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Wednesday, July 10
 
Alcor Life president placed on probation

Associated Press

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- The president of an Arizona company involved in a controversy over the remains of baseball great Ted Williams was placed on probation last year by Tennessee medical regulators.

Dr. Jerry B. Lemler, president of the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Ariz., was accused in Tennessee of failing to document records and prescribing medication without documentation.

Williams' children are arguing about whether to freeze or cremate his body.

His daughter, Barbara Joyce Williams Ferrell, has accused her half brother, John Henry Williams, of moving their father's body from a Florida funeral home to the Alcor facility in Scottsdale where bodies are frozen.

Lemler said Wednesday he has completed the requirements of his probation, including paying a $1,000 penalty, and expects the probation to be lifted soon.

"I have fulfilled the requirements ... and my attorney has already requested that to the board,'' Lemler told The Knoxville News-Sentinel in a call from Scottsdale on Wednesday night.

Lemler was chief of the medical staff at Lakeshore Mental Health Institute in Knoxville in the early 1990s.

Lemler, 52, joined Alcor in February 2001, a month before the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners placed him on probation for two years. The board, according to minutes from its March 2001 meeting, found that Lemler failed to document records for hundreds of patients and prescribed medication without documentation, among other unspecified allegations.

The incidents occurred between 1997 and 2000 while Lemler operated a weight-loss program in East Tennessee, the minutes say.

"I would prefer to call it an oversight,'' Lemler said. He said none of his patients suffered any harm and said the probation stemmed from "a medical record-keeping problem.''

"The board was helpful in helping us understand what was required,'' Lemler said. "I could not argue with them. In retrospect, I believe they were absolutely right.

"I didn't realize that level of record-keeping was required, but by golly it is.''

Lemler declined to say if Williams' body is at Alcor.

He also said two open investigations being conducted by the Arizona Board of Medical Examiners are related to the Tennessee board's action and a medical malpractice lawsuit in East Tennessee.

He said that case, involving a patient at his Harrogate, Tenn., practice, was settled this year. Details of that case were not disclosed. Lemler worked as a psychiatrist and family practitioner in Harrogate in the late 1990s.

Lemler often testified as an expert witness in court cases in Tennessee. A 1999 Tennessee Supreme Court worker's compensation opinion described Lemler as a "board-certified psychiatrist and forensic psychiatrist.''

He is a 1974 graduate of the University of Tennessee Medical School.

Williams, a Boston Red Sox star who was the last major league hitter to bat better than .400 in a season, died Friday in Florida at 83.






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