Subject: A precedent setting “Landmark Case” is going on in Florida. The “Health Freedom Movement” has taken a significant interest in it. It is precedent setting because the support network operating behind the scenes intends to make an example out of the Florida State employees involved.
Health Freedom activists feel that the dental establishment, backed by the “Quackbusters,” really messed this one up, and there is an opportunity to make them pay DEARLY for their mistakes.
Opinion by Tim Bolen
Officially, the case is called “The Florida Dental Board vs Phillips.”
Here is my “Opinion” about what’s happening. The hearing will be WELL ATTENDED. For more information,
see the website at www.dentalpatientfreedom.com.
Phillips’ support network is looking into the legal course to file formal complaints (towards disciplinary action), against the Florida Investigator for her actions (or lack of actions) in this case.
Also, they are looking into what action can be brought against the State Attorney that brought in dubious www.quackwatch.com downloads as “evidence” in the Probable Cause Hearings…
Health leaders, all over North America, are looking at a program to officially file formal complaints against ANY government employee that brings in questionable www.quackwatch.com, de-licensed MD Stephen Barrett, or any of the “Quackbuster” minions, into a hearing
process.
See below for information on why supporters are considering these actions.
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THE FLORIDA DENTAL BOARD vs. AMERICA…
Opinion – by Tim Bolen
A new drama is unfolding in West Palm Beach, Florida, a place even more famous after this last US Presidential election. West Palm Beach has become the first major battleground for the future of Dental Care in North America. And, a battle it is… a very
important one.
On one side is a corrupt, cash-bloated dental establishment determined to maintain the status quo.
On the other is the American consumer; awake and aware, sharpening their swords and weapons of war. The
first conflict begins in “chad city.”
It is a classic battle between good and evil – everything that’s good about America versus everything that’s bad about the dental establishment, and the poor dental offering being inflicted on Americans.
The “issue” is the so-called trial of a world renowned West Palm Beach Dentist, Dr. Doug Phillips, by the Florida Dental Board over his leading edge dental practice, and his philosophies.
The first assault began October 16th, 2000, in an administrative hearing at the Palm Beach County Courthouse, Tenth floor, Courtroom 10D, 205 North Dixie Highway, West Palm Beach, FL. The dental establishment, using it’s minion, the Florida Dental Board, wants his practice restricted to only those things taught in a Florida Dental school – nothing else. Their assault was unimpressive.
The counter-attack begins January 22, 2001 in the same room, in the same place. And, a counter-attack it is. D-Day…
Phillips has a support group that isn’t messing around – they’ve come to fight. – And it isn’t “defense” they’re planning…
WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT…
In American dentistry, Florida Dentist Doug Phillips is about as “leading edge” as you can get. He is part of a growing cadre of Dentists who have broken out of old patterns, and are providing services and philosophies heretofore unknown in the dental office.
He is doing the right thing. His patients come from all over the world.
Doug Phillips is, right now, in the year 2000, where Dentistry will be in the year 2015. When you’re that far ahead, you scare people. And Doug Phillips is scaring the dental establishment right down to its roots. Good.
But now he, and hence his patients, are suffering for it. The dental establishment wants him silenced. Bad.
Doug Phillips is not the problem.
North American organized Dentistry, as we’ve always known it, is under siege – for good reason. It is an industry that cannot, and will not, police itself and solve its own problems. Doug Phillips is to them, anathema, for in his practice he runs radically counter to current dental establishment thinking.
THE CHANGE IN AMERICAN THINKING…
Phillips is on the side of the American consumer (the patient) in the five major dental issues. Phillips says: (1). What happens in your mouth affects your whole body – radically. Which means that Dentists must be aware of, and trained in, health/medical issues – or work directly with other health disciplines. (2). Mercury amalgam fillings are a poison to the human body. (3). Root canals are a place where the very worst kinds of infections fester, and they should be discontinued. (4). Cavitations (holes in the gum and bone left from tooth removal) must be treated immediately, and the infection removed before closure – not just rely on prescription antibiotics. (5). The
dental industry must learn to police itself, not act as an obfuscator or an apologist. It must act responsibly.
The dental establishment, full of arrogance, has positioned itself on the wrong side of these five significant social issues – in direct opposition, not just to Phillips, but to a growing juggernaut of a grass-roots, and litigious, North American health movement.
THE DENTAL ESTABLISHMENT IS SCARED TO DEATH….
Why? In California, the legislature passed a law, despite opposition from the American Dental Association (ADA), forcing California Dentists to warn patients about the toxic dangers of mercury amalgam fillings. In Canada, a citizen’s group is suing the Canadian Dental Association over the use of mercury amalgam. Citizen’s groups all over the continent are opposing ADA sponsored water fluoridation. Research shows, conclusively, that although the health condition of a person’s mouth affects the status of the whole human body – few Dentists, know, or pay attention to this issue, and the official dental establishment ignores it completely. And, more…
The dental establishment has taken a position to be “officially blind” to dental issues important to Americans. Historically, industries in America that ignore, or act to thwart, the wants and needs of the people experience backlash. And, it can take years to overcome the public reaction.
