinics, and in our hearts. To those who want to silence us, know that we are descendants of physician patriots. We are not afraid.

To our patients: We will not abandon you. We will stand by you. To our fellow doctors: We call on you to stand up, reclaim your voice, and remember your power.

And Dr. Benjamin Rush: the fire that you lit still burns in us. Thank you.

Kevin Pho: Thank you so much for sharing your perspective and insight. Thanks again for coming back on the show.

Muhamad Aly Rifai: My pleasure.