• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

36 Women Given Faulty Breast Cancer Test Have Died: Medical Examiner

Posted on: Thursday, 17 May 2007, 18:00 CDT

ST. JOHN'S, N.L. (CP) - A senior medical examiner says at least three dozen women in Newfoundland and Labrador who received a false negative on a faulty breast cancer test have died, although it's not clear if any of them died as a direct result of their cancer.

A letter signed Wednesday by Charles Hutton, the province's deputy medical examiner, says at least 36 women who had a false negative on the error-prone test have died.

The women missed out on potentially life-saving treatment such as hormone therapy, but it's also unclear how many of them, if any, died as result of that.

The letter was written to lawyer Ches Crosbie as part of a class-action lawsuit against the province's Eastern Health authority over the faulty tests.

It comes as Premier Danny Williams told the legislature that the province, out of a "moral responsibility," would undertake a review to determine how more than 300 women received the wrong results from their hormone receptor tests from 1997 to 2005.

"We want to make sure that the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, but most importantly the people who are affected here, the patients, the people who have suffered, their families, they all need to know the answers," Williams said.

Williams said the province is seeking legal advice on how best to go about a review, but promised it would be done without delay.

"It is a very sensitive issue and a very delicate issue, and there's issues of confidentiality of information here that are very important because it's a medical matter," he said.

"We're going to do something. It's a question of going about it and doing it right."

In 2005, the authority arranged for Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto to repeat more than 2,000 hormone receptor tests dating back to May 1997 after oncologists discovered inconsistent results in breast tumour samples.

Crosbie, who represents 47 of about 80 women behind the class-action lawsuit, will argue for its certification in a St. John's court next week.

Source: Canadian Press

More News in this Category