Unless you get your news only from The Spokesman-Review or the Coeur d’Alene Press, you know the story of Dr. Farid Fata, the highly-respected and revered Michigan oncologist who late last week received a 45-year prison sentence for administering poison — cancer chemotherapy — to 550 “patients” who either didn’t need it at all or needed different and often less frequent dosages.   Some of his “patients” died because of Dr. Fata’s admitted lust for money and power.

Fata’s conduct was despicable, but he had help from fellow doctors and state regulators who knew in April 2010 that what Fata was doing was harmful to his “patients” but who consciously avoided doing their professional duty to expose and stop him.  Their failure of duty was almost as despicable as Fata’s greed for money and compulsion for power and acclaim.

Nurse Angela Swantek received little encouragement after her efforts in 2010 to expose Fata’s willfully administering treatments that harmed his victims.  But OpenCdA is completely unsurprised by the State of Michigan’s unwillingness to act.  Fata was a highly-respected oncologist who had trained at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.  Why would a state regulatory agency take the time to investigate the factually-supported allegations of a “justa” (as in, “She’s just a nurse”) over that of someone who was clearly her better, in this case, a medical doctor prominent in the community?

But it’s fair to ask:  If the state of Michigan’s investigatory department, now called the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA), had taken nurse Angela Swantek’s well-documented facts seriously in 2010, could the suffering and pain Fata inflicted directly on his “patients” and indirectly on their families have been stopped sooner?

OpenCdA hopes that during the inevitable civil lawsuits that will follow, the misconduct and clear failures of duty of other medical professionals and public officials will be fully and completely revealed.  Their actions and failures to act are almost as despicable as those of Dr. Farid Fata.