Speaking from Cancer

by emptywheel

Update: Here's Murray's own take.

It almost seems like Howie didn't have the heart to do it, to insinuate that Murray Waas' past struggles with cancer influence his current reporting. But true to his smarmy self, Howie musters up several suggestions that the cancer has compromised Murray's reporting.

For a reporter whose specialty is digging out secrets, Murray Waas has been keeping one about himself for a long time.

[snip]

It's hard to say where the line should be drawn when it comes to such an intensely personal disclosure. Did Waas's near-death experience, and subsequent complications, affect his journalism? How could such a searing experience not change your outlook on work and life?

[snip]

Waas acknowledges that the disease influenced him in the late 1980s when he was writing for the Boston Globe about the collapse of Florida health care facilities where some cancer patients had died. "I wrote that as someone who my family and doctors thought was certainly going to die from cancer," he says. "Is it relevant to my work when I report on national security, foreign policy or politics? I don't think so."

But the lines are not so easily drawn. In one of several conversations, Waas says his near-death experience made him more determined to report on how the country got into both Persian Gulf wars, with their life-and-death stakes. After watching on Capitol Hill when the Gulf War resolution was approved in 1991, Waas interviewed two men at the Vietnam War Memorial who said two of their friends had died in that war and questioned why the United States was getting into another one. He saw in this "the mirror image of my own life" -- the unresolved questions about why his cancer was missed -- and vowed to fully investigate the war.

As someone who has a pretty good understanding of where Murray's coming from, let me just tell Howie to fuck off.

You see, I too write as a cancer survivor. Like Murray, I was misdiagnosed. When I showed a doctor my 1 cm breast lump in 1997, at the age of 29, he said I was too young to have breast cancer and said that my primary care physician, who suggested I get an ultrasound (which as I've discovered was standard of care at the time for someone with my symptoms), "didn't know what she was talking about." He said this in spite of the fact that two immediate family members had already gone through cancer.

I am very very lucky that my body fought the cancer well on its own. When I was finally diagnosed five years later (after getting better health insurance), the lump had grown to 4 cm, but hadn't metastasized beyond one lymph node in my armpit. I wasn't diagnosed with terminal cancer--my chances of dying in 5 years probably went from 5% to 35% with the misdiagnosis (talk to me in May 2008 to see how I did meeting that prognosis). But a misogynist doctor denied me care in order to save his HMO money, and had my cancer been as aggressive as it usually is in women my age, I would be dead now.

So perhaps Howie would insinuate that the lines are tough to draw with my own reporting. Perhaps he would say that anything I add to this discussion would just reflect my own bias.

No. My history with cancer has affected my blogging on three specific matters:

• It has made me very critical of claims that malpractice is ruining doctors. I was unable to sue the doctor who refused me standard of care treatment precisely because it took so long to diagnose. I know this guy had treated at least one other woman with the same overtly woman-hating disdain, within weeks of when he did it to me. I have reason to believe (but never got the subpoena power to prove it) that he treated more women the same way. For all I know, he continues to do so, because the medical industry doesn't remove the serial problems. If we had a working malpractice system, he would not be practicing medicine, and people like me would have paid $10,000 to treat cancer instead of the $75,000 my insurance eventually paid.
• It has made me very critical of the carcinogens the computer industry and the agriculture industry release into our environment. My father, who had a prominent role in designing computers for a HALaciously big computer company, talked openly about the radiation from monitors causing his brain tumor (the tumor first formed at the point where the rays from the two monitors he worked with intersected). He said, of the personal computer he helped design, "we knew the radiation emanating from the screens was too high. We fixed it. But when we released that computer, we knew the radiation was too high." And this same company has a very big cancer cluster associated with its chip manufacture. So I'm rather disgusted by claims that computers are a "clean" industry.
• I'm equally critical of big agriculture. But here, too, my family shares the blame. The pesticides and herbicides my Ag Scientist grandfather experimented with almost certainly contributed directly to my mother's own Parkinson's disease. And I'm well aware that those same chemicals have contributed to cancers in other people. So I feel very strongly about supporting organic agriculture. I don't have the right to ask farmers to suffer from cancer or Parkinson's because they grow my food. No one has that right.

