PENNSYLVANIA - FRACKING corrupt state authorities use court to gag doctor from warning public about fracking health risks

Sent: Friday, November 1, 2013 1:37 PM
Subject: PENNSYLVANIA - FRACKING corrupt state authorities use court to gag doctor from warning public about fracking health risks

Home / Breaking News / Judge defeats challenge to ‘medical gag order’ on
health risks from fracking




Judge defeats challenge to ‘medical gag order’ on health risks from fracking

Posted by: Contributing Author in Breaking News 19 hours ago 3 Comments


maybe the ACLU could challenge this outrageous abuse of doctors' civil
and professional rights . . . . ?

http://rinf.com/alt-news/breaking-news/judge-defeats-challenge-to-medical-gag-order-on-health-risks-from-fracking/



Pennsylvania authorities have denied a doctor the right to challenge a
so-called “medical gag rule” that prevents him and other physicians from
warning the public about the health dangers associated with fracking.

Dr. Alfonso Rodriguez of Dallas, Pennsylvania filed a lawsuit against
the state last year, asserting that Act 13 of 2012 forces medical
professionals to enter “a vague confidentiality agreement” that prevents
them from having a completely honest dialogue with patients.

Hydraulic fracking involves drilling through underground shale rock with
the help of chemicals – many of them toxic – to release natural gas.
Earlier this month, a research team out of Duke University examined
Pennsylvania wastewater and found what they described as “alarmingly”
high levels of radioactivity, salts, metals, and other potentially
harmful sediments.

Yet the “medical gag rule” forbids doctors like Rodriguez from going
into depth about the health problems that chemicals from fracking can
cause. Critics have said the bill’s passage, and the court’s refusal to
grant Dr. Rodriguez the right to speak freely with his patients, is an
indication of just how entrenched the oil and gas lobby is in state
politics.

Rodriguez specializes in renal diseases, hypertension, and advanced
diabetes. He “has recently treated patients directly exposed to
high-volume hydraulic fracturing fluid as the result of well blowouts,”
including a patient “with a complicated diagnosis with low platelets,
anemia, rash and acute renal failure that required extensive
hemodialysis and exposure to chemotherapeutic agents,” the complaint
stated, as quoted by Courthouse News.

For fulfilling his true responsibility as a doctor, though, Rodriguez
allegedly risks violating the American Medical Association’s Principles
of Medical Ethics, an infraction that could cost him his medical license.



That may well happen, because the state requires professional healthcare
providers “to enter into, upon request by gas drilling company or
vendor, a vague confidentiality agreement to maintain the specific
identity any amount of any chemicals claimed to be a trade secret by a
gas drilling company and/or its vendor as a condition precedent to
receiving such information deemed unnecessary to provide competent
medical treatment to plaintiff’s patient,” according to the complaint.

Despite Rodriguez’s complaint that the provision is a violation of his
First and 14th Amendment rights, and multiple briefs filed by medical
associations on his behalf, a federal judge dismissed the suit upon
deciding the issue was “too conjectural” to stand.

“Although plaintiff alleges that he requires the kind of information
contemplated under the act for the treatment of his patients, he does
not allege that he has been in a situation where he needed or attempted
to obtain such information, despite the fact that he alleges that he has
treated patients injured by hydraulic fracturing fluid in the past,”
wrote Judge A. Richard Caputo. “Similarly, plaintiff does not allege
that he has been in a position where he was required to agree to any
sort of confidentiality agreement under the act.”

The decision goes on to state that any attempt Rodriguez made to notify
his patients of Act 13′s impact were “merely a prophylactic measure to
ease his fears of potential future harm.”