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The Maryland State Police’s medical director resigned last week after a state board charged that he was involved with an unlicensed, felon-run erectile dysfunction clinic accused of causing at least one penile injury.
Dr. Donald William Alves stepped down March 3 ahead of his appearance before a disciplinary committee, which could result in his medical license being revoked, the Baltimore Sun reported. The Maryland Board of Physicians charged Alves in December with unprofessional conduct and practicing medicine with an unauthorized person at a clinic plagued by scam allegations.
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The Guy’s Clinic advertised that its doctors would provide a treatment plan that would “safely awaken your sex life in just one visit,” according to the charging documents.
Alves told state investigators the clinic “fills an itch between the little blue pill, when the oral agents aren’t working, and for individuals who aren’t ready to get surgical procedures done. So it provides them with injection therapy.”
The Guy’s Clinic in Baltimore County, Maryland, began employing Alves in 2016, paying him $250 per week to supervise a a physician’s assistant, according to the Board of Physicians. Alves initially told investigators he was unaware that the Clinic presented him as its medical director but later conceded that he’d maintained business ties to the entity.
The surgical treatment of erectile dysfunction with a penile prosthesis is pictured in France’s Lyon Hospital. (BSIP/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
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Under a delegation agreement, the physician’s assistant gave clients injections without permission from Alves or approval from the Board of Physicians, according to the charging documents.
The clinic’s owner, who is not licensed to practice medicine, wrote “guidelines” for the clinic, according to the board. These included an instruction that “every patient” receives penis injections consisting of “mostly non-FDA approved” drugs that dilate blood vessels and “cause the patients to obtain immediate erections.”
The Maryland Office of Controlled Substances Administration visited the clinic in 2021 and found that staff administered erectile dysfunction prescription medicines without a permit, including higher-than-recommended injection doses, the Board of Physicians charged.
A men’s impotency clinic is depicted in Australia in May 1997. (The AGE Picture by MICHAEL RAYNER Fairfax Media via Getty Images)
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One patient told the Maryland Board of Physicians in 2020 that he was hospitalized for a five-day-long erection following an injection at the clinic, according to the charging documents. The patient added that a medical specialist told him he would “likely require a penile prosthesis due to the development of fibrosis” during the sustained erection.
The Maryland Board of Physicians received three complaints about the clinic between September 2020 and January 2021, the Board of Physicians wrote. One stated that patients who visited the clinic were not seen by medical doctors, while another said their insurance company described the business as a “scam organization.”
The Securities and Exchange Commission in 2018 described Guy’s Clinic owner Mark Thomas Johnson as a “recidivist violator of the federal securities law,” the Baltimore Banner reported. Johnson was convicted of securities fraud and conspiracy to commit securities fraud in 2010 and faced additional SEC action in 2018 for allegedly orchestrating a scheme that defrauded $5 million from roughly 50 investors.
A Maryland State Police spokesperson confirmed Alves’ resignation to Online News 72h but declined to comment further since the issue “is being handled by the Maryland Board of Physicians in reference to his secondary employment.”
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