Man loses license after telling doctors he drinks

My title pretty much states my opinion.

For those not familiar - Hippocratic Oath -- Modern Version

The doctor chose not to break the law - it is not his fault that this is the requirement of the law in his state. And in several other states. And in the rest of the states, which do not have similar laws, doctors may voluntarily submit the same kind of information.

The guy is downing a 6 pack a day (or was). Even if he has been clean so far, I think it's best not to risk that record on the road. I'm not saying he should have his license removed - I am saying he needs to stop drinking so much. Hopefully he'll stop altogether, and the whole situation will be resolved.

However, the doctor did take the appropriate (and legal) course of action.

Drinking is not a medical impairment, Kambic. Drinking 6+ beers a day in no way implies that he drinks and drives, either. What he did, according to the info provided, is not in any way illegal, and removing his license on the basis that he drinks daily is patently ridiculous.

By that logic Kambic, I should have my license removed as well.

Don't drink a 6-pack a night, but I do imbibe about 5 of 6 shots of rum every night. Many people drink well more than myself or this guy.

I do however have a strict 'No Driving' rule that I never compromise.

It's not the state's job or right to intrude in this manner and they are infact, demanding, that their state certified physicians violate the hippocratic oath.

That's not right.

Err so if a doctors notices abuse on a small child then he should just look the other way because of his "oath"?


Although this case sounds fishy to me, It may have been the doctors opinion that this particular persona had a drinking problem. Not just drank beer at night, but a drinking problem. I assume we can all aknowledge that people do in fact sometimes have drinking problems. And I am sure that is what this law was designed around. To staop the person with a drinking Problem from harming himself or others..

When I was a kid growing up in Cleveland, lot of my friends dads and some of my relative worked in steel and aluminum mills. They would get out of work, cross the street to the bar and get plastered. Then they would take a taxi or bus home. Should they have then not been able to drive on the weekends because of no license?
Same gos for this guy, he had a prior 23 yrs back, but not a problem since. A sixpack is nothing for him to down after work. Most serious alchoholics who still drink beer go through most of a case with shots on the side. I think the doctor jumped the gun on this one.

By the way Gnomish, that link your provided doesnt have a lot of positives to say about the oath..



in close to 10% of the oaths out there they still swear to not provide abortion means..

6 beers spaced out throughout a day isn't enough to inebriate any average man. Of course, anyone who says they drink 6 a day probably drinks 10, so I would think there has to be more to this story.

-applies to-

That is totally different than...

It's not just some "oath", as you said Aidden. It's the guidelines for being a decent physician, they existed and still exist for a reason. Some people take being oathsworn seriously. As an aside since it's not really the point here...it's mainly an invasion of privacy.

By the way, the link was provided for a copy of the modern hippocratic oath, not NOVA's slanted opinions of it.

As a future physician it's a matter that's important to me. If doctors don't have trust, what do you have?

EDIT: Grammar!

Aidden, I'm not sure if you know this, but it's off limits for a psychologist or psychiatrist to divulge any information about his or her patients unless the patient is threatening to hurt him/herself or someone else.

The same rule should apply to doctors, if not by law, at least by ethics.

and according to the link you provided, there are about 400 different variants of the oath around the nation and the world..

Some of them clearly state, still , to this day that they will not provide a means of abortion for women, or reference god in the oath.. My point being which oath did he take? do you know?

I really wanted to stay out of this one.

Wouldn't that also pertain to the general safety of the public at large? You don't let a plague patient walk out the front door, why would you let someone with a probable potential to injure others driving impaired?

I think the ridiculous law is more questionable than the doctor's adherence to the law.

If he gets up, goes to work, comes home, throws back 6 of your average "sex in a canoe," goes to bed, rinses, repeats, wipes hands on pants then his ability to drive is going to be affected next to nil. Hell, even if he's throwing back a six pack of Spaten Optimator before going to bed, his driving isn't going to be affected. His liver on the other hand...

If we're strictly limiting ourselves to the confines of the article, the doctor and the state were out of line. Six 12oz beers a day is not a lot. It's more than average, but the worst classification you could give this guy is functional alcoholic. However, in my personal opinion, labeling this guy any kind of 'alcoholic' is a serious overstatement because he has the ability to say no. This is proven by his self-imposed limitation to weekends only.

