Doctors Are Frustrated, Thwarted in Their Efforts at Housecleaning

According to the Los Angeles Times (March 25), “in a rare punitive action” the Medical Board of California revoked the license of a longtime Orange County practitioner.

The operative word here is rare. Perhaps the most scurrilous lie promulgated against doctors is that they refuse to police themselves. Trial lawyers love to complain about how difficult it is to get a doctor to testify against another doctor.

As a member of the Board of Directors of the Orange County Medical Assn. for over a decade, I can tell you that there are many misfits, incompetents or outright charlatans whom we have been trying for years to cleanse from our organization--only to be frustrated and often totally thwarted by the legal delays and maneuvers that pass as “due process.”

Organized medicine is no more willing to see a responsible member of its community pilloried than the media were willing to be quiet when Andy Rooney was suspended from his TV job.

But given the proper policing tools and protection from guerrilla attacks by the legal profession, the OCMA would tomorrow expel a dozen members whom it is ashamed to call colleagues.

ARTHUR D. SILK, MD

Garden Grove