Trial of 45 doctors for spreading anti-vaccine claims during Covid pandemic starts in Poland

Apr 17, 2025 | COVID-19, Law, Society

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

A trial has begun in Poland of 45 doctors who spread anti-vaccine claims during the Covid-19 pandemic. If found guilty of disseminating information inconsistent with medical knowledge, they could lose their medical licences.

The doctors are part of a group, the Polish Association of Independent Physicians and Scientists (PSNLiN), that actively opposes the use of vaccines.

“They signed a letter which falsely presented both the results of research on vaccines and the entire strategy to combat the pandemic,” Paweł Wróblewski, president of the Lower Silesian Medical Chamber, which is overseeing the case, told broadcaster TVN.

“The doctors are accused of promoting anti-health attitudes and publicly disseminating information that is inconsistent with current medical knowledge, thereby acting to the detriment of patients and the entire society,” he added.

The trial of the 45 accused doctors began on Wednesday at the district medical court in the city of Wrocław. Further proceedings against other doctors accused of the same offences are also taking place in Gdańsk and Poznań. Around 100 doctors in total are facing action.

During yesterday’s hearing in Wrocław, anti-vaccine activists protested in defence of the doctors. Among them was Grzegorz Braun, a prominent radical-right politician, conspiracy theorist and currently a presidential election candidate.

In 2021, Braun was part of a group of far-right MPs who attended a protest against Covid vaccinations and restrictions and stood beneath a banner saying “Vaccination sets you free” modelled on the sign at Auschwitz and other Nazi German camps saying “Arbeit macht frei” (“Work sets you free”).

Earlier this year, the mayor of Warsaw, Rafał Trzaskowski, filed a motion in court to dissolve PSNLiN, which is registered in his city.

He did so in response to a request from the state Commissioner for Patient Rights, who argued that the association was acting to the detriment of public health by, among other things, questioning the safety of mandatory vaccines for children.

PSNLiN’s website, for example, claims that children are six times more likely to die after receiving a Covid-19 vaccine. The website also promotes a campaign by STOP NOP, a leading anti-vaccine group, offering advice on “how to defend yourself against forced vaccination of children”.

OKO.press, an investigative news and fact-checking website, notes that PSNLiN members have been involved in spreading conspiracy theories that the Covid pandemic was part of a secret global plan aiming to bring about depopulation.

During the pandemic, a number of large protests against Covid vaccines and pandemic restrictions took place in Poland. International polling suggested that Poles were among the most reluctant to take the Covid vaccine and the country’s vaccination rate lagged well behind the EU average.

In 2022, a Polish doctor who spread claims that Covid was a “fake pandemic” was stripped of her medical license for a year by a medical court. In the same year, the chairwoman of PSNLiN, Dorota Sienkiewicz, also had her license suspended for a year for spreading anti-vaccine claims.

More broadly, Poland has, like other countries, experienced a growth in anti-vaccine sentiment in recent years, leading to a dramatic increase in the number of parents refusing to give their children compulsory vaccinations.


Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

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