These explicit positions show up in my commenting, not in my blogging (unless you count my outspoken support for sustainability). By my past history with cancer does not directly affect my reporting on the Iraq War or the Plame Affair, as Howie seems to suggest it has with Murray.

You see, there's a distinction here that Howie may not understand. Surviving cancer has made me a more serious person. It (along with my father's relatively early death from cancer) has forced me to consider the value and tenuousness of my own life. It has made me treat life--my own and that of others--with much more humility and awe. Yes, my fight with cancer has made me much more skeptical of war. But that comes from an awareness of my own mortality. That comes from an awareness of my own humanity, not reporter's bias.

Which is why I find it so disgusting that Howie (and others--trust me, there are others) want to claim that Murray's own fight with cancer compromises his work.

Would that we had more reporters who were aware of their own humanity, who were aware that politics and war and life and death aren't one great big game. Howie Kurtz should be celebrating the perspective Murray brings to his reporting, not besmirching it.

From Murray's own take.

While I was writing about the origins of the first Gulf War, it was a ritual, at least every other week, to sit at dusk, or dawn, with no one else around at the Vietnam War Memorial. Near the stone with the names of Randy Campbell and Carl Wenzel.

Now, covering the origins of the second war with Iraq, I have gone back to my ritual. One reason is that I simply feel fortunate. I survived cancer. I am not a name on a Wall or on a quilt.

One of the major problems with journalism today is that too many reporters care more about their constituencies, rather than their readers or their mission. We write for our peers and prize committees. We serve at the pleasure of corporate boards and stockholders. We are too often afraid to stray too far from the conventional wisdom.

If one were to catch a glimpse of me from some distance, at an early morning hour, at the Vietnam War Memorial, they would see someone sitting all by himself, alone. But I am hardly alone. And I am home. I am with my constituency.

Update 2: Here is Howie's defense.

A final note: I got a wave of hostile e-mail, which seems to have been triggered by some Web site, for yesterday's column on reporter Murray Waas disclosing that he had once battled what was diagnosed as terminal cancer and exploring whether that affected his journalism. Just to be clear: Waas contacted me and asked me to write about this, and wanted to explore the impact on his reporting, a subject on which he had mixed feelings. Don't take my word for it: He's got a long post up on the subject himself.

I think that's a great defense against people who thought Howie was unfairly ambushing Murray. But I want to make clear, that was not my complaint. My complaint is that Howie's judgment about the impact of cancer (or whatever major life struggle) on one's lifework completely misreads life-changing events as compromising bias. I felt, and still feel, that Howie's judgment demeans a very important part of human life and turns it into bias.

Comments

[DHinMI]

Clearly Kurtz' own experience with intellectual vapidity and narcissism has biased his view of people who are intellectually rigorous and possess great empathy.

[emptywheel]

DH

Only it's not Kurtz. This is a fairly organized smear, some time in the making. Yes, Kurtz is vapid. But he's also happy to propagate a smear, even one as absurd as this one.

[DHinMI]

BTW, regarding doctors complaining about malpractice hurting them, the American Medical Association's own data shows that malpractice costs haven't cut in to doctors' income one bit.

[mainsailset]

There resides in our family almost a clone of your story/ies. What struck me about Howie's perspective was (and I apologize up front for the sick logic) how it reminded me of the Coulter premise that the 9/11 widows should step back and let the pundits argue the issues of their husbands' deaths rather than take up the discourse themselves because their personal experience makes their participation irrefutable ... because I guess their participation is just too personal and therefore cannot reside in any debate. I don't get it. You, Murray and the 9/11 widows bring a seriousness to these discussions that distanced voices can never capture.

[Kagro X]

WTF? Is Kurtz just totally off his rocker, or what?

Roll out the files, Howie. You've just set a new standard. All reporters must disclose their medical histories.

And while we're at it, I suppose it's only natural to demand financial disclosure as well. I'm afraid I'm also going to need a list of your consumer preferences, as well. What you drive, what you eat, where you vacation. Everything. If having cancer can affect your reporting about non-cancer-related issues, then there's no reason in the world why your choice of summer vacation spots shouldn't be relevant as well.

