National Post (National Edition)

Sports doctor rapped for his ‘dishonesty’

Ontario tribunal decides Galea can still practise

- TOM BLACKWELL National Post tblackwell@nationalpo­st.com Twitter.com/Tomblackwe­llNP

A Toronto doctor who treated a who’s who of U.S. profession­al athletes — and at one point was wrongly linked to sports doping — will not lose his right to practice medicine after all.

An Ontario medical tribunal handed Anthony Galea a nine-month suspension Wednesday, saying that though he had shown “fundamenta­l dishonesty” by spiriting unapproved drugs into the United States a decade ago, he had voiced sincere contrition ever since.

He was also ordered to pay $21,000 in legal costs and will be officially reprimande­d.

A lawyer for the College of Physicians and Surgeons had asked that Galea’s medical license be taken away, potentiall­y ending the sports doctor’s career — a rebuke the college’s discipline committee concluded would be too severe.

“The quality of Dr. Galea’s clinical care was not in question or at issue. The central issue is that Dr. Galea’s conduct displayed fundamenta­l dishonesty, which is a serious concern,” the panel said in a 33-page ruling. “The committee believes that he is genuinely remorseful and it is unlikely that he will reengage in such misconduct.”

Still, the penalty was considerab­ly stiffer than what Galea’s lawyer, Brian Greenspan, had urged. He recommende­d that his client be reprimande­d, barred from taking on new patients for three months and required to donate his fees from existing patients to charity for up to six months.

Neither Galea nor Greenspan could be reached for comment Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the belated profession­al penalty raises questions about the speed of the college’s discipline process. The ruling comes more than six years after a U.S. Federal Court found Galea guilty of taking “mislabelle­d drugs” across the border and lying about it, and sentenced him to a form of probation.

American media initially raised the possibilit­y that the Canadian was administer­ing performanc­e-enhancing drugs, a potentiall­y huge scandal given that his patients included golf’s Tiger Woods, baseball great Alex Rodriguez and Jamal Lewis of the National Football League.

But evidence revealed he was simply treating the athletes’ injuries albeit via medically controvers­ial means — a skill for which he became celebrated in the sports world.

The case began in 2009 when Galea’s assistant was stopped at the border as she tried to take drugs and equipment into the U.S., offering the lie that the medicines were intended for presentati­ons at a conference.

In fact, the drugs and other substances were used to treat injuries, work that over a two-year period earned Galea $800,000 in the States, though he was not licensed to practice there.

One of the substances was a form of human-growth hormone — banned by most profession­al sports leagues as a potential performanc­e booster — but the doctor diluted it to minute volumes in homeopathi­c solutions. (Most medical scientists have a different kind of criticism of homeopathi­c concoction­s: that they are ineffectiv­e.)

Galea pleaded guilty to misconduct before the college committee last October, and had a penalty hearing in July that included testimony by him and several character witnesses, mostly current or former patients.

The discipline committee found Galea had “reaped significan­t profits” on his 70 trips to the U.S., and said it was appalled that he led his young assistant into a predicamen­t that left her with a U.S. criminal conviction.

“When she was arrested, Dr. Galea demonstrat­ed callous disregard for her situation in not acting to make any immediate plans for his employee to be returned to Canada,” the panel said.

But the committee also suggested he seemed genuinely ashamed by what he had done and had tried to make amends in the years since. An Ontario medical tribunal handed sports doctor Anthony Galea a nine-month suspension Wednesday and ordered him to pay $21,000 in legal costs.

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