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Doctor May Lose Idaho License: Hearings Officer Issues Stern Report on Endocrinologist Tarek Haw

Posted on: Wednesday, 12 April 2006, 12:00 CDT

By Jonel Aleccia, The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Wash.

Apr. 12--It's been a year since Dr. Tarek Haw last injected Ed Whidden with massive doses of testosterone, but the Coeur d'Alene man said he's still coping with the aftermath.

The powerful hormone was supposed to correct a testosterone deficiency sparked by surgery. Instead, it propelled Whidden into a second puberty, complete with severe acne and wild mood swings that the 39-year-old said cost him his marriage.

"I was real temperamental, short-fused â€" things I've never been in my entire life," Whidden said Tuesday. "I don't think he should be practicing medicine anywhere â€" not in this country anyway."

This week, a hearings officer commissioned by the state Board of Medicine all but agreed with Whidden.

Officer Kenneth L. Mallea found that 21 violations involving patients of the former Coeur d'Alene doctor contain enough evidence to warrant discipline that could include revocation of Haw's medical license and his privilege to practice in Idaho.

Complaints had ranged from improper prescriptions and fraudulent insurance billings to unnecessary breast exams and rough pelvic exams, including at least one performed without gloves.

"The evidence and testimony in this case demonstrate repeated violations by Respondent of the applicable community standard of care, repeated abandonment of patients, repeated fraudulent and abusive insurance practices and consistent abuse and violations of patients' trust," Mallea wrote in public documents released Tuesday.

Members of the Idaho Board of Medicine will meet May 12 to consider final action, said Nancy Kerr, the board's executive director.

The move could mark the end of the Idaho career for the doctor who abruptly closed his Coeur d'Alene practice last fall. Haw's medical license was restricted in June 2002, denied in 2003 and then later reinstated that year. It expires in June, but formal revocation would warn others in the future, Kerr said.

Mallea's opinion followed a February hearing that neither Haw nor his attorneys attended. Officials indicated that Haw may have returned to Egypt, where he graduated from a Cairo medical school in 1968.

The hearings officer found that all but one of the 21 complaints had enough evidence to support a violation of standards or laws. Whidden's case was the only instance in which the doctor's conduct did not violate a community standard of care. Even then, however, the doctor who reviewed the case indicated that neither she nor other endocrinologists would have initially administered such a large dose of testosterone â€" 400 milligrams twice a week â€" to the patient.

Whidden identified himself as a patient of Haw's after reading about the doctor in the newspaper. Whidden said he developed hypogonadism â€" a condition characterized by markedly low testosterone â€" after several back surgeries. When he stopped growing a beard and developed other alarming symptoms, Whidden sought medical help.

"Dr. Haw was the only endocrine doctor in town," he explained.

The treatment, however, was arguably worse than the disease. Whidden and his ex-wife had intended to have a baby, but the testosterone injections interfered. "Having so much testosterone in your body, your testicles just shrivel up," he said. "Your body actually quits making it."

Now Whidden is under the care of another doctor who has prescribed a much lower dosage of testosterone administered in a cream, not via injections.

"I know it contributed to the end of my marriage," Whidden said. "He had a major impact on my life."

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Wash.

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Source: The Spokesman-Review

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