Gould’s Doctors Cleared By Jury

A medical malpractice suit brought against two doctors at a Harvard-affiliated hospital on behalf of a deceased Harvard professor was resolved Friday, ending in the exonerations of the doctors and awarding no damages to the plaintiff after nearly five years of legal battles.

In May 2002, renowned evolutionary biologist Stephen J. Gould died at age 60 from lung cancer just 10 weeks after doctors found the tumor, which had already spread to his liver, brain, and other organs. His wife, Rhonda Roland Shearer, brought suit three years later, claiming that the lesion that became cancerous was already evident in an X-ray taken of Gould’s chest in Feb. 2001.

Shearer named three doctors in the suit—Rebecca L. Dyson, who had examined chest X-rays taken in Feb. 2001 at Harvard-affiliate Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Harvard Medical School professor Robert J. Mayer, an oncologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute who had been Gould’s physician since 1993; and Salvatore G. Viscomi, who was exonerated earlier.

After deliberating for nearly five hours, the jury determined that neither doctor had been negligent, according to a clerk at the Mass. Middlesex Superior Court, where the trial was held.

“We are grateful that the jury looked at all the evidence and confirmed our view that Dr. Mayer provided high quality, appropriate, and compassionate care,” Dana-Farber spokesman Steven R. Singer said.

Mayer and Dyson’s lawyer William J. Dailey, Jr., credited the win to “very strong expert testimony on the part of the defendants indicating that they had complied with all practices at all times.”

The suit has been in the works since it was first filed in May 2005, and the trial itself lasted three weeks —an average length of time for a medical malpractice suit, according to the court’s clerk.

Gould had battled serious health issues earlier in his life. In 1982 he was diagnosed with abdominal mesothelioma, a cancerous growth in the tissue coating many organs that usually comes about as a result of asbestos exposure.

Gould recovered from the mesothelioma and “functioned at a very high level,” according to Dailey. Doctors at Dana-Farber, including Mayer, continued to follow Gould’s health. But Gould also suffered from small bowel obstructions, which Dailey described as painful and debilitating intestinal blockages, and was hospitalized in New York in March 2002 for his sixth such obstruction when the lung cancer was ultimately found, already at the final stage of progression.

Gould, a winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for “The Mismeasure of Man,” developed the theory known as “punctuated equilibrium,” which describes evolution as a sporadic, jerky process over a period of time rather than a smooth, gradual change in traits.


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Mesothelioma victim fighting for compensation

A former mill worker employed at a paper mill in Camas, Washington, has been awarded $10.2 million in compensation after developing mesothelioma, a rare but aggressive form of cancer. However, an appeal is expected, delaying the compensation. The man, Henry Barabin, worked in Camas for 16 years, and during his time at the paper mill his work involved him cleaning an asbestos ribbon with compressed air. At the time, the mill was operated by Crown Zellerbach, but is today run by Georgia Pacific.

Barabin was diagnosed in 2006. Mesothelioma is nearly always caused by exposure to asbestos, a mineral fiber widely used in construction and manufacturing. While average Americans did not know about the health risks associated with asbestos exposure until the 1970s, there is evidence that companies using the material may have known about the risks for decades prior to that, but did nothing to protect their workers.

According to Barabin's lawyer, James Nevin, "Asbestos is very strong, durable. The problem is, those same propensities - it has them when it is inhaled into your body. People like [Barabin], who were exposed years ago, are still going to be developing diseases, because they are such long-latency diseases. Most doctors don't know to even ask about history of asbestos exposure. [At-risk workers] need to be assertively telling their doctor, 'I need to be monitored for this.'"

"They [the company] knew in the 1920s that asbestos dust released from products was causing asbestosis," he added. "They knew in the '30s that it was causing lung cancer. And by 1960 they knew it caused mesothelioma."


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