Was a doctor tried and executed in Malaysia for "giving the bioweapon vaccine and killing a patient" under the Nuremberg Code? No, that's not true: Malaysia stopped executing people in 2018 and hasn't reversed the moratorium on capital punishment since then.
The claim originated in a video (archived here) shared on Telegram on November 3, 2022, by the user named Dr_Betsy. It opened:
Hi patriots! Dr. Betsy Eads here today, it's Thursday in sunny Florida. So it's come to my attention that in Malaysia, the first physician was put to death under the Nuremberg codes for giving the bioweapon vaccine and killing a patient. Now this sets a humongous precedence for the rest of the world, the rest of the nations, and it should send a tremendous signal out to nurses, doctors and hospital staff that you can't run and hide from this anymore.
Here is what the post looked like on Telegram at the time of writing:
(Source: Telegram screenshot taken on Tue Nov 15 20:28:33 2022 UTC)
The statement contained a significant discrepancy. While capital punishment is not outlawed in Malaysia, the country introduced a moratorium in 2018. On July 10, 2022, the government confirmed its plans to abolish the death penalty. Had Malaysia returned to executions, a policy change of this magnitude would be covered by international media organizations. However, there are no such reports from credible sources.
Even though Malaysian courts continue to issue these sentences before the final legal prohibition of capital punishment, most cases are still related to drug offenses. A case involving a licensed medical professional would be a rare occurrence, drawing the media's attention. Yet no such reports could be found.
The Star, one of the largest Malaysian English-language newspapers, published an article about someone who received the death sentence on October 27, 2022. The defendant was not a doctor -- it was a man convicted of a murder of a dental hygienist.
On November 10, 2022, the same paper wrote about a medical professional, a dentist, who had been found guilty in connection with a case where a patient fell unconscious during treatment and later died. However, the story was not about the death penalty: The Court of Appeal upheld a fine for malpractice.
Elizabeth Eads, who published the post on Telegram, is a family physician in Florida.
Eads previously made other false statements about COVID-19 vaccines. For example, she said that shots could give people AIDS (Lead Stories debunked similar claims here and here).
It is noteworthy that Eads is not known for conducting any research on the matter. According to Google Scholar, Eads did not publish a single article about vaccines or anything else since the beginning of the pandemic.
Other Lead Stories fact checks about COVID-19 can be found here.
