Occupational licensing in the U.S.: the stifler of talent and innovation, the waste of human capital. The story of a Renaissance man whose knowledge and talent America rejected - likely, under the pressure of several special interest groups.

 

Meet Dr. Richard M. Fleming, MD, JD.

This handsome man, a Peter O'Toole look-alike (compare)

is actually also an actor.  

And a nuclear cardiologist, and an inventor and patent holder in important areas of medical diagnostics, and an ardent advocate of public health, this is his self-description on the professional LinkedIn profile.

He holds undergraduate university degrees in:

• biology;
• psychology and 
• science (physics);

and professional degrees in law and medicine.

He is also a man who is not allowed to practice in his profession, engage in his valuable scientific research that would have helped not just his locality, not just his state, not just this country, but very likely - the entire world.

Why?

According to documents I so far received and reviewed, not because he broke any laws - even though that is what he was made to plead to - but because he stepped on too many toes of two many financially and politically powerful and "connected" people.

Dr Fleming courageous exposure, using entirely legal means, of what he considered in good faith to be a powerful charlatan, and his going public in order to protect the public from that charlatan, led to

• his conviction on a coerced nolo contendere plea (under a hint that otherwise he will be sent to prison and his children will be abused while he was there) to a legal nonsense, to committing what was not a crime as a matter of federal rules and regulations, and to 
• stripping him of his medical license;
• preventing him from ever having a law license;
• denying him support as a scientist (based not only on the conviction, but apparently on the fact that diagnostic methods for treating heart disease and breast cancer may be much cheaper and easier than the medical establishment would have wanted it to be to gouge the American public).

You know what this man has gained out of all of this, in addition to poverty and humiliation.

He's got his children who he saved from abuse, paying his entire career, dreams and visions as a scientist as a price.

Meet Dr.  Richard M. Fleming - doctor, inventor, innovator, public health advocate, actor - the Renaissance man whose talents are rejected by American bureaucracy and against whom occupational licensing, the tool declared to be introduced to protect the American public, was used as a sword of retaliation, simply because he crossed too many of the "wrong" people.

A FATHER, with all capital letters.

The story of Dr. Fleming is so complex and so full of details requiring specialized knowledge that it took me a long time to go through all the materials in this case that were available to me and verify credibility of issues I am going to raise in description of Dr. Fleming's story.

Due to its complexity, I will have to present the story in not just one article, but in a series of articles, this one being just an introduction.

I am not naïve and I do realize that Dr Fleming may be a complex man and may have his own flaws, as all of us do, or that there are more undercurrents in his story than I could discern from research of open public records and interviews with some witnesses to what was happening to him.

And, people who, I believe, so far stopped his career as a doctor and scientist (and prevented his career as a lawyer, while he also holds a Juris Doctor degree), are so rich and so powerful that, I am sure, they tie their ends well.

What remained for me is to try to trace those ends, as a court of law does reviewing and judging based on circumstantial evidence, and there is a lot of both first hand and circumstantial evidence in this case pointing at certain individuals, businesses, institutions, public officials and industries that may have benefited from professional demise (or at least, forced hibernation) of Dr. Fleming.

I am starting to publish the story of Dr. Fleming along with the story of another whistleblower about what is wrong in our public health system - even though in an entirely different geographic locality and in an entirely different area of public health, treatment of people with developmental disabilities.

Yet, the bottom line in treatment of both whistleblowers - Dr Fleming of Missouri and Iowa where he held medical licenses and Jeffrey Monsour of New York - is the same: vicious, petty, unreasonable, stupid, vulgar, ruthless retaliation by those in power whom these men criticized and attempts to deny them their right to do what they do best and what they love to do - for the benefit of us, the people.

Stay tuned.