/mmm Spaten Optimator

So someone who habitually binge drinks on the weekends only and never during the work weeks cant be an alcholic?

I may be missing something, but it's not the doctor with whom I'd be angry, if anything it'd be the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation for forcing doctors to report the statements. I'd be very surprised if the DOT revoked his license based on a single doctor's report though; more likely the doctor's report, combined with a history of being pulled over for drunk driving would get a license revocation. One can also argue that drinking and driving is a threat to both himself and others, so in informing the DOT he is protecting the public from his patient.

You might want to check out the DUI laws up here in British Columbia; we don't worry about getting doctors to fink on patients, we just suspend licenses if you get too many 24 hour prohibs (an officer can write up a 24 hour prohib on the spot if he suspects you're under the influence - no breathalyzer needed). If you take a breathalyzer and fail, or refuse to blow at all, you can be given a 90 day suspension (that's usually when they check your driving history to decide whether or not you should get a 90 day suspension). If you get caught driving during the 90 day suspension, you tack on a one year driving prohibition to the end of it.

I never said the words "habitual" or "binge." That's a whole different ball of wax. If he's made the conscience decision that he wants to drink and acts on that decision, no he shouldn't be called an alcoholic regardless of how much he drinks so long as his decision to continue drinking is an active choice and not because of an inability to stop once he has started. If he tries not to drink and his will breaks and he does it anyway, then yes he has a substance abuse problem. Likewise, if he makes the conscience decision that he'd like to have a drink or two but ends up having eight or nine because he can't stop once he's started, then yes he has a substance abuse problem.

Yes, it's a fine line and, unfortunately, one that most people can't even see. They like to throw the words "alcoholic" "habitual" and "binge" around when all they are really trying to say is, "that person drinks more than I do." It's comparable to the liberal use of "whore" "nympho" or "slut" when describing a person who makes a conscience, non-compulsive choice to engage in sex more frequently than the person spewing the insult.

They all include respecting the privacy of your patients. It's a core principle of the oath itself and it's what I'm focusing on. The abortion reference is irrelevant in the scope of the current discussion.

For reference the original oath, translated from the original Greek texts, on the same page.

Also wanted to address the following:

The only 'history' this guy had happened 23 years ago.

EDIT: Missed this but re-read.

Heh, they sound like a slap on the wrist. Here in Florida, you get a DUI and BAM it's a $500-1000+ fine, the night in jail and up to 6 months and suspended license for 6 months to a year. You also get to have lovely pop-quiz meetings at all hours of day with your Probation Officer for a year after. It only gets steeply worse from there.

Don't blow at all? Congratulations, the officer just got a heaad start on his paperwork. You earn the night in jail, instantly suspended license for a year and probation. Don't blow a second time in your life? It's now a misdemeanor and you should expect to spend up to a year in jail.

Wraine you make a good point, but blindly defending the guy because you may drink as much as him or more is just as silly, and also doesn't preclude him from being an alcoholic either..


The point is there is oboviously more to the story than meets the eye and
the doctor was required by law to report him.

The situation may indeed suck, but the target should be the law then, not someone following the law..

It would have been a liability on the doctor's part not to report him. Come six months down the road, say the guy's will breaks and he downs a few, and hits the road. Nails a car with a mom and her three kids at night, no headlights.

If that doctor knew he was drinking, big trouble for him.

The oath is great, and I like the idea that the tradition still stands, but there is a reason for the law. And in court, the law is going to be a lot more important than the oath.

The law is what I've been talking about the whole time. The law is what made him have to break the oath. The law is what forced this doctor to invade this man's right to privacy and report him to the Department of Transportation.

>>If doctors don't have trust, what do you have?

"Trust" my ass. If a patient's doing something dangerous, to himself or to anyone else, or even if the doctor just thinks there might be some sort of small, vague possibility he'd do something dangerous, how is doing anything but contacting the authorities the correct action? You're putting the comfort of one party ahead of potential disasters that could obliterate lives. My sister was 18 when she OD'd on heroin and died on the couch behind me, despite more than one doctor being fully aware that she was using. They could've let us known, but did they? No, they didn't tell anyone "because she was legally an adult and had the right to her own privacy." Fat lot that privacy did her, huh? Well, it wouldn't have done this guy much either, if he'd killed himself or others while behind a wheel.