Kurtz, that's the most retarded stretch I've ever seen anyone make in print. Bar none.

[mainsailset]

Just read Murray's piece, would have missed it without your link, thank you. Howie needs to leave the room quietly as Murray has, as usual, stopped the world on its axis for one precious humane moment.

[Hostile]

Thank you for sharing your story and thank you for telly Mr. Kaus to fuck off.

[kaleidescope]

Is the courtier media out of its mind? Kos was a kid in El Salvador; Waas had cancer? This supposedly brings their journalism into question? But having a wife who is a Republican Pary operative doesn't? This is idiocy.

[DHinMI]

kaleidescope, you're missing something important here: at least in Markos' case, those things didn't happen in DC, so they're just the stuff of legend. The only "real" things happen in DC (or, for those who don't live in Georgetown or Cleveland Park, Northern Virginia).

[orionATL]

kurtz's "charges" against murray waas are so stupid it is hard to explain why he would bother to make them.

i say this from this standpoint,

was there ever a human who did not change their thinking, develop an altered perspective on life, due to a major life experiences?

was there ever a soldier who was not changed by war?

was there ever a smoker neighbor limited by emphysema or a relative dying of cigarette-induced cancer whose experiences did not alter their views on their life and on the society that gifted them with cigarettes?

what could conceivably be wrong about altering your thinking (and writing, too, if you are as a reporter) based profound life experiences? to do so is as natural as breathing for humans.

has howard kurtz not been altered by being a teevee AND newspaper personality ("reporter" simply cannot be used to describe kurtz's type of career-loving media opportunist).

should a reporter actually avoid thinking or writing about matters related to a life-changing experience?

of course not. it is just these experiences that make for insightful, cant-free reporting.

i'll probably be laughed out of the weblog world as a conspiracy nut for seeing the malign hand of karl rove in this,

but i am confident rove and his rnc allies are behind these attacks on waas and kos.

i am surprised "next hurrah" and e'wheel have not also been attacked.

the strategy behind all such attacks, whether on reporters or politicians, is simply to create a record of doubt. it does not matter if the "charge" is false, or irrelevant, or downright stupid.

just create "the stain" in print. get the rumor started. then you can build on it later.

this is the absolute hallmark of rove's propaganda.

it is the same technique used in negative political ads. just create a bad impression of someone in your ad. the ignorant viewer won't know, or try to find out, the truth but will remember the negative comment about ... waas, gore, zuniga, joe wilson, john kerry, et al.

the current attack on gore and his global warming movie is out of the same cloth. create doubt among the ignorant (and conviction among the right-wing faithful).

the comforting truth about an attack such as this is that

if journalists carrying water for rove and company attack murtha, markos zuniga, murray waas, al gore, sen. reid, et al,

that can only mean that these people are being effective critics.

waas certainly has been effective in detailing fitzgerald's keelhauling of rove for going after valerie plame and joe wilson.

markos' site is not one i enjoy very much; it just too big to be fun. but the daily kos has made an enormous impact on the media.

and the daily kos's success has directly encouraged weblogs like next hurrah, talking points memo, the carpetbagger report, talk left, firedoglake, the left coaster, and dozens of others whose political and social reporting is so far above that of wapoop and the nyt(wit)times that those two print media "leaders" have virtually lost (pun is serendipitous)this reader and thousands of others entirely when it comes to political reporting.

weblogs reporting on economic policy and corporate shenanigans will, i hope, be next to receive the same highly competent and caring analysis that political reporting is now receiving from weblogs.

kurtz's charge is pointless, inane, and mean-spirited, but from the wapoop's standpoint it is useful because it may ignite a controversy, similar to that when a sports columnists calls a coach or player "savior", "incompetent", to dumb to chew tobacco ans spit, etc.

controversy hauls in readers.

kurtz's charge against waas is too stupid to merit retaliation. but if retaliation were called for, then the influence of kurtz's own major life experiences, specifically moving into teevee, on his reporting should be called into question.

