The owners of a privately owned Edmonton cancer care clinic are threatening to sue a group of doctors who filed a whistleblower complaint against an Alberta Health Services administrator, who is a minority share owner of the clinic.
The Canadian Cancer Care or CCC clinic issued a cease-and-desist letter to five whistleblower doctors after The Tyee obtained the confidential complaint and published conflict of interest allegations made against AHS official Dr. Daniel O’Connell.
Based on the complaint, O’Connell has been the subject of an internal AHS investigation since November 2022. Despite this, in December 2023, AHS appointed O’Connell, an ear, nose and throat or ENT surgeon, as permanent head of the ENT section in Edmonton.
O’Connell has declined interview requests. The allegations against him are unproven.
In an interview, surgeon Dr. Raiyan Chowdhury and oncologist Dr. Brock Debenham, two of the CCC clinic founders, said they issued the threatening letter to stop the spread of what they said was “misinformation” about the clinic.
They said the complaint, and subsequent media exposure, created the misconception that the clinic offers private, for-profit cancer surgery and care.
“We had death threats coming to us,” Debenham said. “We had all these...
False sexual or rape allegations can have devastating consequences for the accused, including reputational damage, loss of employment and emotional trauma. In Nigeria, current legislation focuses ...