The incredible story of ‘DoctorX’
The dark net doctor who is very unhappy with the Ross Ulbricht judge
When I first started on the dark net beat, many years ago now, there was one character that fascinated me more than any other. More even than the Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht. A user called ‘DoctorX’.
For several months before the Silk Road dark net marketplace was shut down by the FBI in October 2013, ‘DoctorX’ gave free health advice on the Silk Road forums to anyone who asked for it.
What was unusual about DoctorX – his real name is Fernando Caudevilla –is that he was a trained doctor with a PhD in Drug Dependence, who specialised in family medicine and drug dependency. Even back in 2013, Fernando, who is now in his late 40s, had years of experience in harm reduction in Spain. He'd published academic papers and spoke at conferences. Not the sort of person you’d expect to find hanging out on a dark net drug bazaar.
Doctor X, at the UN (from ‘Doctor X: the doctor of the dark net’)
Except it kind of is. That’s the strange thing about the dark net – it’s not always what you expect. Fernando / DoctorX first went there, he told me back in 2015, because ‘drugs forums are the places drugs users go.’
When he invited users to ask questions to a professional, he was inundated. His thread was called “Ask a Medical Expert About Health and Drugs” and received between 10-15 queries a day, about doses, mixing prescriptions, adverse effect, long-term effects, how to detoxify. He started setting aside 2 hours a day to get through them. The original questions and answers are available in the DoctorX Archives section, which is a pretty invaluable resource for anyone interested in the subject. Fernando advised one heroin addict - who had been diagnosed with withdrawal symptoms – to get a second opinion: he was subsequently diagnosed with leukaemia. Another time a user’s girlfriend overdosed while Fernando was online, and he provided instructions on the necessary emergency measure. (Eileen Ormsby, probably the best dark net investigator out there, wrote about this case in her book on the The Silk Road).
He became a fixture of the site. Even Ross Ulbricht himself sent him bitcoin donations for his services.
So when Ross Ulbricht was on trial for running the Silk Road in 2015, his defence argued the site made drugs use safer for ordinary people. And his legal team asked that Fernando give written testimony about the harm reduction work he’d done on the site – which he did.
Judge Katherine Forrest was not impressed.
In her sentencing summary, she spent a decent chunk of time dismantling the ‘harm reduction’ argument, saying user harm reduction was only one small part of the ‘massive’ social harms created by the drugs trade that Ross was enabling. And DoctorX’s testimony seemed to really annoy her.
The Court notes that there is the presence of Dr X, who deserves special mention. It is particularly despicable that he has been pointed to as a big part of the harm reduction... I have read each and every post of Dr. X and I was blown away and infuriated by it. It is absolutely clear that Dr. X is part of the problem, he is not part of the solution, and again it is magical thinking to think so… he is an absolute enabler. He is a positive marketing event to get people to use drugs… The first post of Dr X on exhibit 4 in Ms. Lewis’ affidavit is an example of the problem. He is told that an individual has never done MDMA - ecstasy - but is interested in exploring it - market expanding… the individual discloses that he has Type 1 Diabetes. Dr X states that MDMA would be okay nonetheless, that ‘dramatic changes in glucose are not expected’. He states that a danger is that MDMA could make the user forgetful, that he might forget to test his sugar, so he recommends that individual set an alarm clock. He states: “I think with that, it should be enough”. This doctor has got a guy with Type 1 Diabetes, knows nothing else about him, about to try MDMA. This is breathtakingly irresponsible. It goes not take a physician to see this as plain common sense…
And she goes on, with further examples. She was not happy.
He went a bit quiet after Ross’ guilty verdict, which was life without parole. He might have been worried that there would be some legal ramifications to himself. And I think he was shocked by the way his work was viewed by the judge.
This week, I got an email from DoctorX.
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