But, not all dentists are part of the establishment…
AMERICAN HEALTH CARE IS A WAR BETWEEN “EDGES.”
In North America “leading-edge” health practitioners seek out the best and the newest means to deal with patient issues. To them, a protocol from China, a device from Finland, a procedure from another health discipline, etc. are a welcome new tool to solve patient problems. For a “leading-edge” practitioner, solving patient problems is how they define their role in society.
“Lagging-edge” practitioners are those so-called health professionals, who frankly, just don’t cut it with patients – they don’t recognize patient needs, and they don’t provide what the consumer wants. They insist, in an authoritative way, on providing what THEY want to provide – usually expensive, usually third-rate, and way too often – very, very deadly. They call their offering “standard of care.”
“Leading-edge” health care vs. “standard of care” (lagging edge) is an issue being argued throughout North America. One would think, that since Americans have an affinity for “newer and better,” that “leading-edge” health care would dominate – without question. But, alas, that’s not true. In North America, “standard of care,” practitioners, rule.
It is not surprising that North Americans seek out “leading-edge” practitioners – and spend their health dollars with them, even though those dollars are mostly, if not all, out-of-pocket. Generally, nothing “leading-edge” in health care, will be paid for by insurance or Medicare. Americans, apparently, given a choice, want to be healthy. Unfortunately for Americans, “leading-edge” practitioners are in the minority, and are constantly under attack. It’s all about money, and status quo…
HEALTH CARE IS IN BAD SHAPE – AND CANNOT (OR WILL NOT) SOLVE IT’S OWN PROBLEMS.
Frankly, if the American Medical-Industrial Complex were to be in charge of the American Computer industry we’d still be using #2 pencils, and you’d have to have a license to have an eraser. The health situation in America is that bad.
Dr. Barbara Starfield of the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, in an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) this last year, wrote a blistering expose of so called “standard of care” medicine. Starfield showed that
250,000 unnecessary deaths per year can be attributed to “standard of care” health practices. She says that there were 12,000 deaths from unnecessary surgery, 7,000 deaths from medication errors in hospitals, 20,000 deaths from other errors in hospitals, 80,000
deaths from infections in hospitals, 106,000 deaths from non-error negative effects of drugs.
Not in Starfield’s article, by my own observation, is that most likely none of those deaths were questioned, and a state regulatory board prosecuted none of the practitioners involved…. Why? Because all of those deaths would be explained away, or excused, because
the practitioner was allegedly practicing within the “standard of care.” In other words, “bad health care” is OK, so long as everybody else does it?
Starfield’s data comes only from studies on hospitalized patients – so I suspect her data represents only the tip of the “standard of care” iceberg… The World Health Organization, this year, ranked the US health care system 15th among 25 industrialized countries.
15th? Did I say 15th? It’s time to fire the Coach…
WHY THEN, DOES “STANDARD OF CARE” SURVIVE?
Several reasons:
(1). “Lagging-edge” practitioners have control of the US health regulatory structure.
How did that happen? “Health care” is still, somewhat, a free-market system. When a “leading-edge” practitioner moves in down the street and offers services that work for the patient, and that a patient wants, the “lagging edge” practitioner begins to have a lot of free time – and less money.
Instead of using their free time to upgrade their own skills, they join local medical societies, using those connections to leapfrog into positions of power in the health regulatory structure. In that way they get themselves appointed as “expert witnesses” in their
profession, or to the “regulatory board” itself. In those positions, they can now get revenge on that “leading-edge” practitioner down the street who took all their patients away. Their biggest, and nastiest tool is the “standard of care” argument.
That’s the argument the Florida Dental Board is using against Doug Phillips.
(2). The false accusation of “quackery.” There is covert organization operating in North America that arrogantly calls itself the “Quackbusters.” It is not an established group, but a conglomeration of smaller; interconnected conspirators, which I have, reason to
believe is funded by the sleazier operators within the Medical-Industrial Complex. The king-pin, and chief propagandist, of this operation is a de-licensed MD named Stephen Barrett, who operates out of his basement in Allentown PA.
You can view Barrett’s propaganda by going to his website at www.quackwatch.com. Barrett’s primary job in the Quackbuster conspiracy is to slime “leading-edge” practitioners by painting them with the brush of “quackery.”
“Lagging-edge” practitioners, watching their business walk down the street, leap at the opportunity to be able to lash out at their betters. Hence, “lagging-edge” practitioners inevitably call their betters “quacks” at every opportunity.
