Why I write what I do

By María Eugenia Guerra

Except for the punning and funning in some parts of LareDOS, I have always written with the intent to inform by gathering data and all sides of an issue so that better decisions might be made individually and by taxpayer-funded governing bodies. Cognizant though I am that the levity of satire may nudge a little change in our community, it is the serious pieces of writing in this news journal that I believe have been instruments of change.
Through the seven-and-a-half years of our publication's history, I have written of the sometimes questionable spending of the public nickel, environmental degradation and environmental apathy, the quality of health care in Laredo, and the erstwhile onerous acts of public officials in their leadership capacities as department heads, trustees, city council members, or commissioners. I have at times believed that my writing lends a voice to that which has none.
For all the years I have written in my exercise of my constitutionally guaranteed rights, it has been conscience and conscience alone that had the power to put the brakes on any story I wanted to write.
That is, until May 9, 2002, when informed by local and out-of-town attorneys representing physician Dr. Rebecca Uribe Garza that if I ran a story about a 1989 Texas State Board of Medical Examiners (TSBME) investigation of Dr. Uribe Garza I would face a suit for libel and that if, forewarned as I was, I printed my story in LareDOS, I would be doing so with malice.
I considered the threat carefully and responded to it with a request to meet with Dr. Uribe Garza for an interview. I received no response to that request, and though I knew in my heart I had written a sound story, I could see that it was on hold for the time being.
At the heart of the story her attorneys apprised me was in my best interest not to run, was Dr. Uribe Garza's January 30, 1990 appearance before the TSBME with her attorney Sam Stone and her uncle Dr. Joaquin Cigarroa, an unsigned 1990 TSBME board proposed order, the findings of fact of the TSBME's 1989 investigation, its conclusions of law, and its recommendations for a five-year probationary period -- recommendations that included urine testing for drugs and alcohol, abstinence from all addictive agents, and refraining from prescribing for adults.
The findings of fact in that 1989 investigation state that Dr. Rebecca Uribe Garza, then Knapp, was "writing prescriptions in fictitious names for Tylenol #3, Darvon compound, Vicodin, Centrax, Tenuate Dospan, Restoril, Temazapam, and Mepergan Fortis which the Respondent was consuming."
The conclusions of law in the unsigned proposed board order -- the fruit of the 1989 investigation into Uribe Garza's prescription records -- cite the state and federal laws she allegedly violated in "writing false or fictitious prescriptions for dangerous drugs…"
The 1990 proposed agreed board order was never signed by Dr. Uribe Garza (Knapp) or by then-president of the TSBME Dr. Robert L.M. Hilliard, and so it was never entered into the public record as was her most recent board order of April 2002.
So how is it I am now telling you that which a threat of suit halted on May 9?
On July 12, 2002, I received a call from an attorney for the Campero law firm who was preparing a brief for a motion for a new trial in the matter of a suit against Mercy Regional Hospital and other defendants, a suit in which Dr. Uribe Garza had testified by deposition as a factual and expert witness in hearings relative to the death of a newborn at Mercy. The attorney asked me to confirm information in the story I ran in the May 2002 issue of LareDOS, a story that dealt only with Dr. Uribe Garza's April 2002 public record board order.
The question asked by the attorney was: did my story cite an 18-month investigation prior to the April 2002 TSBME board order? Yes, it did; as it was stated in my story about the status of Uribe Garza's medical license. The information had been lifted verbatim from the contents of a two-page letter sent to me on May 9 by Uribe Garza's cousin and local counsel Martha Cigarroa de Llano. Cigarroa de Llano stated, "Of significance is that the BME (TSBME) conducted its investigation of Dr. Garza and her medical practice for almost eighteen (18) months, yet the result was that her license was unrestricted with regard to her current practice."
The Campero firm's July 15, 2002 brief/motion for a new trial alleges that Dr. Uribe Garza stated in December 11, 2001 depositions that she had voluntarily resigned her neonatology privileges at Mercy Hospital and by so stating had allegedly perjured herself by withholding information that a Texas Department of Health investigation into high infant mortality rates in Mercy's neo-natalogy intensive care unit had fomented the downgrade of the unit and her subsequent "voluntary" relinquishment of neonatal privileges.
"It was of much interest to us that the Texas Department of Health was looking at the neo-natology unit and that Dr. Uribe Garza was herself at the time of the testimony taken in deposition the subject of an investigation by the Texas State Board of Medical Examiners," said attorney José Angel Becerra of the Campero law firm.
Reading through this recent brief authored by the attorneys of the Campero law firm and the accompanying motions for Cause No. 2000-CVQ-000574-D2 was for me an eye-popper and a heart wringing narrative of medical misadventure that ended the tragically short life of newborn Claudio Arian Lerma -- the bereaved parents; the allegation that Mercy physicians and staff placed the blame on the birthing efforts of the mother in delivery; the allegation that the OB-GYN delivery physician was so impaired by arthritis and perhaps so medicated that she preferred vaginal deliveries to C-sections; the vague testimony of Dr. Uribe Garza, who could not recall life-and-death procedures or the hour of the day of the allegedly botched birth but said she had a photographic memory of the room number of the baby's delivery; Dr. Uribe Garza's disjointed comment that she'd had the same hairdresser the same length of time that she had the same attorney representing her at depositions (12 years); her assertion that she'd discussed end of life issues and an autopsy with the parents; their recollection that no such conversation transpired.
Back to the question: how is it I can now reveal that which the threat of suit thwarted May 9? The last 17 pages of the Campero Motion for A New Trial, now entered into the public record as of July 15, 2002 included the TSBME's 1990 unsigned proposed board order with its findings of fact and conclusions of law, 1990 correspondence from then-TSBME enforcement director Paul R. Gavia to Uribe Garza's Austin attorney Sam V. Stone, Stone's correspondence back to Gavia, correspondence from Uribe Garza's psychiatrist Dr. Stephen Gelfond to TSBME executive director Dr. G.V. Brindley, Jr., and an interim history of Uribe Garza by Dr. Gelfond.
Truth is the best defense for the accusation of libel, our attorney reminds me often, and so what I have to answer about what I have written here today is two questions. "Have I presented the reader with as many facts as possible so that the reader can make a decision?" I believe that it is my job.
"Is it the truth?" How could something so thoroughly corroborated and documented in the correspondence of attorneys, TSBME enforcement officers, and psychiatrists not be true?