Imagine knowing better and choosing not to do better. A doctor with his own family practice in Oregon was charged with spreading misinformation about the coronavirus, including telling patients that masks caused carbon dioxide poisoning and instructing patients to remove them, Newsweek reports.
The Oregon Medical Board issued a final order on September 2 against the physician, Steven Arthur LaTulippe, for “dishonorable or unprofessional conduct; repeated negligence in the practice of medicine; and gross negligence in the practice of medicine.” He was also fined $10,000.
LaTulippe’s license was first suspended last December and then upheld after the board found his practice operated in a way that it constituted an “immediate danger” to the public and presented a “serious danger” to public health and safety, Newsweek states.
His public exhortations against mask mandates possibly raised his profile, and clearly not in a good way. As Newsweek noted, LaTulippe was recorded dismissing the importance of masks in a speech at a “Stop the Steal” rally in Salem on November 7, which backed Donald Trump‘s false claims that the 2020 election was rigged.”
“I hate to tell you this, I might scare you, but I and my staff, none of us, once wore a mask in my clinic,” he told the crowd, reported The Huffington Post. “And how many problems did we have in our clinic from that? Zero.”
With his license revoked, that good luck seems to have run out.
