DOC IN DISGRACE

Brilliant physician hires call girl. Things go downhill from there.
They play doctor, and then some, for six months. He gives her narcotics.

He hires her as his assistant at St. Joseph's Hospital in London,
Ont., where he is a respected rheumatologist, epidemiologist and
professor of internal medicine.

Then he posts photos of their trysts on the Web. Spiced up even more
by porn tales penned by him.

He does this FROM A HOSPITAL COMPUTER!

Not so brilliant, for a guy listed as Dr. Kevin Patrick White, MD, BA
Chem, PhD, FRCPC, IntMed, Rheum, in the 2004 Canadian Medical Directory.

Saucy photos are not his only contribution to the Internet.

White, 45, has authored many papers, taught many classes, given many
speeches, broken much ground in rheumatology, especially in the study
of chronic pain, fibromyalgia.

He does not look like a giant of medicine, hunkered beside his lawyer
in a hearing room at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario.

Ichabod Crane, more like. Mousy. Spectacled. Balding from the front,
hair swept forward at the sides.

He wears earthy tweed with elbow patches, over a drab olive sweater,
white collar, brown pants and black loafers.

The college wants to add DDU to his resume: Disgraceful,
Dishonourable, Unprofessional. It also accuses him of incompetence. He
pleads guilty.

A panel is deciding, at its College St. digs, whether to pull his
licence or let him keep it with conditions.

He has been suspended since March, when his hospital discovered
uploads and downloads that are not, strictly speaking, medical.

The college hearing identifies the hooker/patient/employee only as
Patient A.

An agreed statement of facts says she and the doc conducted business
"on numerous occasions" from August 2001, when he phoned her escort
agency, to January 2002.

Several times White took photos of Patient A performing fellatio on
him.

She agreed, on the condition they not show her face.

How either thought that was positionally possible is not
explained.

Sure enough, Patient A was front and centre. The photos and stories
were "sexually graphic and degrading" to her.

In January 2002, White hired Patient A to assist him at the hospital.
The agreed statement does not describe her duties.

He began writing prescriptions for her in December
2001.

Between September 2002, and February 2004, he gave her narcotics,
knowing she was severely hooked on opiates.

"In this way, Dr. White enabled the patient's addiction to continue
longer than it might have under professional guidance." White has no
training in addiction medicine.

He wrote only five clinical notes about Patient A, though he saw her
at least twice a week. But from Dec. 7, 2002, to May 17, 2003, he
billed OHIP for 140 services on her totalling $4,687.45.

Even after -- until last February -- he prescribed opiates for Patient
A and visited her home three times a day to shoot her up with Lorazepam.

By now you are wondering: Why? What drove an admired professor and
physician down this sordid path?

Well, White has an explanation. It is a doozy.

It belies his resume. "It's absolutely at the far end of the
brilliance of this man," says his lawyer, David Little.

"You will not believe his story," says Little, without
irony.

He hints at dark secrets in White's family history.

It is "incredible." It is "sad."

Then White takes the stand and tells it. And his lawyer is right.
Incredible and sad.

But I cannot tell you what White said. Not yet.

The college slaps a ban on his testimony. It buys Little's argument
that what White says might jeopardize the disgraced doc's own rights
and privacy as a patient.

"The absolutely unacceptable behaviour of White is not anything other
than a disease," says Little, and White is "in treatment" for it.

"The play-by-play stuff is sensationalism at best." At worst, it might
keep White from a cure, says Little.

Dunno. There is the small matter of the public's right to know what
our docs are up to.

Today college prosecutor Carolyn Silver is to finish cross-examining
White. The panel will decide whether to lift the ban, or parts of it,
and I can tell you what's underneath.

Better have your meds handy.