Three of the largest professional organizations representing plastic surgeons in Canada are filing formal complaints against a Toronto physician who hired a private investigator to spy on a colleague whom she suspected was causing a drop in her business.
The Ontario Society of Plastic Surgery, the Canadian Society of Plastic Surgery and the Canadian Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery plan to ask Ontario's medical watchdog to investigate Dr. Behnaz Yazdanfar's decision to send an undercover female investigator to consult with plastic surgeon Dr. Sean Rice and secretly record the conversation.
As the Toronto Star reported last week, Yazdanfar used the recording as the basis of a $300,000 lawsuit against Rice, alleging the plastic surgeon slandered her reputation.
"Nobody has ever seen anything like this," says Dr. Michael Weinberg, a Toronto-area plastic surgeon and member of the three organizations filing complaints with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario.
"We would like them to investigate the ethics of wiring an investigator to come in, ask questions, to pretend to be a patient and pose naked."
Weinberg says members of the three organizations decided to file the complaints Monday.
"The medical community is very upset by this," he said. "I can't imagine that asking a woman to expressly lie to a doctor and then to have their breast examined by a doctor and that person being sent by another doctor for the sole purpose of trapping them could be considered in any way ethical."
College officials would not comment.
"I can confirm we are investigating Dr. Yazdanfar, but I can't provide you with details of the investigation or how the matter came to our attention," said Kathryn Clarke, college spokesperson.
Yazdanfar has been at the centre of controversy since Krista Stryland, a 32-year-old real estate agent and mother, was pronounced dead in hospital Sept. 20 following a liposuction procedure at Yazdanfar's Toronto Cosmetic Clinic.
Read the full story in the Star (click here)
