I think I dodged an enormous bullet.

It was in early 2021, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. A gastroenterologist friend asked if he could pass my name to “Mr. Ed” a businessman seeking a medical director for a proposed new laboratory for diagnostic COVID testing. (My friend did not know Mr. Ed well and had no role in the project.) As a pathologist, I was among the most trained and best suited to be a laboratory medical director, and I told my friend to let his contact know that I would be interested.

Pathologists are physicians trained in the art and science of creating, maintaining, and managing excellent medical laboratories. We are probably not the ones running the chemistry analyzer, examining petri dishes for bacteria, or isolating DNA for next-generation sequencing. Technologists perform those duties. But in cooperation with our clinical colleagues, pathologists choose which tests the laboratory performs and how the results should be interpreted. The clinicians usually leave it to us to decide the methodology for conducting the tests and whether the results are valid and can be reported.

When Mr. Ed phoned me, I explained that as the medical director, I would ensure the laboratory space was safe and adequate, the technicians were qualified, the test kit was accurate, and appropriate controls were run routinely. I would also regularly review results for trends or other anomalies suggesting inaccurate data. The lab would need state certification, with a long-term goal of accreditation by the College of American Pathologists, the industry’s gold standard.

“No,” Mr. Ed replied. “The test is idiot proof so we don’t need you to do any of that. All I want from you is to come in once a week and sign that you showed up. You’ll be compensated generously.”

“Mr. Ed,” I responded, “you’re talking to the wrong man for this job. I am respectfully declining your offer, and I recommend you rethink your business plan.”

I don’t know what happened to Mr. Ed and his planned laboratory. But just this week, Zishan Alvi, a Chicago-area businessman pleaded guilty to Federal charges that his laboratory was releasing inaccurate COVID results to patients whose specimens had inconclusive results or had not even been tested. The Federal government was billed for all these tests. As a result of these infractions and his guilty plea, Mr. Alvi faces up to 20 years in prison.

This is fraud a competent medical director in a well-managed laboratory would prevent.

I doubt that Mr. Alvi was the same person as my Mr. Ed. It is quite likely that more than one Chicago profiteer saw the same pot of gold in widespread, barely-regulated COVID testing. But the gold rush couldn’t last forever.

Had I accepted Mr. Ed’s offer, I might have been up to my neck in questionable COVID swabs and their consequences. But because I declined, no legal bullets are headed my way.

Sometimes the move you don’t make turns out to be the best move of all.