Accusations of abuse clash with family-man image built by owner of Brown hand clinic

Sept. 6, 2010, 7:00AM
The day before Michael Brown turned himself in Aug. 24 on a charge accusing him of beating his fourth wife, the Brown Hand Center's marketing department sprang into action.

The department pulled from the airwaves some of the advertising that has helped make Brown such a wealthy and familiar figure in Houston, the former surgeon who, surrounded by his wife and kids, promises his carpal tunnel clinics "will care for you just as I care for my own family."

"That's not a message Brown wants out there right now," said Partha Krishnamurthy, director of the University of Houston's Institute for Healthcare Marketing. "The irony wouldn't be lost on many people."