Ever hear of an anesthesiologist named William E. Miofsky, MD? Neither did we, until a reader responding to our January story about ENT surgeon Twana Sparks, MD, performing unsolicited genital exams on sedated male patients told us to look up Dr. Miofsky. "He's the man behind the greatest operating room sex scandal of them all," he told us. "Go ahead, Google him."

Turns out Dr. Miofsky did worse, much, much worse, to his unconscious female patients than the disturbing things Dr. Sparks allegedly did to her male ones. He pleaded no contest to committing acts of oral copulation on anesthetized female patients at Sutter Hospital in Sacramento, Calif., in the late 1970s, including one act against a 12-year-old girl. The former chief anesthesiologist was convicted in 1979 and committed for 8 years and 8 months to a state hospital as a mentally disordered sex offender. He never served time in prison.

Word soon leaked that hospital personnel looked the other way at the sexual misconduct, that they said nothing and did nothing while the chief of anesthesia placed his penis into patients' mouths during surgery an average of twice a month. More than 150 civil suits were filed against Dr. Miofsky and the hospital, which had been accused of acting too slowly on the allegations. One patient said she held the hospital and the staff to blame, not Dr. Miofsky. The suits were consolidated and settled in 1983 for several million dollars.

The state Board of Registered Nursing tried to revoke the license of the head nurse in surgery at the time Dr. Miofsky was sexually abusing patients. Why? "Inaction," said the board, which found her silence as sickening as we do. Several nurses at Sutter Memorial came forward to accuse Dr. Miofsky of sexual abuse, but only after he'd been at it for more than 2 years.

Does it takes more courage than it should to stop a person of power from assaulting a helpless patient? Is the fear of repercussions greater than your responsibility to your patients? Maybe physicians in the OR are beyond reproach. Maybe it's safer to just keep quiet — What goes on in the OR stays in the OR — if patients wake up none the wiser for what was done to them. And maybe these last 4 sentences are incredibly lame, pathetic excuses.

As a few readers pointed out to us (see "Silent Witnesses to Inappropriate Behavior" on page 8), we sort of missed the boat in our story about Dr. Sparks and the CRNA who claims the hospital revoked her privileges only because she blew the whistle on the unwelcome exams. No, the real story was all the OR personnel who for years witnessed the alleged improper genital exams and kept quiet. Shame on them and anyone else who lets patients suffer on their watch.