[John Casper]

emptywheel, I am so sorry to hear of your battle with cancer.
I'm in complete agreement with your assessment of quality controls and physicians. If I understand correctly, U.S. physicians pay dues to the American Medical Association. The AMA in turn artificially limits the number of Medical School graduates each year. This in turn artificially lowers the number of new physicians, which of course increases the likelihood of errors/malpractice. Then physicians complain about the high cost of their malpractice insurance.
Rhetorical questions:
[1] have you looked into registering your complaints with your state licensing board? At least getting your complaints in there helps.
[2] have you considered asking John Dingell for help or at least making him aware of the situation?
[3] have you considered asking the major daily in your area to publish the story? They might not mention the guy's name, but at least it would generate some "heat/light" on the whole system. It also might bring some action against this guy from Criminal prosecution, which imo is more appropriate than Civil at least to begin with.
I ask these rhetorically as you have already disclosed much that is intensely private. I do not in any way wish to appear to presume to be intrusive. Knowing your competence, I suspect you have already taken these and other more appropriate remedies.
We all know you were a "survivor," I at least did not know how much that applied. Bloggers and our nation needs you. I pray for your continued recovery.

[emptywheel]

Orion

Not sure if Rove is behind it, but as I suggested, there were others out there preparing to push this story using the same ridiculous reasoning.

[mommybrain]

Murray's piece moved me to tears. Where do you suppose this is coming from (*cough Rove cough*)? I've heard rumors that the Dreier pushpoll against Russ Warner ("If you knew Warner's son had committed attrocities in Iraq, would you still vote for him?") came from *cough* that general direction.

Oh, and I intend to find you in 2008 and ask.

[Meteor Blades]

Can we all join your chorus, ew: "Howie, fuck off"? Or better yet, from now on, let's just call him Fuck-off-Howie.

As I always told my journalism students when we discussed "objectivity," every journalist - being human - is affected by how s/he was raised, by poverty or wealth, by culture, by education, by whether there was one parent or two or none at home, by skin color, by traumatic experiences, by how s/he has interacted with other people, by religion or lack of it, by being in combat or prison, by how many weddings, births and funerals s/he has been part of, by travel, by every big and lots of little events that s/he has witnessed or participated in.

So, Fuck-off-Howie, your column is one of two things, an attempt to denigrate somebody's reporting based on his bout with a deadly disease, or a statement of the utterly obvious. In either case, a waste of space and pixels, in one case, malicious, in the other, moronic.

[emptywheel]

mommybrain

And I intend to be here, fully healthy, to answer.

[TeddySanFran]

emptywheel, thank you for this eloquent post.

kurtz's take on compromised journalism is like cheney's on accurate quail-shooting.

this smells like rover.

[Mimikatz]

This (Kurtz) seems like yet another example of the experience-impaired trying to denigrate the life-changing experiences of others in order to make their own shallow lives seem to amount to something. A variant of the chicken-hawk syndrome.

Except that it is deeply political in intent, a particularly ugly form of what the Soviets used to practice, namely questioning the sanity of critics to the point of locking them up.

Rove's hand, indeed.

[DeanOR]

emptywheel said: It has made me treat life--my own and that of others--with much more humility and awe. Yes, my fight with cancer has made me much more skeptical of war. But that comes from an awareness of my own mortality."

Exactly. I've seen this in my own experiences, and even more so in my work with HIV/AIDS patients. I will never view life through the same lens again. Naturally, a reporter may not be able to work at times due to illness, but I have no doubt that your and Murray's experiences made you better at what you do and better people.

[SaltinWound]

I think Waas will be difficult to smear in any way, judging from the Plame panel. His basic humility and humanity take the weapon out of their hands, and he's done it again with this latest piece. I actually read Waas this morning on HuffPost, not even realizing it was a response to anything. Thanks for putting this in perspective, Wheel. That original doctor of yours sounds like a real asshole. And I know you don't bring up gender issues lightly, so he was obviously a misogynist as well. Made me angry just reading about it.

[kim]

Kurtz's jibes were pathetic, he's becoming the Bob Bennet of journalistic ethics. No wonder the DC media has come to resemble cows and sheep, little courage left in that crowd.

Sorry to learn of the personal stuff EW.

