0
Please log in or register to do it.

Anyone who devotes the time, energy, and money necessary to become a doctor should be committed to helping others. Medical school requires years of study, large tuition fees, and arguably a lot of intelligence. Yet, despite all of this, you continue to hear stories of doctors doing things that are so remarkably stupid or terrible that they end up losing their licenses as a consequence. Such is the case with these doctors.

#1

mputating a Toe on the Porch

In general, most of us wish to go through life with all the parts we had when we began. However, fate is unkind and sometimes you have to bid farewell to some random items. Perhaps you have been in an accident or maybe you have to have a part amputated to prevent further damage. An example would be if you get an infection and it is not treated properly, causing gangrene to develop. One Missouri man chose the wrong doctor, leading to his amputation. Former doctor John Ure amputated the man’s toe because it had become gangrenous. Details are crucial here. Ure’s office also functioned as a machine shed. There was no running water or even an examination table. The amputation was performed on the porch when Ure performed it. Despite the fact that everything was sterile, he did exactly what any physician would have done. Medical records indicate that may not be the case, since he was not even given antibiotics. However, he did prescribe painkillers in an improper manner to two other patients, all of which resulted in the loss of his license.
#2

Prescribing Pot Cookies to a Misdiagnosed 4-Year-Old

Acting childish is the work of children, it is in their name. We’ve all seen those viral videos of adults behaving badly, but at least if it’s a kid, it’s easier to understand and deal with. Children need to learn right from wrong and how to deal with their feelings. When a parent struggles with that, a doctor may need to be consulted. Just hope the doctor knows what he’s talking about. Parents of a four-year-old having temper tantrums consulted William S. Eidleman, a “natural medicine doctor” in Los Angeles. In and of itself, that’s hardly noteworthy, but Eidelman’s prescription was. I gave him cookies. They’re marijuana cookies. When the kid asked the school nurse for more marijuana cookies in the middle of the day, things went sideways. The state medical board found that the doctor mistakenly diagnosed the boy with ADHD and bi-polar disorder. His license wasn’t revoked because of pot, but because of that hasty diagnosis they called “grossly negligent.”
#3

Filming Dance Videos While Botching Surgery

As a dancing doctor, Windell Davis-Boutte became famous for YouTube videos in which she performed surgical procedures while dancing to popular music. Additionally, she had to repay nearly $200,000 to patients who never received surgery after becoming embroiled in a scandal that resulted in her license being suspended for over two years. The dancing videos were questionable, especially since sometimes patients were unconscious, but it was the malpractice charges that got her license revoked. There were numerous complications after botched procedures, and one patient even said he had brain damage. Boutte was a dermatologist, so that’s even more impressive. She told patients she was a plastic surgeon and performed plastic surgery when she wasn’t.
#4

Drugging Pregnant Women to Induce Labor and Make More Money

Loverboy has a song called “Working for the Weekend.” It’s about working all week to get to the weekend. It’s pretty self-explanatory. It’s the complete opposite of the life obstetrician Paul Shuen led. Shuen developed a remarkable racket for himself that saw him reap huge money, and all he had to do was force women to have babies on the weekend, whether it was time or not. Where Shuen worked, doctors get paid by the government. A birth on a weekday pays $498. Hospitals have fewer staff on weekends, so a weekend birth costs $748. Doctors also have a limit on how many deliveries they can do a month. Shuen has a plan. He gave his patients misoprostol without their knowledge or consent. You use it to induce labor, and he did it to ensure weekend births whenever he could. Five women went into labor on the same day in 2016. He got caught when nurses found the medication inside patients. The process was slow, and Shuen had been doing this for years before his license was revoked.
#5

