A Monterey doctor loses his license for anti-vax views that factored into a deadly custody case.

A Monterey pediatrician known for his anti-vax beliefs, Douglas Hulstedt, has lost his medical license in the wake of a dramatic custody battle case Hulstedt was a part of, one that even he publicly called “fairly grisly.” In that case, a 9-year-old boy was shot and killed by his father who in turn killed himself, after the father was ordered by a judge to present his son for routine childhood vaccinations in 2021. Hulstedt advised the father that such vaccinations were dangerous.

The California Medical Board filed an accusation against Hulstedt last year for gross negligence due to “lacking basic medical knowledge” and repeatedly providing written vaccine exemptions for the boy between 2014 and 2020. On Nov. 8, 2022, the board held a hearing resulting in his license revocation, which included ordering Hulstedt to pay $20,000 in fines and $49,560 in reimbursement of the board’s investigation costs. Hulstedt tried and failed to stop the revocation, which delayed it being formally entered and announced publicly until Feb. 27.

Hulstedt, representing himself, argued during the hearing that his actions caused no harm to the child. “To the contrary,” Administrative Law Judge Juliet E. Cox wrote in her decision, “respondent not only delayed [the child’s] receipt of immunizations that would have protected” the child and community from diseases, “but also contributed to conflict between [the child’s] parents.”

Last fall Hulstedt filed two lawsuits against the Medical Board in which he claimed numerous miscarriages of justice using an explosion of nonsensical legal terms. The case is pending a motion by the state to dismiss. Hulstedt continues to file documents – in one filed March 16, Hulstedt made “criminal-claims” against California Secretary of State Rob Bonta for allegedly lying and denying Hulstedt due process. He copied myriad state and federal officials, including U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and, inexplicably, a military post office in Virginia.

Hulstedt followed a similar playbook prior to and during the Medical Board hearing in November, according to the revocation decision written by Cox. Hulstedt “barraged” attorneys representing the state by mail “with documents that did not state any cognizable pre-hearing motions,” she said. During the hearing Hulstedt demanded the judge and the state’s attorney answer “irrelevant or incomprehensible questions, and asserted the same objections over and over.”

Attempts to reach Hulstedt were unsuccessful. During the Medical Board’s investigation last year, Hulstedt repeatedly refused to hand over medical records, another violation. “The Medical Board has been out looking for scalps for anyone that has written medical exemptions,” he said during a podcast in April 2022.

Hulstedt said that he was justified in writing exemptions for the child based on his medical history. In the decision, Cox pointed out that other doctors who had examined and tested the child found there was no reason he couldn’t be safely vaccinated.