By Any Other Name?

A man who is licensed to treat patients' ills is a doctor and is undeniably practicing medicine. But is he therefore a doctor of medicine and entitled to put the magical letters M.D. after his name? Yes, contends Richard Oliver, 43, a physician who practices in the little (pop. 6,000) Georgia town of Eastman. No, says the Composite State Board of Medical Examiners, which licenses physicians to practice in Georgia.

Oliver is a doctor of osteopathy, a graduate of the Kansas City College of Osteopathic Medicine. He is entitled to call himself a doctor and put the letters D.O. after his name. Oliver has had unusually broad training and experience for a physician of any school, and practices obstetrics and gynecology in a small, neat building that he shares with a family-practitioner M.D. He also practices his specialty in the Dodge County Hospital. But, he complains, 90% of Georgians don't know what an osteopathic physician is and are apt to confuse him with "rubbin' doctors," chiropractors or outright quacks. As a result, Oliver claimed in a suit filed in U.S. district court, his practice was only about one-fourth what it would be if he could put M.D. after his name.

Until recently, osteopathic schools accepted candidates with poorer educational qualifications than did ordinary medical schools and gave inferior training, with excessive emphasis on spinal manipulation. That is no longer generally true. Most of the nation's seven surviving osteopathic schools have raised their standards and incorporated more general medical subjects in their curriculums. Their graduates are permitted the same professional privileges as M.D.s in all 50 states. Moreover, in 36 states, including Georgia, osteopaths must pass exactly the same examination as M.D.s before they can be licensed to practice. Oliver passed such an exam in Georgia in 1971. He contends that his own osteopathic training is superior to that of many foreign-educated physicians who are allowed by the board to style themselves M.D.

Oliver's suit naturally incurred the wrath of the Medical Association of Georgia. By no coincidence, the Georgia legislature passed a bill, which the Governor recently signed, forbidding anyone without an M.D. degree to put those initials after his name. Oliver charged that the legislation was lobbied through specifically to affect his pending case. Last week the three-judge federal court ruled in his favor; pending any appeal by the board, he is now Richard Oliver, M.D.

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