Dr. Feelbad

The waiting room of Dr. Richard Feldman’s diet clinic is a depressing place.

On a recent weekday afternoon, the place reeks with a humid funk reminiscent of sweaty children or unwashed dogs. About a dozen patients sit on standard-issue waiting-room chairs. The people are large, listless. Almost all are women, mostly black and Hispanic. There is one man with his wife and baby.

Two small children play and fuss around their mother’s leg. The appendage is nearly as wide as the two children combined. The mother sits slack-jawed, hands joined in her vast lap, head cocked to the side, staring into oblivion. The children at her feet giggle quietly.

On the walls hang pictures of women that these unfortunates most likely will never resemble—trim, smiling honeys in pink and blue bikinis. They have tan, slender legs, taut bellies and breasts that have not yet yielded to the inevitability of gravity.

In the middle of the room hangs another picture, this one placed higher than the others as if in the center of a slim and sexy pantheon. This picture is of Dr. Feldman, the man who started this clinic near West End Avenue. In the picture, he’s sitting in an ornate chair looking relaxed and confident. A half-moon of black hair rings his bald pate. He has a big, bushy mustache like some South American generalissimo. Sitting in the chair next to him is President Ronald Reagan.

With nine diet clinics across Tennessee, one in Los Angeles his own line of herbal supplements, and services that include Botox and other nonsurgical cosmetic treatments, Dr. Feldman has built quite a business. His ads claim that his Doctors Diet Program is “Tennessee’s No. 1 physician-supervised weight loss clinic.” His website—www.smallerclothes.com—makes the McDonald’s-like boast, “Over 40,000 patients served.” Dr. Feldman’s diet empire is so big that he needs a private plane, which he pilots, to keep tabs on his various offices.

But what many of Dr. Feldman’s patients probably don’t know is that he is a diagnosed sex addict. According to the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners—which licenses and polices doctors—Feldman has a history of molesting patients and making sexually inappropriate remarks to—and about—his staff. Those who have worked with him say that he hits on minors and employees. In the late 1990s, he settled a sexual harassment suit with a former employee for $10,000, according to court documents.

Feldman clearly loves the ladies. He loves them so much in fact, that for a time he wasn’t averse to paying—or at least swapping—for them. There’s evidence that Feldman would provide prostitutes at one of Nashville’s now defunct houses of ill repute with medical services free of charge. Well, almost free. As payment for his services, he would sample theirs.

In 1998, Dr. Feldman’s inability to control his sexual impulses with patients in Tennessee resulted in his medical license being permanently revoked in Ohio, where he attended medical school. In Tennessee, however, the medical board penalized him with a mere $2,500 fine and one year of probation. He also had to attend a treatment program for sex addicts at a high-priced clinic. When Feldman bailed on the program early, he was fined an additional $2,000 and his probation was extended to September 2003.

But this sanction didn’t prohibit Feldman from practicing medicine. Far from it. After paying his fine, he was allowed to continue practicing as a licensed doctor as long as he submitted to psychiatric treatment. He’s been seeing patients and prescribing pills ever since.

Even after Feldman ran afoul of the medical board for a third time in 2001—after some of his promotional literature violated the state’s ethical guidelines—all he received was a slap on the wrist. He paid a $1,000 fine and continued doing business as usual.

Breaking ethical guidelines in pursuit of flashy marketing seems to have become a habit for Feldman. Last month, he was brought before the medical board yet again, this time for claims made on his website regarding “mesotherapy” injections. Mesotherapy is a holistic treatment that proponents say will do everything from eliminating cellulite to reversing signs of aging. According to the medical board, Feldman claimed that his mesotherapy treatments cause a “typical patient to lose up to two dress sizes with 10 treatments.”

The medical board says that such claims are a misrepresentation, and it is threatening to hit the doctor with fines totaling more than $120,000.