A thought just occurred to me a few minutes after I woke up.

Would an employee take this crap in the private sector? Would his union?

Consider a run-of-the-mill complaint about an employee in the private sector from a customer or from another employee. There would be mediation, Laws and contract clauses would be cited, due process and so forth, corrections and/or sanctions would be applied. To the satisfaction of all involved.

Now think of the various professional associations as unions. When did a union ever go after one of its members like this for any reason? There's a thing with unions we don't find in professional associations - competition from other unions. There's only one PA for docs. This competition means trying to provide better - not worse - service to its members. Competition means a protocol of inclusion, not of exclusion. It means standards for all members regardless of various specifics like skin color for example. See where I'm going with this? Well, let me be crystal clear.

The only solution here is to allow competition for professional associations. This way, the really bad apples won't get members. I mean, if I was a doc and I had a choice, I certainly wouldn't choose an association that persecutes its members, would I now.

Ah, but a professional association isn't a union, it's a ruling body that self-regulates the profession. Ya, that's a problem, there's no way to ensure a neutral outcome because there's only one entity deciding anything. No oversight. So the second part of this solution is to establish an independent ruling body without a horse in the race. This ruling body cannot be a professional association, is what I'm saying.

But then we're left with customers - patients in this case - without any solid means for reparations as the case may be. The professional association advocates exclusively for its members, just like any other union. The ruling body is neutral, no soup for patients. So the final part of this solution is to establish a patient advocacy group, but instead of being monolithic like it is now with PA's, make it like unions so that patients also have a choice, just like docs would have a choice. Here, competition means patients get the best too. Oh but we already have this - lawyers. Ya, like that's going to do any good for Noakes (and Fettke and all the others would are also persecuted) - and his patients which likely genuinely benefit from Naokes' own professional misconduct.

Imagine, a low-carb doctors professional association that acts independently from the industry-driven BS we have now.