Telemedicine prosecution may lead into new legal territory.
The San Francisco Chronicle (12/29, Egelko) reported, “In August 2005, John McKay, a 19-year-old Stanford student and former high school debate champion, committed suicide by rolling up the windows in a car at his mother’s Menlo Park home and piping in exhaust fumes” and “in the next few weeks, a Colorado doctor who had prescribed a generic form of Prozac for McKay after receiving his request over the Internet, without ever seeing or examining him, will go on trial in Redwood City on possibly precedent-setting charges of practicing medicine in California without a license.” The teen’s “parents settled their suits against the pharmacy and JRB and dropped their suit against Hageseth, who surrendered his Colorado medical license after coming under investigation in the youth’s suicide.” However, “in contrast to the civil suit, which would have required the parents to prove that Hageseth’s actions contributed to their son’s death, San Mateo County prosecutors must show only that he practiced medicine in California without a license.”

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