Citing Public Safety, Doctor’s License Recalled

PHOENIX —  State regulators on Monday suspended the medical license of a doctor accused of trying to abort a teenager’s full-term baby last month and of causing a woman to bleed to death in April.

The Arizona Board of Medical Examiners voted unanimously to temporarily bar Dr. John I. Biskind from practicing medicine.

Board members said the suspension was an emergency measure to protect the public, pending the outcome of the board’s investigation into the two cases.

Biskind did not attend the board’s hearing. Larry Kazan, his attorney, said Biskind denies the allegations and welcomes the investigation.

Biskind, of Scottsdale, also is the subject of a criminal investigation regarding the April bleeding death of Louann Herron. An autopsy found that Herron, 32, died from a ruptured uterus caused by a medical instrument. Such injuries do happen, but the patients don’t usually die if they get proper care, board member Dr. Edward Sattenspiel said.

In the other case, Sattenspiel said it was impossible to believe that Biskind could not tell that the 17-year-old girl was 37 weeks pregnant instead of the claimed 23 weeks. The baby survived the June 30 abortion attempt with a fractured skull and lacerations.

“Dr. Biskind is incompetent to tell a woman in the middle of her pregnancy from a woman in the end of her pregnancy,” Sattenspiel said. “Anybody that does this should not have the right to practice medicine.”