Being Drunk and Then Committing Massive Fraud

There’s a saying about taking a shot of liquid courage before doing something daring. Just a quick drink to calm your nerves and boost your confidence. It works for some people, but you probably don’t want your doctor to be one of them. Marco Antonio Chavez was a psychiatrist in San Diego when he lost his license for drinking. He wasn’t a teetotaler either; he drank two 8-ounce glasses of vodka mixed with cloves. That’s about 10 shots. Apparently, the drinks, which he had started at six in the morning, were meant to get him to stop drinking. All that happened in 2018. He made headlines again in 2020 for defrauding Tricare, a company that handles healthcare benefits for military members. He had to pay back $783,000.
#6

Posting Racist Messages on Social Media Related to the Job

When you go to the doctor, you don’t know what kind of person they are in their everyday lives. They’re not your friend, they’re a doctor. Thanks to social media, many people can’t keep their personal feelings to themselves, even when they’re terrible. Like this Ohio doctor. After someone pointed out Kollab’s tweets, the Cleveland Clinic let her go after just three months. Kollab talked about intentionally prescribing the wrong drugs to Jewish patients in the long since deleted tweets. She then lost a second residency in California for submitting false or misleading information during the interview. Her license was revoked a year later, so she can’t practice osteopathic medicine in Ohio.
#7

Claiming to Cure Ebola and Other Life-Threatening Diseases with Sound

Ebola is one of the scariest diseases out there. Up to 90% of infected patients die from it, and it’s not fun. You bleed out of every orifice because your cells break down. You don’t want that. If you get it, don’t let William Edwin Gray III treat you because his treatments aren’t good. They got his license revoked. Gray said he was a homeopath, but he did graduate from Stanford Medical School in 1970. On his personal website, he sold cures for Ebola and other conditions in the form of MP3 sound files. They were $5 each. Treatments don’t even compare to homeopathy, so it’s a double-edged sword. On his site he said homeopathic solutions create clusters of molecules that radiate energy and that can then be amplified and recorded as a sound wave and that’s what he sold. Gray said his treatment cured malaria in Sierra Leone. The state medical board revoked his license despite his claims it could cure swine flu fever, headaches, and more.
#8

Branding Sex Slaves for a Cult

When you dig into the whole NVIXM cult, there’s a lot to unpack and very little is good. But there’s one story that some people overlooked involving a doctor who was involved with the group. Danielle Roberts’ license was revoked in 2021 for 12 kinds of misconduct. Among them was the use of a cauterizing tool to brand the initials of the cult leader onto 17 different women who were being used as sex slaves. The brands were meant to show they belonged to the cult leader, who is currently serving 120 years in prison. The branding was also done without anesthetic to cause pain on purpose. She’s appealing because, in her role as a brander of sex slaves for a cult, she’s not acting as a medical professional, so those rules shouldn’t apply.
#9

Installing Unnecessary Pacemakers

Healthcare fraud is a big deal and we’ve already seen some evidence of it from some shady doctors. The fraud really goes off the rails when it involves implanting stuff in humans, and that’s what happened with Anis Chalhoub in Kentucky. Chalhoub lost his license, paid $250,000, and was sentenced to over three years in prison. He gave people pacemakers they didn’t need. Of the 234 he gave between 2007 and 2011, evidence shows dozens were done when patients didn’t qualify. He told patients they’d die if they didn’t get a pacemaker when their conditions weren’t fatal. Every time he performed the surgery, he got paid. That was his main reason for doing it.
#10

Declaring a Baby Dead When They Weren’t

There’s not much of a happy ending, but it could have been a lot worse, and it’s all due to this one particularly negligent doctor. Back in 2013, a baby was born in an Eastern China hospital and the doctor declared it dead. It’s a harrowing experience for any parent, but imagine how they felt when they found out two days later that the child was still alive when the funeral home had sent him to be cremated. Workers notified the hospital, and the boy was brought back to be treated, but the prognosis wasn’t good. He apparently had a breathing problem, and the hospital said it was for “humanitarian reasons.” The doctor who declared him dead lost his license, and the story ended with an explanation that the baby was in critical condition.
10 Things You Never Realized About Popular Cartoons
10 Historical Publicity Stunts That Backfired Miserably