BOISE, ID – Attorneys in a lawsuit against Idaho pathologist Dr. Ryan Cole for his alleged false cancer diagnosis that led a woman to undergo major surgery reached an agreement to dismiss the case.
But almost no information about the agreement is public.
Idaho 4th District Judge James Cawthon on April 10 agreed to dismiss the medical malpractice lawsuit, following a stipulation between attorneys on both sides. That came months after Cole and the patient’s attorneys began mediation, which is a legal process to work toward agreement.
Filed in April 2023, the lawsuit was scheduled for a jury trial in April. Granting a request from both sides’ attorneys, the judge dismissed the case with prejudice. Each party will pay their own costs and attorneys’ fees.
In November, patient J.B.’s attorneys submitted a ream of additional evidence in court. Those included statements from six doctors — who either worked with the patient, or were independent from her medical care — that disagreed with Cole’s diagnosis of a rare and aggressive form of endometrial cancer. The Idaho Capital Sun is identifying the patient only by her initials to protect her medical privacy.
In legal declarations, two independent pathologist doctors called Cole “reckless” in rendering the patient’s cancer diagnosis.
Cole, an Idaho pathologist, gained fame for false and misleading statements he made about COVID-19. He serves as an appointed Idaho health official.
Early last year, Washington state regulators restricted Cole’s medical license in the state after they found he spread COVID disinformation and broke medical practice by virtually prescribing ivermectin to COVID patients. The drug — long used as an anti-parsitic in humans but which lacks evidence to treat COVID — can now be sold over the counter in Idaho, after the Legislature widely approved the deregulation this year.
Cole and his attorney, Nancy Garrett, could not be immediately reached for comment. Mallam Prior, an attorney for the patient, declined to comment to the Idaho Capital Sun, saying the lawsuit’s outcome was confidential.
Two pathologist doctors call Cole’s misdiagnosis ‘reckless’ in legal declarations
In 2021, Cole ran a laboratory being used by women’s health practices in the Boise area. J.B.’s nurse practitioner sent Cole’s lab a biopsy from her body that summer.
After she underwent surgery to remove her female reproductive system, J.B. learned she didn’t have cancer, the Sun previously reported.
Part of Cole’s stance against COVID vaccines included false claims that they cause cancer.
There is no evidence that COVID vaccines can raise, or lower, a person’s risk of cancer. There is evidence that they lower a person’s risk of severe illness, death and chronic health issues after a COVID infection.
“I have seen a 10- to 20-fold increase of uterine cancer in the last six months in my laboratory,” Cole said at a meeting of America’s Frontline Doctors in San Antonio, Texas, about two weeks after he misdiagnosed J.B. with cancer of the uterine lining. “In the last six months. When did we start shots? January? How much solid-tumor cancer increase are we going to see over the next several years? Probably a lot.”
In November, as part of the plaintiff’s additional evidence submission, J.B’s attorneys wrote that Cole “claims to have retracted his comment that he was seeing a 20-fold increase of endometrial cancer in 2021 when there is nothing he can point to in order to demonstrate he has actually done so.”
Actually, Cole’s cancer diagnosis records — which the plaintiffs’ attorneys obtained as part of the lawsuit’s evidence discovery process — show “less than a 1% increase,” the legal filing alleged.
That was part of the patient’s attorneys’ request for a jury to require Cole to pay punitive damages in the lawsuit.
Six other doctors — including five pathologists — evaluated the patient’s tissue samples and disagreed with Cole’s diagnosis, the filing alleged.
Dr. Matt Tannenbaum, an Idaho Falls pathologist who disagreed with Cole’s diagnosis of the patient, wrote “it is my opinion to a reasonable degree of medical probability and far more likely than not that Dr. Cole was negligent and reckless when misdiagnosing (the patient) with serous carcinoma.”
“He either knew or should have known that there were problems with the diagnosis of serous carcinoma, that it was an incorrect diagnosis, and that by rendering such diagnosis it was creating an unreasonable risk of harm to (the patient) and a high probability that such harm would actually result,” Cohen wrote.
Cole maintained his cancer diagnosis for J.B. was correct, despite the lawsuit and another review of the slides since his initial diagnosis, the filing alleged.
Cole is still licensed as doctor in Idaho, and serves on Central District Health board
The medical malpractice suit J.B. filed in Ada County accused Cole of negligence and other harms. The lawsuit also was against his business Cole Diagnostics, based in Garden City.
The company is still registered as an Idaho business and lists Cole as president, business filings from the Idaho Secretary of State’s Office showed Thursday night.
Cole is still licensed to practice medicine in Idaho, the Idaho Board of Medicine’s licensing records website shows.
In 2024, his Idaho license temporarily lapsed, prompting questions about his status on the Central District Health board, the Sun previously reported. In September, Cole renewed his Idaho medical license.
Central District Health is a regional Idaho government public health agency that serves Idaho’s two most populated counties in and around Boise — Ada and Canyon — and two rural counties: Elmore and Valley.
Cole remains on the Central District Health board.
In the state of Washington, Cole’s medical license is active with restrictions, the Washington State Department of Health’s website shows.
