CDHC = Consumer Driven Health Care or the ability to choose doctors and hospitals based on their track record and their price. This would put the incentive on the health care system to keep you healthy rather than to keep you sick as it exists today. ------------------------------------------ Web attack on surgeon starts battle Published 12:00 am PST Thursday, February 8, 2007
Georgette Gilbert was at a low point in her life. At 33 and having recently broken up with a long-time boyfriend, she was feeling insecure about being single and looking older. At least that's how the Sacramento-area woman describes her motives for undergoing facial plastic surgery on her Web site, www.mysurgerynightmare.com. Dr. Jonathan Sykes, the UC Davis surgeon who performed the operation, believes that Gilbert's tale, as revealed online -- complete with before-and-after photographs -- is riddled with false and misleading statements and is defamatory. He filed a lawsuit to squelch Gilbert's online commentary. Four years, several court filings and a medical malpractice lawsuit later, Gilbert's Web site is still up and running. Sykes, an author and frequent television commentator on cosmetic surgery, remains unhappy. And the self-expression revolution that is the Internet is emerging as a potential public relations threat to similarly high-profile professionals. Late last month, a state appeals court sided with Gilbert on the defamation suit Sykes filed in an effort to shut down her Web site. The court said the Web site is protected free speech and that Sykes was fair game for public criticism because "he had placed himself in the spotlight on a topic of public interest." Sykes told The Bee that he has written more than 100 articles and book chapters on plastic surgery and annually gives more than 200 lectures on the topic around the United States and the world. The decision by the Sacramento-based 3rd District Court of Appeal may have ramifications for other kinds of professionals, some legal experts said. "The opinion is good protection for consumers who want to express opinions about services they receive, but professionals who promote themselves may have this burden if they think they have been defamed," said First Amendment attorney Charity Kenyon. Sykes' lawyer, Daniel L. Baxter, contends that doctors and other health care professionals will be left powerless to defend themselves, since they are bound by federal patient privacy laws. Gilbert's attorney, William L. Brelsford, would not allow Gilbert to speak to The Bee because of her malpractice lawsuit. On her Web site, Gilbert said she hadn't considered having plastic surgery until about three weeks before her appointment. "I really liked how I looked, but I started to notice small changes that probably no one else noticed," she writes. "I never wanted to change my looks (sic) I just wanted to maintain what I had longer." After consulting with Sykes, she said, she agreed to an operation in which the surgeon would lift her eyebrows (endoscopic brow lift), tighten the skin around her eyes (blepharoplasty), lift her cheeks and inject fat into her face to tighten skin and decrease wrinkles. According to court documents, Gilbert "was extremely unhappy with the results, asserting that she could not fully close her eyes, her eyebrows were higher than she expected, one eyebrow was higher than the other and she had a permanently 'surprised' look on her face." On her Web site, Gilbert posts before and after photographs of her face, the later one taken five months after the surgery. "I was told by my doctor that this was a good result -- that I looked better after his surgery -- what do you think?" she asks Web site visitors. Baxter contends that several statements and representations Gilbert made on the site were untrue or misleading, including her comment about the photographs. Gilbert calls her decision to undergo facial plastic surgery "the biggest regret of my life," stating that she "didn't need five procedures and I had no idea what I was really getting myself into." Baxter disputed the notion that Gilbert was an unwitting patient. In fact, he said, she "directed him to be very aggressive in carrying out the procedures." Sykes, who spoke to The Bee by telephone from his UC Davis office, would not comment specifically about Gilbert's case except to say that her Web site has tainted some patients' opinions of him. Speaking more generally, he said he never tells a patient what types of procedures to undergo, since cosmetic surgery is not a medical necessity. He added that he commonly talks patients out of surgery, particularly those he deems to be impossible to satisfy or those who are emotionally unstable. "They come to us with the complexity of issues, and our job is to ferret them out, to make sense of them and try to decide if we can please that patient," he said. "That is at least as challenging as the surgery itself." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Upgrade to Adobe ColdFusion MX7 Experience Flex 2 & MX7 integration & create powerful cross-platform RIAs http:http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;56760587;14748456;a?http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/flex2/?sdid=LVNU Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/message.cfm/messageid:227490 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.5
