Breaking the Code of Silence

The story began in February 2001, with a brief news item in a tiny newspaper downstate. The State of Vermont Board of Medical Practice had ruled that a local orthopedic surgeon—despite several complaints against him—was allowed to continue to practice.

At The Burlington Free Press, we’d written about the state’s physician oversight panel before. A 1991 editorial slammed the board for allowing an ear, nose and throat doctor to keep his license after he was convicted of having sex with a minor in his examining room. In 1995, an editorial again criticized the board, this time for taking five years to act against a psychiatrist who counseled patients to cross-dress, ordered them to perform her office tasks, and over-medicated them to the point of seizures. In these editorial criticisms, the newspaper had treated those cases as rare instances of laxity by an

otherwise diligent watchdog.

Read More