Johns Hopkins doc Jonathan Epstein bullied colleagues, exposing profession

The US medical profession has a real credibility problem — and doctors bear a huge share of the blame. 

Consider the latest news for the “bad physician” file, the sobering tale of Dr. Jonathan Epstein, a leading pathologist at Johns Hopkins. 

The doc allegedly bullied his colleagues to deliver second opinions supporting diagnoses from his wife, also a pathologist.

These included, horrifically, a surgical bladder removal that may not even have been necessary. 

Epstein was put on administrative leave in May: Why is the public only finding out about this now?

Worse, neither Epstein nor his erstwhile employer has admitted that anything in the slightest could be wrong. 

So here we have Hopkins — the byword for medical excellence in America — engaged in a seeming cover-up of what looks like massive misconduct by one of its top physicians.

It’s part of a culture among the US medical elite where one hand washes the other.

And for what? Recent studies suggest that top-level institutions like Hopkins are not necessarily safer or better for surgical patients than lower-ranked ones. 

Consider, too, a damning paper by Post contributor and Hopkins prof and surgeon Marty Makary, collecting data that suggest medical error may be the No. 3 cause of death in America, right behind heart disease and cancer.

Makary’s numbers chalk up north of 250,000 deaths — not by any means all caused by bad individual doctors, but still massive evidence of systemic failures. 

Then there’s the great COVID debacle, which saw leading voices of medical authority prostitute themselves utterly for political gain — championing in the face of all data worse-than-the-disease interventions like toddler masking and lockdowns.

Anthony Fauci is the paradigmatic figure here, endlessly whipsawing his “scientific” views to best fit the politics of the moment, bullying the media to censor opposing views, nakedly lying about his own involvement in funding research that may have sparked the pandemic, and declaring with insane arrogance that criticizing him was the same as criticizing “science.”

Aside from the deaths and suffering, the profession’s problems cause serious second-order effects.

Among them is cratering public confidence in America’s public health officials. 

That’s to say nothing of what the opacity of health care systems is like around pricing, insurance coverage, and other key issues. 

Or the fact that medical schools are now publicly announcing the abandonment of admissions standards to facilitate their DEI goals. 

Doctors need to face some real public accountability — otherwise, they’re going to lose every shred of faith their patients hold in them.