Jarrod Shapiro, DPM
Practice Perfect Editor
Mountain View Medical &
Surgical Associates,
Madras, Oregon

FOOTLOOSE or Foot In Mouth?

I’d like to address my extreme disagreement with the recent New Yorker article by popular journalist Jeffery Toobin, in which he issues a general indictment of the professional integrity of all podiatrists.

I will address one primary point which is Mr Toobin’s not so subtle insinuation that podiatrists are criminals, motivated to act in illegal ways because we were incapable of acceptance into allopathic medical school. This relates to podiatry’s so called “status anxiety,” (his words) as if we desire so strongly to “just be doctors” that we’re all somehow willing to commit fraud.

I shouldn't skip over the reality, which is that podiatrists are in fact doctors. Our four years of medical school and three years of residency (not to mention the degrees on our walls and the recognition by the federal government of our physician status) attest to this fact. No; we’re not medical doctors or osteopaths. We are physicians and surgeons of the foot and ankle. No; we’re not going to treat our patients’ hypertension or their leukemia. But I would also point out that our orthopedic colleagues don’t treat these either and yet they are “doctors.” I might also point out that the emergency room “doctor” called ME to repair his patient’s broken ankle three days ago. I must have been “doctor” enough for this. Do you really want your fractured foot treated by your primary care “doctor’? I’ll leave that up to Mr. Toobin to answer.

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Mr Toobin brings up examples of criminal behavior in the podiatric community, implying these situations are examples of a wider problem with podiatry. If these few cases are indicative of the behavior of the larger podiatric community, I would ask Mr Toobin to respond to cases such as Dr Conrad Murray (MD), recently accused of involuntary manslaughter in the death of Michael Jackson, or doctors Khristine Erosevich and Sandeep Kapoor (both MDs), accused of illegally prescribing drugs to the now deceased actress Anna Nicole Smith, or Dr Phil Aston (another MD), sentenced for illegally prescribing drugs to, among others, a wrestler who killed himself and his family. Or how about Allan Zarkin (MD), a New York gynecologist who carved his initials into the abdomen of a patient after a cesarean section?

Need more examples Mr Toobin? OK, let’s talk about British general practitioner Harold Shipman (MD) who committed suicide while incarcerated for killing 15 patients and implicated in the deaths of 215 people? What about Dr Mark Weinberger (MD), who had been on the run from authorities for 5 years under allegations of fraud and negligence? I find it interesting that according to the Federation of State Medical Boards, approximately 200 licensed physicians were disciplined by state medical boards for criminal activity in 2008.

Why is it that when a relatively few of the general medical profession’s physicians are found guilty of criminal activity, we don’t see any splash-back against the profession, but when a few podiatrists act criminally, it becomes a reflection on the community as a whole?

The simple fact of the matter is that doctors – whether allopathic doctors, osteopaths, or podiatric physicians - are people and have the same incidence of behaving in criminal ways as anyone else. The people mentioned above, as well as the podiatrists discussed in Mr Toobin’s article, are simply and individually criminals. Their actions say nothing about the professions in which they are employed.

Perhaps I might accuse all journalists of a lack of integrity, using Mr Toobin’s poor article, with its lack of depth and poor research preparation, as the example that proves the rule. But that would be an over-generalization wouldn’t it?