Dutch surgeon wins right to tell Google to remove links to her name in online “blacklist”

A Dutch surgeon has won a court ruling in the Netherlands requiring Google to remove links to her name on an unofficial “blacklisted doctors” website, under a European law dubbed “the right to be forgotten.”

The surgeon’s name was placed on the website after the Dutch healthcare regulator suspended her from the medical register in 2014 over a patient’s aftercare. She appealed, and the sanction was replaced by a conditional suspension with a period of probation, allowing her to continue practising.

The surgeon is one of hundreds of thousands of Europeans who have asked Google to remove links to their names on the internet since the Google Spain decision, a 2014 judgment of the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.

The …