[viget]

EW--

Thank you for sharing your story. It also resonates with me as well; the breast cancer survivor patients of mine are among the most compassionate, courageous and amazing people I have ever met. They constantly inspire me to be a better doctor-to-be.

Echoing others on this thread, has Howie never had a life-changing experience that caused him to reassess everyhting he knew and did and change the way he lived his life? Has the outside world never influenced his work? If so, then I guess he really isn't a human after all.

And the "coordinated" smears of kos, Waas and the lefty blogosphere in general just brings to mind that famous Gandhi quote, "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, and then you win."

I guess we're passed the laughing at phase.

[marky]

Kurtz doesn't even make sense there, but the article is disgusting nonetheless.
By the way, of course you are right to be skeptical of claims that malpractice is ruining medicine. The sum of ALL malpractice awards, including settlements, is a fraction of 1% of all medical costs.

[orionATL]

of course.

rove is not likely to have directly orchestrated this little hit piece masquerading as washington gossip.

but then, when you have a lot of power and use it very actively to reward and punish,

you don't have to actually utter the words

"will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest."

to get good results.

in any event,

my concern is to point out

how widely practiced is the technique of applying "stains", large or small, to the reputation of a critic (richard clark was just selling his book; joe wilson was just using his wife's connections)

how it has a long history as the weapon of choice for rove and his college republican "colleagues" (and atwater before rove)

and how it has become the certain fate of an effective critics or of a dangerous opponent of the right wing political machine.

while i'm at it,

i'll add that the concept and practice of "disclosure" or "full disclosure" in journalism has become trivialized by the demand that a journalist reveal even the smallest personal events which may be related to the content of their reporting.

it has also become trivialized by the use of implied or stated charges of "unethical" activity as a weapon in public discourse, useful in drawing attention away from the substance of a reporter's critical writing.

and then there is the matter of scope and scale in ethics.

in our public discourse we really must distinguish between "not nice", "bad", and "really,really bad".

here, though, up often becomes down, white becomes black, and a charge of "unethical conduct" is a feint.

the trivial ethical misconduct (pres clinton's affair) is treated as an unforgivable lapse or failing for purposes of generating a political attack

while grotesque ethical lapses or failures (pres bush's speeches during his "attackirak" campaign) are not even labeled as lapses or failures, but as acceptable political activity.

important though ethics is in evaluating social conduct,

watching this ethics-as-a-weapon game play out over and over has left me with the feeling, cynical to be sure, that, in american politics, ethics, like patriotism, is too often the last refuge of scoundrels.

[margaret]

First, the malpractice thing: a plastic surgeon friend of mine once told me that malpractice was the reason American medicine was some of the best in the world. Doctors were held accountable in ways they aren't in other countries. So, malpractice is a good thing for everyone.

Second, The Waas piece at HuffPo was very touching, and a beautiful piece of writing because it had all of what you have described as essential, I think, to good writing or good reporting, a depth of humanity and a history of personal suffering on a heroic scale. Fighting for one's life, medically, or in war, or in the everyday world where values become so diluted and the discourse is so shallow, is heroic, and worthy of respect.

The attempts to discredit Waas and Greenwald, in another instance, are part of a scheme to undermine the solid voices of our political society. The smear is always around for people low enough to use it for their purposes. But, integrity has its own power. Its voice rings clear with authenticity.

[vachon]

Jeezuz, does Kurtz have no shame?

[Larisa Alexandrovna]

Since it would appear we are now under full attack by the Rove machine and singled out one by one, let me save old Kurtz the trouble: I have Lupus. More specifically, I have MCTD and like cancer patients, I have had to withstand massive chemo to get my flares under control. What is clear is that the Rove strategy this election cycle is to attack the alternative media and bloggers from the left. It is clear he is not going after the Dems, he does not need to. What he needs is to control the message, which has spun terribly out of alignment. So Rove has sent out his pay-per-ethic proxies and Bush rangers to do some ugly work. Grrr, I am so angry that someone's cancer should be the topic of a column. Kurtz is pathetic!

[desertwind]

The tone (and my wtf? reaction) reminds me of the piece Kurtz wrote the day after Jill Carroll's release.

