Over the years, it’s become increasingly evident that medical licensing boards are misusing their considerable power over doctors to impede free speech and maintain the status quo of the medical industry, which in large part is dictated by drug company interests. Any doctor who “steps out of line” can easily be reined back in by the threat of having his or her license revoked.

In this way, medical boards ensure that “standard practice” is maintained — even when standard practice does more harm than good, or goes against a doctor’s sense of integrity or medical expertise.

In 2012, a large National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded study presented evidence in support of chelation therapy for people with cardiovascular disease.¹ The trial to access chelation therapy (TACT), demonstrated that by removing heavy metals from patients with coronary disease, incidence of death, heart attacks, stroke, coronary revascularization and angina was lowered, occurring at a rate of 26.5 percent in the treatment group compared to 30 percent in the placebo group.

Interestingly, diabetic patients, which made up one-third of the participants, benefited the most. Chelation therapy has been a controversial topic for many years, and its popularity among alternative health practitioners has been widely criticized as unscientific, unnecessary and potentially dangerous. The results from TACT were therefore highly unexpected. It was the kind of “inconvenient” evidence that gave alternative practitioners the ammunition they needed.

The Case of Dr. Geier

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvXIqUyOdK4

Enter Dr. Mark Geier, a medical doctor with a Ph.D. in genetics, who spent 10 years of his scientific career at the NIH, wrote more than 150 peer-reviewed scientific papers and worked as a professor of genetics at Johns Hopkins University. In the video above, Geier discusses some of his work and his involvement in the effort to make vaccines safer. Over his three decades’ long study of vaccine efficacy and safety, Geier came to believe mercury was a liability.

More specifically, he argued for the idea that mercury binds to testosterone, and the treatment protocol he developed involved the use of the testosterone-suppressing drug leuprolide (Lupron) and chelation. Lupron is used in the conventional treatment of precocious puberty.

Off-label, the drug is also used to chemically castrate sex offenders. While I had some personal disagreements with his use of dangerous drugs loaded with side effects, like Lupron, in his detoxification protocol, he was certainly correct in identifying mercury as a pernicious toxin.

As reported by The Washington Post,² Lupron is “considered dangerous for young people and not known to alleviate symptoms of [autism],” and in 2011, the Maryland Board of Physicians suspended his license over his continued use of the treatment.³ Over the next two years, all 12 of his medical licenses were suspended, and several were revoked altogether, including his Maryland license.

The story might well have ended there, had it not been for the Maryland Board of Physicians’ decision to continue to pursue and humiliate Geier, and Geier suing the board for harassment — and winning.⁴

Medical Board Sued for Harassment 

In 2012, the medical board claimed Geier was prescribing drugs for himself and his family even though his license was suspended. A public cease-and-desist order posted online included a list of the specific drugs Geiger had allegedly prescribed for himself, his wife and his son — a serious violation of the health insurance portability and accountability (HIPAA) law, which protects patients’ privacy and health information.⁵

The Geiers say they were “horrified” when they realized their private medical details were on show for all the world to see, and critics indeed seized the opportunity to bring even more public attention to it by mocking their use of the medicines in various blog posts and online forums. During a 2014 deposition, Geier’s wife Anne said, “How would you feel if somebody put your medical records up and then they laughed at you and made fun of you? They humiliate you. The whole thing has just ruined my life.”

While the medical board claims the inclusion of such private details was “an honest mistake,” the Geiers sued the board, arguing the publication of their health information was an act of vengeance, aimed at punishing Geier for advocating unconventional ideas, specifically the idea that thimerosal-containing vaccines may play a role in autism.

Making matters worse, an administrative law judge determined the allegations against Geier were meritless to begin with, as Geier was not the prescribing doctor; his son, David Geier, was.