Posted by Sharon on 12/22/10

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As Dr. Rea has treated many workers and dwellers of water
damaged buildings.

http://www.anh-usa.org/milestone-victory-texas-state-
medical-board-attack-on-leading-integrative-doctor-beaten-
back/

Milestone Victory: Texas State Medical Board’s Attack on
Leading Integrative Doctor Beaten Back
December 21, 2010
A court defeat for the Texas Medical Board is changing
policies—and minds.

As we have reported previously, when integrative
practitioners treat the whole patient, their treatments
often challenge traditional models of medicine. State
medical boards are aligned with the American Medical
Association’s brand of allopathic medicine. Because of
this, they have historically been biased against
complementary and alternative medicine—to the point that
they not infrequently target practitioners specifically for
practicing a higher standard of care.

But the tide is turning, according to attorney Jacques
Simon. Simon represented Bill J. Rea, MD, in a stunning
legal victory against the Texas Medical Board (TMB). The
suit has helped shift bad board practices in Texas.

Jacques Simon has an outstanding success rate defending
integrative medical doctors in these types of proceedings.
He is one of four attorneys in the US who collaborate and
specialize in this area. (The others are Alan Dumoff, Algis
Augustine, and Richard Jaffe.)

Dr. Rea is a leading researcher and clinician in the field
of environmental medicine and chemical sensitivity. For the
past thirty years, he has treated illness caused by food
and wide-ranging environmental factors such as air and
water pollution. In 2005, the Texas Medical Board filed a
number of charges against Dr. Rea, challenging his testing,
diagnosis, and treatment—everything he does. They even
claimed that Dr. Rea was injecting his patients with diesel
fuel and harmful chemicals, a charge that was patently
false.

After three long years in court, Simon was able to prove
that the Board’s claims were unsubstantiated. Instead of
revoking his license, the Board lamely told Dr. Rea to
present a revised informed consent form to patients saying
that his therapy is not “FDA approved.”

If you are a physician and under investigation, it is
important to make no statement whatsoever to investigators
or officials without the presence and approval of a lawyer.
As Simon told us, “When an investigation starts, it is
important for the physician not to make the mistake of
thinking they are the authority in the field. Pick up the
phone and call an attorney who specializes in these types
of proceedings.” (Feel free to contact ANH-USA for a
recommendation.)

Simon noted that the TMB has targeted integrative
physicians in the past, but this has shifted in the last
two or three years, and it appears they now investigate an
equal number of traditional MDs. This is due in part to
procedural actions taken by Dr. Rea through the course of
his ordeal, which including filing charges against the
board itself.

Texas has strong due process protections for doctors, but
those rules are not always followed. ANH-USA is working to
get a bill introduced in the Texas legislature that will
provide physicians with redress if the board doesn’t follow
its own rules. Jacques Simon notes that the more doctors
fight back (and the more the boards are educated), the
better the landscape will become in state medical board
proceedings. Meanwhile, state laws and regulations are
constantly changing, and it is important to remain vigilant.

ANH-USA has just released an 80-page report, “Know Your
State’s Medical Board: An Integrative Medical
Practitioner’s Guide to Understanding the Legal and
Regulatory Environments in the 50 States.” Across the
nation, state laws and regulations do not always adequately
protect practitioners’ due process rights in medical board
disciplinary proceedings, so we have created a guide and
checklist to provide a general sense of the legal
protections, or lack thereof, available in each state in
the country. The report is available as a PDF document, and
may be downloaded here.

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