The Hypocritical Oath By Mike Coughlin

An article published by the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that a Cleveland Clinic doctor owned stock in a company that produces the materials he would sometimes use in spine surgery. Dr. Isador Lieberman would use them if his patients opted for a more expensive, intensive and dangerous operation.

What's odd is that they usually picked the riskier surgery. Wondering why?

Maybe if your doctor recommended a more expensive treatment, you'd listen. He knows what's best for you and, after all, he took the Hippocratic Oath (you know, the one all doctors take saying their patient's care is their top priority).

Lieberman apparently took the Hypocritical Oath. He's on the Cleveland Clinic's conflict-of-interest committee where he is supposed to be judicious about the relationship between Clinic employees and private industry. Instead, he's got himself tangled in it.

This worries me almost beyond being able to joke about it. There were people who died because they agreed to this operation -- trusting this doctor who wouldn't tell them of his financial interest in the company unless they specifically asked. Just be happy he didn't have stock in a catheter supply company. (I said almost unable to joke about it.)

To be completely fair, the entire Cleveland Clinic seems to be endorsing this surgery, although no obvious evidence suggests why they would prefer it over the other option.

Can you imagine if your parents (to whom you entrusted so many years of your well being) had succumbed to these same conflicts of interest? Maybe they'd have told you to play in traffic because they had stock in an auto body shop. Maybe they would have given you aspirin instead of children's Tylenol because they had stock in Bayer.

Did people actually die just because this guy was protecting his stock? Did some elderly person (and most of the candidates for this operation do tend to be elderly) die because he is, for some insane reason, unsatisfied with his salary as a surgeon at one of the best clinics in the country? Who knows, but something like that shouldn't even be an issue.

Regardless, I'm in favor of poetic justice. After suspending his license, if he wants to push his stock, force him to spend all of his money on stock in Lucky Strike cigarettes, Jose Cuervo tequila and Dunkin Donuts. Then he can spend the rest of his active years doing his part to keep their stock up. Then once his body has deteriorated, weakened to the point of an elderly person, several of his vertebrae will be manually cracked and he will undergo that same operation.

There are reasons most doctors are respected so much and paid so well. Dr. Isador Lieberman is not one those reasons.

[Photo credit: http://www.healthnetfoundation.org/ASSETS/1B1C7860466542C3B6AF09EB62331A4D/cleveland2.jpg - A view of the Cleveland Clinic from afar]