Saturday, January 16, 2021

Petition to President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Dear President Elect Biden,
We strongly request that Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman not be considered for the position of Health and Human services, nor any position in your administration. Were it not for Dr. Lieberman, who became the most prominent defender of the president in the mental health world, we could have been spared the deadly reign of President Donald J. Trump, who incited a violent terrorist insurrection at the Capitol and came very close to destroying our Democracy.  Further, he denied the danger of a deadly virus, which has already caused hundreds of thousand Americans to die unnecessarily and millions more to suffer permanent disabilities.
Dr. Lieberman crusaded against conscientious mental health professionals who tried to warn us about a mentally unfit, dangerous president, claiming that they were unethically “diagnosing” the president, when they were in fact fulfilling their societal responsibility to educate and protect the nation.  By contrast, Dr. Lieberman explicitly diagnosed the president:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/wjjv3x/trumps-brain-and-the-25th-amendment​

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/12/opinion/trump-mentally-ill.html

He did so by clearing the president of any serious conditions and calling the him “just a jerk,” which he was in no position to do without having examined him or received authorization to do so (Dr. Bandy Lee and others have clarified that “neither exclusion nor inclusion is possible from a distance”):

http://www.bioethics.net/2020/10/the-mental-health-pandemic-that-did-not-need-to-be/

As a concerned citizen, we believe we have the right to hear the opinions and warnings of mental health professionals regarding the fitness of presidents and candidates to serve.  We have suffered greatly for the ban on mental health professionals by the media, which Dr. Lieberman helped to effectuate:

https://www.madinamerica.com/2020/04/muzzled-psychiatry-time-crisis/

Please do not appoint Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman, who did all he could the silence the voices of ethical professionals, from whom we needed to hear the most.  The simple ability to hear trusted voices in time could have saved countless lives and prevented so very much pain, suffering, and loss.

Sincerely,
Citizens who value mental health expertise