Categories: Uncategorized

Florida of the day: Florida teen poses as doctor, opens office, and examines undercover agent

Most “Florida Man” stories don’t feature someone with this much ambition: 18-year-old Malachi Love-Robinson of Palm Beach, Florida was arrested for practicing medicine without a license — convincingly enough to somehow hang his shingle in a medical office building and see patients. I assembled the video below from a number of reports filed by the news crew at KTLA 5, a local news show:

His Facebook page doesn’t exist anymore, but here’s a screen capture. As you can see, Love-Robinson went by “Dr. Love” on the page, which would be my runner-up choice if I had to use a fake doctor name. “Dr. Feelgood” is still my first choice:

While Love-Robinson should face the consequences for his actions, I think that simply locking him away would be a waste of some serious potential. It’s a rare 18-year-old who not only has the ambition to become a fake doctor (in both the sense of not having credentials and training, and also because I think naturopathy isn’t backed by any real science) but the skill and wit to somehow secure an office and start a practice. This isn’t a case of some hick sport-humping a manatee or a goofball thinking that throwing an alligator through a drive-through window would be a funny prank, but someone who exemplifies the sort of unorthodox thinking that leads to success that I talked about in my Ignite presentation on Florida Man. What he needs some kind of mentor to take that chutzpah and wherewithal and point them in a more productive direction.

Joey deVilla

View Comments

  • Couldn't disagree more. This kid is clearly smart, but lacks any sense of humility, responsibility, or sanity. Medicine, of whatever kind, requires these factors in abundance.

    Give me a humble, hard working doctor ANY day, over a proto-Shkreli.

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