Rand Paul's Upstart Ophthalmology Group Leaves Little Mark

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Rand Paul's reputation for marching to his own drummer may extend to his medical career. The GOP Senate candidate is the founder and president of a certifying board for eye doctors, which he appears to have set up as a rival to the existing certification board. But his organization has left little public record, and the legitimacy with which it's viewed remains unclear at best.

In 1999, Paul created a new non-profit organization, the National Board of Ophthalmology (NBO), headquartered at his home in Bowling Green, Kentucky, in order to "provide information to the public concerning physicians with exemplary qualifications in the medical specialty of ophthalmology," according to the organization's founding document, filed online with the Kentucky Secretary of State's office. Page One, a Kentucky politics blog, first noted the group's existence last month.

"It was a certifying board," Beth Ann Slembarski, the administrator of the major existing ophthalmology certifying board, the American Board of Ophthalmology (ABO), told TPMmuckraker.

Annual filings for NBO list Paul -- a Tea Party favorite, who days after an upset win in the GOP primary for Kentucky's U.S. Senate race ignited a firestorm last week by criticizing a key provision of the Civil Rights Act -- as the group's "owner and president." Paul's wife, Kelley Paul, is listed as its vice president, and his father-in-law, Hilton Ashby, is listed as its secretary. But it's not clear how involved Kelley Paul or Ashby have been. Reached at his home in Russellville, Kentucky, Ashby told TPMmuckraker: "I can't tell you what the organization does." Informed that he was listed as the group's secretary, Ashby said: "I was at one time involved as a secretary on something. But I don't know whether it was about that specifically or not."

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/05/rand_pauls_upstart_ophthalmology_group_leaves_litt.php