Pennsylvania authorities have denied a doctor the right to challenge a so-called \u201cmedical gag rule\u201d that prevents him and other physicians from warning the public about the health dangers associated with fracking.<\/p>\n
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 \u201ca vague confidentiality agreement\u201d that prevents them from having a completely honest dialogue with patients.<\/p>\n
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 \u201calarmingly\u201d high levels of radioactivity, salts, metals, and other potentially harmful sediments.<\/p>\n
Yet the \u201cmedical gag rule<\/em>\u201d forbids doctors like Rodriguez from going into depth about the health problems that chemicals from fracking can cause. Critics have said the bill\u2019s passage, and the court\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n Rodriguez specializes in renal diseases, hypertension, and advanced diabetes. He \u201chas recently treated patients directly exposed to high-volume hydraulic fracturing fluid as the result of well blowouts<\/em>,\u201d including a patient \u201cwith a complicated diagnosis with low platelets, anemia, rash and acute renal failure that required extensive hemodialysis and exposure to chemotherapeutic agents<\/em>,\u201d the complaint stated, as quoted by Courthouse News.<\/p>\n For fulfilling his true responsibility as a doctor, though, Rodriguez allegedly risks violating the American Medical Association\u2019s Principles of Medical Ethics, an infraction that could cost him his medical license.<\/p>\n That may well happen, because the state requires professional healthcare providers \u201cto 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\u2019s patient<\/em>,\u201d according to the complaint.<\/p>\n Despite Rodriguez\u2019s 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 \u201ctoo conjectural<\/em>\u201d to stand.<\/p>\n \u201cAlthough 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<\/em>,\u201d wrote Judge A. Richard Caputo. \u201cSimilarly, 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<\/em>.”<\/p>\n The decision goes on to state that any attempt Rodriguez made to notify his patients of Act 13\u2019s impact were \u201cmerely a prophylactic measure to ease his fears of potential future harm<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Pennsylvania authorities have denied a doctor the right to challenge a so-called \u201cmedical gag rule\u201d 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3695,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[97,104],"tags":[161,523,524,157,166,141,1221],"class_list":["post-3694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-democracy","category-featured","tag-biology","tag-clashes","tag-corruption","tag-court","tag-law","tag-politics","tag-usa"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/15.si_.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2SfUR-XA","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3694"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3696,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3694\/revisions\/3696"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}