Ironically, Barrett, and his cronies, are not known to do good research. When this group stumbled around years ago and found the word, “quack,” they didn’t bother to check out the origin of the word. The term “quack” originated in Europe, coming from the word
“quacksalver” which was used to describe a Dentist dumb enough to put mercury (a poison) fillings in their patient’s mouths.
(3). An alliance has been formed between “lagging-edge” practitioners on regulatory boards and the “Quackbusters.”
In the case against Doug Phillips, Trisha Webb, an attorney representative from the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, in the official “Probable Cause Hearing” on December 17th, 1998, “included a packet” downloaded from the Internet on “quackery” to
influence the decision of the panel towards prosecution.
(4). “We the people” haven’t given any attention to this issue. The public doesn’t know about it, and doesn’t understand its importance, so the public isn’t doing anything about it. Consequently, “lagging-edge” practitioners, not the public, continue to own health care.
THE “STANDARD OF CARE” ABSURDITY
How did “we the people” ever let regulatory bodies that are supposed to be working for us, so something so anti-public, and blatantly anti-American, as twisting the definition of “standard of care,” to protect bad health care practices, and condemn advances?
Yes, we want health practitioner to work within a “standard of care.” But by this concept we meant to weed out those operating BELOW the “standard of care,” not those operating ABOVE it. The “lagging-edge” people on our regulatory boards, either through
stupidity or malice, have twisted the concept to prosecute practitioners, like Doug Phillips, who operate ABOVE the “standard of care” – and that, my friends, is absurd.
And, it’s not acceptable…
WHAT IS DOUG PHILLIPS DOING THAT FRIGHTENS THE FLORIDA DENTAL BOARD SO MUCH?
A lot…
PHILLIP’S PHILOSOPHY – He believes that Dentistry is a form of health care, and that “what happens in your mouth affects your whole body, your whole health picture.” The dental establishment is officially in denial of this issue. They refuse, for example, to admit, or even officially deal, with the mercury amalgam issue. Root Canals are a big profit item for industry – no way are they going to officially accept the fact that root canals are an infection center. Their defense, or their “position” is one of official ignorance.
SPECIFICALLY, Doug Phillips is against certain dental mainstream icons, and mega-profit centers – like mercury amalgam fillings, root canals, cavitations, mis-matched metals in the mouth, and more. He says with authority and studies backing his claim that, “these things are just not good for you.” And what’s more, he teaches other Dentists as to why he’s against these things.
DOUG PHILLIPS IS A THREAT TO THE DENTAL STATUS QUO.
In Phillip’s “Biological Dentistry” program, the patient is examined first with a system called Autonomic Response Testing. To officials at the Florida Dental Board, apparently, Autonomic Response Testing is synonymous with witchcraft.
However, had the dimwits in Florida done even a cursory investigation, they would have found that Autonomic Response Testing, sometimes called Kinesiology, is a test system well known, and accepted, in worldwide medicine. It examines the body’s Autonomic Nervous System. It is totally non-invasive and, as a test, is very enlightening.
IT WORKS LIKE THIS – The body’s nervous system is made up of three parts: motor, sensory, and autonomic. The motor part moves muscles, such as moving the hand. The sensory part takes care of perception from external sources, such as seeing, or feeling ubstances, or smelling things. The autonomic system handles everything else, including blood pressure, sweating, bowel and bladder function.
Research has shown that malfunctions in the autonomic system can be “markers” towards diagnosis of more widespread problems, and the testing can closely pinpoint a problem.
The University Hospitals of Cleveland gives, I think, the simplest explanation of the science at the web address http://mediswww.cwru.edu/dept/neurology/autonomic/autonomic_test.html. It is written for the layman.
The Mayo Clinic article, written by Paola Sandroni, MD, PhD, at their website is much more detailed, and is written for the scientist. You can read it at: www.halcyon.com/www3/iasp/TC98NovDec.html.
The Florida dental Board has taken a position of official and intentional ignorance – and they’ve found a Florida Prosecutor who will help them enforce that ignorance as a policy.
THE FLORIDA DENTAL BOARD’S “CASE” AGAINST PHILLIPS…
The so-called “case” against Doug Phillips is a not-very-funny joke. It should never have gone anywhere, much less to prosecution. It is the result of the combined work of what seems to be anincompetent, biased Florida Investigator named Bonnie Schaffrick. Schaffrick’s poorly researched and opinionated report, which was the basis of a decision to prosecute made by, what appears to me to be, two
uninformed Florida Dental Board examiners, in a ten minute meeting.
The entire case against Dr. Phillips is based upon Schaffrick’s assertion that Phillips conducted a test, that, in its description, sounds very weird, and very strange, and in Schaffrick’s opinion statement “Dr. Phillips should not be allowed to do this to anyone else.”
