THE Guam Board of Allied Health Examiners’ effort to bring Dr. Joseph and the Wise Owl veterinary hospital into compliance with our laws has resulted in controversy and befuddlement. These unnecessary side effects were the result of yet another virulent disinformation campaign. Perhaps I can spread some truth across the roiled waters.

Were politics or professional jealousies involved? I attended almost every session of this disciplinary hearing and the three previous hearings against Dr. Joseph. I never heard politics mentioned by anyone, and none of the board members are politicians or have any known interest in politics. Does Dr. Joseph? He spews a great deal, but I’ve never heard him take political stands. As for professional jealousies, there were no veterinarians on the disciplinary panel. Nor were there any vets on the GBAHE panel of December 2010 that also found Dr. Joseph guilty of stalking, negligent treatment of pets, etc. (as yet undisturbed on appeal). Why would a respiratory therapist, chiropractor, speech pathologist, psychologist, etc. feel great jealousy for a veterinarian?

And it would require very great jealousy indeed to willingly donate many evenings from 5:30 until 10:30 for weeks on end with no pay or compensation of any kind. The composition of this disciplinary panel was largely different from the last one, and also different from the two panels before those. Four separate panels, four largely different groupings of medical professionals, and they dealt with different charges and different witnesses. The striking similarity is that they all found Dr. Joseph guilty. That’s a lot of politics or a lot of jealousy or a lot of guilt.

How many of us have dumped our families and other responsibilities every night for weeks at a time for the selfless good of Guam? The thanks for GBAHE is to be accused publicly of corruption and negligence without the slightest basis in fact. And that’s the reason why we have trouble keeping members on the Guam Board of Allied Health Examiners. Who works that hard for no pay only to have their reputations besmirched?

For the last six years, every GBAHE has had to deal with Dr. Joseph, and every member has suffered the consequences. It’s gone far enough. It’s time for us to trust the judgment of some of the brightest and most devoted people in our community. They are working overtime to protect us and the rule of law. And the same is true of the hard-working people from the Attorney General’s Office. They left their families too. They all deserve our support.

Tom Poole,
Guam Territorial Veterinarian
Mangilao