The man is an ass.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2006/03/31/BL2006033100473.html

[Sara]

EW -- I too am a long term survivor, in fact a very long term survivor. In January, 1970 I had surgery and came to understand I had Malignant Melanoma -- third stage verging on stage four. Several years earlier I had the primary leasion removed, and it was misdiagnosed. I did sue, and took it to the State Supreme Court, and the upshot of my case is that we really don't have a "right" to diagnosis. But anyhow, when I was between 3rd and 4th stage in 1970 I was offered experimental chemotherapy, and after much this and that waying, I did the course (which took two years but was not all that horrible) and I guess it worked, because then I was 31 and now I am almost 68. I've had no reoccurance, but I can assure you that I stay totally out of the sun. Yep, I smoke, I drink, and I eat all the fancy foods that appeal to me, but I consider the sun my total enemy, and summertimes I even arrange to sleep during the day so as to not be tempted. I look at advertisments for vacations on sunny beaches and a cruise to the sun in winter as visitations from the devil. (I would love to go on a "The Nation" Cruise -- but could they arrange it for the Norwegian Fjords in January?") Even going to Pakistan and India in 1984-85 was difficult -- yea sunblock, but absolutely everything I wanted to see was in full sun. Ten minutes of sun and I feel the impact.

But the Cancer totally changed my life, simply because I had to spend a few years just doing the chemo and being dependent on the U of Minnesota Hospitals and all -- and then coming to understand that because I was understood as "expensive" in terms of health care, I was both uninsurable and unemployable if employment involved insurance. Actually I haven't cost anyone anything for the last 27 years.

But I have had some fun. My Chemotherapist had I think 11 children He was a Hitler Youth out of Northern Germany who came to do the US in the 40's. went to Creighton, His Dad had something to do with Strategic Air Command -- but he did grad school at the U of MN and stayed doing research and teaching. It turned out one of his daughters wanted to sue the Minneapolis Schools under title 9 for failure to provide equal sports support and facilities, and I got her a lawyer, and a batch of internes who would help research a successful case. My Chemotherapist and I have had very interesting conversations over the years. My Former Nazi Chemotherapist, to say the least, was not exactly accustomed to Feminist Daughters who were assisted by his patients.

Making matters more interesting, my Surgeon was about eight years old when Jews were required to clean cobblestones in Vienna with toothbrushes. And yea, of course he got out. Columbia Medical School, and then the Air Force, then Mayo and finally he met up with me in the student health service at the U. He was both research and staff. Invented the pump for diabetics. Not really an expert on Melanoma -- but in the 70's most of what they saw in Minnesota were farmers who spent too much time on tractors without shade. But I had then and now have never driven a tractor.

Surfers -- No I have never surfed except in the latter day sense of the net. I don't do that in the sun.

No -- there are just some of us who need to know that our genetics are such we should never go in the sun. Make for us the shaded beaches, The golf courses where we can pitch our balls into the shade as we progress toward a shaded hole. (My operation actually re-arranged many of the muscles in my left shoulder and Golf was how I actually re-arranged them and came to terms with them.)

But coming awake on the operating table seven hours after you were knocked out, (that's what big clocks are for,) and seeing a consulation going on about what could be done with you right off your left toe, Look there is no way anyone can comprehend this unless they have gone through it. Look, I got Chemotherapy approved for research that never got approved for general release. In otherwords it was mostly a failure, but I was 31 then and am nearly 68 now, and have no relapse. I am not conspiracy minded, I just think maybe staistics are a little screwy. (I smoke Virginia Slims Light, or Ultra Light)

[gizzardboy]

I don't want to make this another cancer surivor story, even though I am four years out from stage 4 lymphoma. The point is, we are all the products of our past experiences, and looking death ion the face can help one get a better perspective. As a teenager, a failed front tire just after flying down the road at 115 mph, made me a better driver (that was in the 1950's). The cancer thing makes you think a lttle more about what's important and when you ought to get at it,(I've been a world class procrastinator). If you go through life without learning some lessons along the way, you must be brain dead.

[emptywheel]

Sara

Thanks for sharing that. I knew you were a survivor. But it's a great story.

