Brian Clement, head director of Florida Health Spa, has reportedly represented himself as a doctor and treated leukemia patient Makayla Sault and J.J., an unidentified 11 year old girl still fighting her disease. Sault attended the Hippocrates Health Institute where Clement treated her. Sault stopped chemotherapy after leaving McMaster Children’s Hospital in Hamilton in order to attend the Hippocrates Health Institute where she died last month as a result of a relapse. “We’ve had more people reverse cancer than any other institute in the history of healthcare,” Clement said to a group of potential customers. This led the Canadian mother of 11 year old Sault to believe Clement could save her daughter. Mother of J.J. also believed Clement could save her daughter and should abandon her daughter’s chemo, after hearing Clement tell her “Oh yes, no problem we can help her.”
Clement denied saying this to the parent. Ontario’s coroner’s office is concluding an investigation of documents collected by CBC News. According to the Florida Department of Health, the director of Hippocrates Health Institute treated the two children fighting leukemia with “unproven and possibly dangerous therapies.” Clement was fined and ordered to pay $3,738 for misrepresenting himself as a medical doctor and given 30 days to respond.
Source:
Connie Walker and Marnie Luke, “Brian Clement, Hippocrates Health Institute head, ordered to stop practising medicine ,” CBC News, February 24, 2015.
Student Researcher: Jessica Sherman, Indian River State College
Faculty Evaluator:Â Elliot D. Cohen, PhD, Indian River State College
Ethics Alert
This story of Brian Clement, head director of Hippocrates Health Institute that provided therapy to two children with leukemia, raises a number of ethical problems. Brian Clement posed as a medical doctor and risked the welfare of two young children battling a very deadly disease. Clement lied on tax returns and took home millions of dollars; also Clement fired employees for speaking up for the wrong Clement were doing.
Brian and his wife Maria Clement are both co-directors of Hippocrates Health Institute, which is listed as an education institute but is licensed as a massage establishment. Neither of them are licensed doctors. Clement travels to Canada and North of the border to potential customers looking for a miracle when everything else fails and having Stage 4 cancer. He has told these vulnerable people that “We’ve had more people reversed cancer than any other institute in the history of healthcare.” Clement also claims to have a doctorate in naturopathic medicine and a PhD in nutrition from the University of Science Arts and Technology, and uses the word Dr. on his website. What is the moral principle of manipulating desperately sick children with hope for survival?
Act utilitarianism will see this as an act that Clement tries to morally justified to be right because he feels as he is doing some good. But the consequences of his actions is not morally right. A 11 year old girl has died in result of after her mother felt it was best to left the Children’s Hospital where she were receiving chemo to go to the Hippocrates Institute where he will be treated there. The problem for act utilitarianism is that despite Clement’s consequences of his actions for determining whether or not his actions were moral, it doesn’t maximize overall happiness in people. Clement could have had a heart to help people that is suffering from cancer but his consequences of posing as a licensed medical doctor to get sickly children in is straight up wrong and is effecting the health of the patients more than helping them.
The care of a human welfare has been violated. People may want to do right even if it’s in their heart to do right, fooling around with a human’s life is always a violation to ethics. One of Clement’s former employee have filed a legal action against him for firing him for speaking up against him practicing medicine, prescribing treatment to patients with seriously diseases, and giving false hope for a cure to patients. There has been several violation of trust within the media, society, and government. Clement violated the trust of the public and media by representing himself and his wife as a licensed medical doctor to helping cure their Stage 4 cancer. Clement has a website with his name and in front of his name reads Dr.
Our society of our people was fool to believe that this institute was reliable and trustworthily which gave hope for their children to live again. The trust of the government was violated by Clement who file a government tax return in 2013 claiming to be an educational institute but Florida has that establish as a massage business. Clement took home millions of dollars after reporting earning $22 million dollars in revenue.
Even though the two children’s mother gave consent to their daughters to receive treatment at Hippocrates Health Institute, both mothers were unaware that Clement wasn’t a real licensed medical doctor which gave him consent to give their children treatment there. Clement violated both parents rights, given that if both parents would have known that Clement was not a license medical doctor, the outcome could have been different. Clement violated the rights of human welfare, he manipulated the parents by convincing them he could help them which lead them to abandon their daughter’s treatment at a pervious facility. Clement brought physical and emotional harm to the two children that were in his care as well as their mothers and families. An 11 year old girl died in result from her cancer relapsing while in the care of Clement at the Hippocrates Health Institute. Emotional harm on the mother that believe Clement and his crew could have helped her daughter but she end up losing her daughter in the process. Brian and Anna Maria Clement did a lot of harm to the community and effected many people in the meantime. Clement and the Hippocrates Health Institute have raise many ethical problems. Was it in good faith or was it for the earning of money? The consequences of his actions was not in morally right, while it effected two little girls who are battling a very serious deadly disease.