Trib Update: Md. suspends autism doctor's license
Chicago Tribune
By Steve Mills and Patricia Callahan : Tribune reporters : May 4, 2011
A doctor who has treated children with autism with a drug sometimes used to chemically castrate sex offenders has had his medical license suspended in his home state of Maryland after officials there determined he was placing children at risk with his controversial and expensive treatment.
Dr. Mark Geier, who has treated some Illinois children and retains a license to practice medicine here, was the subject of a 2009 Tribune investigation that called the hormone-disrupting treatment into question.
Geier allegedly misrepresented his credentials, misdiagnosed young autism patients and encouraged their parents to approve risky treatments without fully informing them of potential dangers, according to the Maryland State Board of Physicians’ April 27 order to suspend Geier’s license.
Geier, according to the medical board’s order, “endangers autistic children and exploits their parents by administering to the children a treatment protocol that has a known substantial risk of serious harm and which is neither consistent with evidence-based medicine nor generally accepted in the relevant scientific community.”
The 48-page suspension order alleges that in six of nine cases the board reviewed, Geier incorrectly diagnosed autistic children with the rare condition of precocious puberty – the early onset of puberty – and prescribed the drug Lupron, a powerful hormone-disrupting drug, the board found.
Insurance companies will sometimes pay for Lupron therapy, which can cost up to $6,000 a month, if a child truly has precocious puberty, which can be caused by tumors, genetic abnormalities or nervous system injury.
In some cases, the board found that Geier diagnosed the children with precocious puberty and prescribed Lupron and other hormone-disrupting drugs without examining them or conducting proper tests. Some of these children were within the normal age range for puberty, so they couldn’t have qualified for such a diagnosis, the board found.
Geier, who is not allowed to practice in Maryland while the case is pending, declined comment, instead referring questions to an attorney. The attorney, Joseph A. Schwartz III, said that at the root of the complaint was a “bona fide dispute over therapy” rather than a case of a doctor who is an immediate threat to patients.
“If you read the (complaint), you say, ‘Holy God, this is awful.’ But if it were so awful they should have an injured child, and they don’t. I would hope that the board would step back and say, ‘Maybe there’s a lot of controversy and he’s not in the mainstream.’ But let’s test these allegations in a fair hearing. It’s just like shadow-boxing with allegations that sound awful but when you delve into the facts of them you say, ‘What’s the big deal here?’” Schwartz said.
Experts have long doubted the scientific basis for Geier’s claims and treatments. In 2009, some two dozen prominent endocrinologists dismissed Geier’s Lupron protocol in a paper published online in the medical journal Pediatrics.
Geier is not board certified in any field that is relevant to the diagnosis or treatment of autism. He is a genetic counselor, but according to the Maryland board order he has claimed to be a board-certified geneticist and an epidemiologist despite being neither. He even made those claims in an interview with the Maryland board, according to the order.
A hearing before the medical board is scheduled for next week. The hearing is closed to the public.
No comments:
Post a Comment