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Sunday, September 12, 2004Six black jurors outvoted two white colleagues in August 2002 in finding that Price failed to diagnose the coronary-artery disease in Lawrence Smith, a black 54-year-old LTV Corp. worker who died of a heart attack in 1999. With court-ordered interest, the Smith heirs' award topped $5 million. That case sounded familiar, and sure enough, here it is. The plaintiff's attorneys argued that the doctor didn't do enough to prevent the patient's heart disease. The crux of their case rested on EKG findings which were interpreted in hindsight as "abnormal." EKG's, although very good at detecting heart attacks in progress, are extremely poor predictors of future heart attacks or of latent coronary artery disease, for that matter. I never realized that the jury's decision was divided along racial lines. It could be just a coincidence. Or maybe not. After all, there was an awful lot of media attention to the racist quality of American medicine at the time. (Which has since been debunked. It's more a matter of demographics and economics than inherent racism.) posted by Sydney on 9/12/2004 01:51:00 PM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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