DR. PHILLIPS HAD NEVER DONE THIS TEST. Schaffrick failed to determine that the test was actually done by a totally different doctor, to the patient, in an office 3,000 miles away in California; two years after the patient had left Dr. Phillip’s care. The description of the “test’ that Dr. Phillips DID NOT DO was the basis for the Florida Board of Dentistry “Probable Cause Panel’s” decision to prosecute and label Dr. Phillips as a “quack.”
I see Schaffrick as an incompetent investigator whose employment with the State of Florida should be terminated forthwith. This type of investigatory blunder is inexcusable under any circumstances.
Little is known, at this time, about the two Florida Board of Dentistry “Probable Cause Panel” members, Garcia and Ross, except what we gleaned from their ten minute hearing minutes to decide to prosecute Doug Phillips. But, their discussion of the Phillips case
illuminates how poorly Florida’s investigation and decision system operates.
The patient that the Dental Board complaint is based on is best described using the words of Allen Grossman – Asst. Attorney General, when he said in the Probable Cause Hearing, “Nancy, you may want to make a note that the patient probably isn’t the one you’re gonna rely on in the prosecution.”
Oh, really?
If the prosecution can’t rely on the statements of the patient who supposedly complained, then now did this case even get to a Probable Cause Hearing – much less to a prosecution?
It looks to me that the Florida Dental Board, backed up by the “Quackbusters,” is prosecuting Doug Phillip’s philosophy, and all “leading-edge” dental procedures, in a sham prosecution. Phillips, through his attorney, long ago pointed out the error in
Schaffrick’s report – to no avail. The Dental Board decided to prosecute anyway – on the basis of his so-called “quackery.”
Never mind “due process,” never mind “facts”…
The patient, a woman from Northern Italy, years ago, had been in the path of the Chernobyl radioactive cloud, and had received a severe dose of radiation. When she came to Dr. Phillip’s office, she made it clear that she wanted – and needed – – to limit her exposure to radiation x-rays. She brought with her, her own recently taken x-rays that clearly showed her tooth problems. She needed treatment. Because of her medical problems, she had been to a large number of health professionals seeking help, both before, and after, being treated by Dr. Phillips.
The Investigator’s report shows that the patient had complaints about EVERY ONE of her Dentists. She also claimed “she had been chronically ill throughout her life, and was not helped by medical doctors.”
The Florida Board’s case against Dr. Phillips is convoluted. It is based on four things: (1) The method Dr. Phillips chose to evaluate the patient (Autonomic Response Testing), (2) the products used to treat the patient (homeopathic remedies), and (3) the surgery done without using “conventional” means of evaluation (x-rays), (4) so-called “inadequate record keeping.”
It needs to be pointed out, and emphasized, that this patient came to Dr. Phillips, on recommendation, specifically because of his methods and philosophy. Dr. Phillips removed two infected root canal teeth, some decayed bone matter, and treated the patient for
the infection. She was fine when she left Dr. Phillip’s care and moved to California, where she then underwent another two years of dental care on the west coast, with no complaints about Dr. Phillip’s care.
The patient, somehow, became convinced, three years later, that cavitational surgery (removal of infected matter) is not necessary, and hired Florida attorney, Francis R. DeLuca to sue Dr. Phillips. The suit went nowhere – and DeLuca filed a complaint with the Florida Dental Board.
And, here we are…
THE ESTABLISHMENT STRATEGY…
You already know, from reading the above, that the Florida Dental Board has no interest in reality. But, even considering that – the story gets better.
Unbelievably, the Prosecutor in the case, apparently believing that West Palm Beach, Florida had somehow, overnight, become part of the old Soviet Russian legal system, MOVED TO EXCLUDE ALL DEFENSE WITNESSES… The judge was not amused, and the motion failed.
Then the Prosecutor began her case with her “star witness,” a dentist in the Florida prison system. It went further downhill from there…
The prosecution’s case is a joke. But, not a funny one.
THE COUNTER-ATTACK…
Phillip’s Attorney, a well-known South Florida litigator, took an entirely different approach in the courtroom. He decided to use a strategy apparently unfamiliar to the State attorney – facts, “real” expert witnesses, and the truth. The judge has already begun watching videotapes of Phillip’s star witnesses.
Defense arguments begin Monday, January 22, 2001 in the old courthouse in West Palm Beach. 9:00 AM.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
The Administrative Law Judge then recesses the hearing, makes a “recommended decision” to the Florida Dental Board, who then makes the final decision. Phillip’s team believes that, no matter what the facts are, the Florida Dental board will NOT rule in
Phillip’s favor.
They plan to win on appeal…
Tim Bolen
JuriMed – Public Relations and Research Group
jurimed@yahoo.com