Doctors

On his medical missions to Africa, Dr. Lawrence Czer has dealt with poverty, lack of electricity, bad accommodations -- and military checkpoints. In Sierra Leone, Czer and his team were sometimes stopped by rifle-toting soldiers who simply wouldn't let them through. "They'll just have you stand there and you'll see other people going through," Czer said. The medical team refused to give the soldiers any money. All they could do was try to cajole them. "Or shame them," the doctor said.

A man who reportedly advertised cures for cancer, AIDS and peanut allergies has been arrested on suspicion of pretending to be a medical doctor, the Orange County district attorney's office said. Daryn Wayne Peterson, 37, was charged with unauthorized practice of medicine, operating a healthcare service without a license, treating cancer without a license, offering an unapproved drug for cancer treatment and misrepresenting himself as a licensed medical practitioner. The charges, according to prosecutors, stem from an Orange County Register newspaper article that profiled Peterson and those who sought treatment from him. In the course of the district attorney's probe, an undercover investigator was sent to Peterson to pose as a cancer patient scared of chemotherapy.

When a close friend went in for exploratory surgery recently, her doctor told her there was nothing to worry about. In fact, he was so unconcerned, he planned to perform the surgery laparoscopically -- that is, with only minor openings. But during the surgery, he found cancer. By the time the operation was over, he had abandoned the original approach in favor of a much larger incision, removing her uterus and ovaries as well.

A sleepless Michael Jackson spent his last hours pleading for a dose of a powerful anesthetic, his doctor told police, according to court records unsealed Monday. For six hours, Dr. Conrad Murray said he resisted -- fearful that the pop star had developed a dangerous addiction to propofol. Instead, Murray administered the sedatives Valium, lorazepam and midazolam -- five times over six hours. But none put Jackson to sleep, and he continued to demand his "milk," the word the pop star used for propofol.

The Los Angeles County Coroner's office said Friday that it had officially ruled Michael Jackson's death a homicide and determined that a surgical anesthetic combined with other medication killed him. In a one-page statement, officials listed the cause of Jackson's June 25 death as "acute propofol intoxication" with the additional factor of "benzodiazepine effect." Three different sedatives that fall into the benzodiazepine drug class were in Jackson's system, but only the anti-anxiety medication lorazepam, often known by the brand name Ativan, was cited alongside propofol as "the primary drugs responsible for Mr. Jackson's death."

Prosecutors investigating Michael Jackson's death have called the girlfriend of the singer's personal doctor to testify before a grand jury today, according to the woman's lawyer and sources familiar with the matter. The Los Angeles County district attorney's office is asking the grand jury only to take testimony from Nicole Alvarez and that the panel is not being asked "at this time" to determine whether Dr. Conrad Murray should be charged with a crime, the sources said. Murray has been identified in court papers as the target of a manslaughter probe related to Jackson's death, and the sources told The Times that his girlfriend, a 27-year-old actress, has not been cooperating with detectives.

The Los Angeles County coroner's office indefinitely delayed the release of Michael Jackson's autopsy results Thursday amid signs that police investigators were trying to determine the interplay between the pop star's personal physician and other medical professionals who treated Jackson in the months leading up to his death. Word of the delay followed a meeting between officials from the L.A.

Michael Jackson's longtime dermatologist and friend filed suit Monday accusing another physician with a decades-long relationship with the pop icon of slandering him in a British tabloid report about Jackson's death. In papers filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, lawyers for Dr. Arnold Klein alleged that cosmetic surgeon Dr. Steven Hoefflin made statements to the newspaper that he knew were false in an attempt to wreck a rival's reputation and hurt his celebrity-studded Beverly Hills practice.

Medical experts say cosmetic surgery should be performed only on relatively healthy people. But Donda West, the 58-year-old mother of rapper Kanye West, had a number of serious health issues, including high blood pressure, high blood sugar and cardiac artery blockage, according to an autopsy report released this week. Still, a Brentwood plastic surgeon approved her for extensive cosmetic surgery last year. She died Nov.

If Kaiser Permanente's Fresno hospital had acted on complaints and kept a closer watch over its medical staff, two babies might still be alive, federal health inspectors concluded in a report released this week. The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services began investigating the hospital in October, two days after the Los Angeles Times reported that doctors and nurses had complained repeatedly to higher-ups about perinatologist Hamid Safari's medical and interpersonal skills.