DUI doctor plays fast and loose with facts

The Doctor of the Day turned out to be the Quack of the Year.

In North Carolina, physicians volunteer to serve as Doctor of the Day at the state legislature in Raleigh. On July 17, the aptly named Dr. Robert G. Crummie seized the opportunity to hand out more than aspirin.

He distributed free copies of his book, “Dr. Bob’s Grocery Store Medicine and Healthy Life Anecdotes.” The Charlotte Observer reported that the book’s 232 pages reveal Dr. Bob has a number of exotic opinions, like lobotomies should be performed more often and schizophrenia is linked to maternal rejection.

Those weren’t the best bits, however. The good doctor offered even keener insights on the subject of homosexuality.

“There is no such thing as a homosexual. The Gay Movement is a hoax,” Crummie wrote.

Wow. I don’t exist and I’m part of a hoax. Pardon me while I slide into the mother of all existential crises.

Crummie added, “Individuals who act out homosexually are at best very neurotic and at worst psychotic. Most of them are character disorders.”

So the best I can hope for is that I’m just deeply neurotic. Not the most inspiring of goals.

Crummie recounted how, as superintendent of a North Carolina prison, he threatened electric shock therapy for anyone caught engaging in homosexuality. In the presence of several inmates, he demonstrated the procedure on a severely depressed prisoner.

That put a stop to the gay goings-on, and ranks, Crummie said, as “one of my funniest stories.”

He’s a stitch, all right.

Crummie, 69, from the town of Rutherford-ton, wrote that his advice was “based on 37 years of medical practice.” His specialty is listed as psychiatry, but according to the records of the North Carolina Medical Board, he isn’t board-certified. There’s a shocker.

He declined an interview request from The Charlotte Observer, saying he didn’t want to become involved in controversy.

The man authors a book peppered with controversial or ludicrous notions, and hands it out to state legislators although participants in the Doctor of the Day program are instructed not to lobby or behave politically. Now he doesn’t want controversy?

Doctor Bob, take two reality pills with each meal, and a teaspoon of common sense before bed.

Presently controversy has him firmly in its grasp, though not for any of the reasons above.

It turns out that, two months before the doctor took his star turn in the legislative building, the state medical board brought charges against him. Dr. Bob likes his booze.

In its affidavit, the board said he was arrested for driving while under the influence in 1997, 2006 and 2007.

Crummie told a board investigator that he’s modified his drinking in response to tougher DWI laws. But for those laws, “he would have a bar in his office and have a drink at the end of the day and a drink in his hand on his drive home.”

The board averred, “Dr. Crummie’s abuse of alcohol constitutes Dr. Crummie being unable to practice medicine with reasonable skill and safety to patients.” His hearing is imminent; the board could limit or revoke his medical license.

We just have to live with the fact that he doesn’t need a license to spread manure.

Leslie Robinson lives in Seattle. E-mail her at LesRobinsn@aol.com, and read other columns at www.GeneralGayety.com.