Apples and Oranges Boot Disk and you know it.

EDIT of the EDIT: Screw it, I wrote up a bunch of stuff pertaining to the absurd lack of correlation between this scenario and Boot Disk's situation but it was increasingly venomous and really didn't need to be here.

In short, things like that happen all the time. If the abuser doesn't commit themselves to a doctor's care. He can't FORCE them to do anything. That...is law.

Edit after the EDIT of the EDIT:: It's 8:45. Time for a little drop of the craythor if you follow?

Heh, make no mistake. That guy drinks a crap ton more than I do. I couldn't function if I drank 6 a day. Not to mention the fact that I would feel like total crap all the time if I did. Counting the excesses of vacations weekend trips and parties, I'd say my average is around 7.5 20oz beers a week. Without counting those excesses, it's more like 4. (20oz is the size of the mug at the bar I frequent)

Keep in mind that I did preclude my entire stance with the phrase, "If we're strictly limiting ourselves to the confines of the article." There may indeed be more going on here than the article states, however the article goes through great pains to show the contrary. I agree that this law is the real issue here, and while I feel the doctor's sense of obligation or of the relevance of this law to this particular person's situation is misguided (again based solely on the content of the article,) he's not really at fault. Blame it on the libertarian in me, but so long as this guy isn't drinking and driving, I really don't feel that it's our, his doctor's, or the state's business to preclude him from driving based upon the fact that he used to drink 6 a day.

Boot, while that's a terribly tragic story and I truly sympathize with the loss to your family, that really doesn't have any bearing on the situation in this article. Heroin is currently considered an illegal narcotic. It's sources and purity can rarely, if ever, be trusted. And though I don't want to make any presumptions about the situation, I would tend to believe that someone who imbibes enough of something to OD crossed the line of substance abuse well before. I'm not trying to insult you or stir you up, because I realize what kind of emotion that the loss of a sibling can cause. I just see the two cases as completely separate with vastly different defining points.

That's a very complex, multifacted combination of potential events. Needs to be broken down a bit.

- "If a patient's doing something dangerous to himself"

Is it illegal? Is it self destructive to the point where it precludes him from functioning in society? If the answer to both of these questions is no, then likely the course of action depends heavily on your political philosophy.

- "If a patient's doing something dangerous to anyone else"

Most likely the law is being broken in this case. If not, then it's most likely psychological abuse. Abuse is still abuse. Action should be pretty clear here.

- "even if the doctor just thinks there might be some sort of small, vague possibility he'd do something dangerous..."

Is he guilty before committing the crime? Is the doctor's speculation grounds to deny a person civil privileges? Is it a governmental responsibility to babysit citizens and provide them a safe, padded world to live in and tell them what they can and can't handle down to this level of detail and beyond? (Good god, what I would give for the answer to this last question to be universally "no" but alas...)

My opinion is that drinking six beers a day really does not mean that you are driving drunk OR that you have a greater likelihood of driving drunk - and that PennDOT has got to have a rod shoved sideways up their ass for even coming up with this sort of ridiculous legislation.

Rhetorical example:

I go home, fix dinner, play some video games, while consuming a bottle of wine (let's say this bottle contains six 8 oz. glasses - about the same amount of alcohol a six pack of 12 oz. beers.) over the course of those 4 hours, before going to bed. I then sleep 8 hours. The alcohol has had 8- 12 hours to get filtered by my liver and I'm not at all impaired when I get up, nor do I imbibe any alcohol in the morning before I get in my car to drive to work.

I go in for my regular checkup with a new doctor, and this doctor asks me if I drink and smoke. I am truthful and tell him that I drink a bottle of wine a day, and smoke half a pack of cigarettes.

This doctor, by law, is required to tell the state transportation agency about patients with 'excessive drinking' habits - and the DOT defines 'excessive drinking' as habitually drinking more than two 8 oz. glasses of wine in a 24 hour period.

Therefore, I'm a DUI risk and my license gets suspended, leaving me without a way to get to work, even though I've never had a prior DUI, and have actually never gotten behind the wheel of a car even after having only one drink???

Pretty damned ridiculous, IMO.