The Philadelphia Inquirer

SEPTEMBER 14, 2000 Thursday SFCITY EDITION

CHESCO DOCTOR’S LICENSE REVOKED PSYCHIATRIST BYRON S. BRAID INJECTED AN UNTESTED DRUG, AUTHORITIES SAID. HE STILL FACES SEX-ABUSE LAWSUITS.

BYLINE: Shankar Vedantam, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

SECTION: CITY & REGION; Pg. B01

LENGTH: 434 words

The Pennsylvania Board of Medicine has revoked the license of Chester County psychiatrist Byron S. Braid on the grounds that he injected patients with an unapproved drug and committed other violations of proper medical practice.
In a statement issued yesterday after a meeting in Erie, the board ordered Braid, who has addresses in Pocopson and Chadds Ford, to “cease and desist from the practice of medicine” and “not represent himself as a board licensee in any manner whatsoever.”
The board said Braid, 55, “presented a clear and immediate danger to the public health and safety.” The ruling was the result of a settlement reached Aug. 24 between lawyers for Braid and the state.
The ruling comes two months after the Bureau of Professional and Occupational Affairs suspended Braid’s license on the ground that he was recklessly injecting patients with dimercapto-propane sulfonate, a drug used to treat mercury toxicity, which the Food and Drug Administration has not tested for safety.
At the time, the state prosecuting attorney, Kathleen Ryan, said she planned to add sex-abuse charges against Braid, who has been the focus of complaints from several women patients.
Ryan said the state had received a number of complaints about Braid, with allegations including sexual abuse and improper use of the mercury-toxicity drug. She said the state began investigating the complaints two years ago.
In an interview in late July, she said that if Braid’s license was revoked on the ground that he misused the mercury-toxicity drug, she would not pursue the other allegations. Ryan was not available for comment yesterday. Braid’s lawyer did not return a call requesting comment.
Braid still faces several lawsuits in Chester County from women who allege that he sexually abused them during psychotherapy. Those allegations were the subject of an Inquirer article last week.
In the settlement statement issued yesterday by the state, Braid agreed that he did the following, which the board ruled were violations of proper practice:
He injected patients with the mercury-toxicity drug.
He injected patients with the anesthetic Procaine “in various parts of their bodies to treat such ailments as post-concussion, eye problems, and mild thyroid problems.”
He told a patient called C.W. that “fetal embryonic tissue could be brought into the United States” for treatment of that patient’s eye problems.
Between 1990 and 1999, the medical licenses of 100 doctors in Pennsylvania were revoked, including 17 last year.