One more point about our right to diagnosis. I was fairly stoic about discovering I had not right to diagnosis. But what pissed me off was that my medical team couldn't talk about it. I had found the lump 5 years before diagnosis. They were unwilling to admit that (it was as if a ghost passed through the room every time I brought it up), because it would imply I should have been diagnosed and their colleague was negligent. But that meant that wasn't something they considered in my treatment. It was kind of creepy, and really undermined my trust in my doctors, who otherwise I trusted a great deal. (Well, I trusted the women doctors.)

[John Casper]

emptywheel, I hope you will consider releasing this physician's name here at tnh.
You have already released the facts about yourself. I realize this is not focussed on the zip codes of his patients, but it's the best we can do. A lot of your readers are very concerned about your life quality and life expectancy. We would like the "opportunity" to let this guy know how "deeply concerned" we are about his gross negligence. He's too chicken to sue you for slander. He knows that would only give you the right to "discovery" that the court has already blocked.
Everybody has leverage. It just isn't always exactly where we think it is.
This is a bad guy. Getting the word out about him, as much as is possible, only helps him experience the consequences of his actions. It also might trickle out to a few of his patients.

[Sara]

John, I disagree on naming names. What people need to know when they face medical decisions is less name, and more about how to ask questions about the right criteria. In my case the wrong diagnosis was made in a hospital lab on a lesion biopsy during a time when the regular and certified Pathologist was on vacation, and the substitute was not properly certified -- and the clinic and the surgeon did not know about the inadequate substitution. I actually suspect that surgeon would have been supportive had he been backed up by a proper lab -- but he had no control over that function at all. (and in the world of managed care, most don't.) In my case it was a system running the back room on the cheap that failed -- not the medical professional I dealt with personally.

By the way -- my lawsuit which I did not win, did produce results -- they closed the inadequate lab and bought lab services from a superior source within a few months of my filing. Eventually the hospital departed the scene, being taken over by a much larger and thus much more able to afford a strong lab system. Little hospitals don't generate enough volume to support proper labs -- but nice big ones like a huge teaching hospital have most of the bells and whistles, plus certified and experienced staff. Moreover, remember my experience is early 1970's, and since then many changes have taken place -- good and bad. But the key is for the consumer to know criteria, know how to ask good questions, and make the system dance the polka.

EW's experience is interesting because her first "diagnosis" (mis) was dependent on judgement -- a doctor feels a lump and based on past experience, makes a judgment. That's actually too much dependence on art as opposed to science. A Biopsy is not all that expensive, and it certainly is not major surgery, and more and more various tests that are even less invasive are available that should be cheap, automated and commonplace. I also suspect (though I understand the dangers here) that genetic testing should eventually be able to tell us precisely what we are prone to -- and what thusly should concern us. In the 1970's for instance, they knew that Melanoma very rarely occurred among Mediterranean and Middle Eastern peoples -- but it was much more common among White Russians, Scandinavians, Scots, Brits and Irish. That was very crude genetics, but at the time they were just beginning to build statistical indexes. Since then, they have become more sophisticated, and the public needs to demand that the NIH funded research on things like this be turned into just much better diagnostics, and that the means to deliver them be cheap and widely available.

Since 1970 when I first became aware of Melanoma (sadly), it has become a much more widespread problem -- something I lay off on the notion that a Beach Holiday is "healthy" and that if you can't afford that in mid winter, you can, of course, use a tanning bed. Sunburns and deep tans are cumulative, The little kid who gets burned during a Beach trip does damage that does not go away when the blisters heal over. In my case, social life during my High School summers very much involved sitting around at one of several swimming pools, trying to "tan" with a mixture of Iodine and Johnson's Baby Oil. Frankly, I would have much rather have been at the library, but my mother insisted on my being social. I still love swimming, but only after 6PM, and not on a reflective beach. (one attraction of Minnesota is lots of beaches with no sand, and where the pine woods come right up to the water. You can actually have a nice swim in good water without leaving the shade.)

There are so many lessons we have not talked about yet that are involved here. One I found of interest was a sense of time. Not being able for a number of years to actually expect a long life I found the conversion to short span thinking of great interest. It took me a long long time to accept the rational of buying IRA's every year -- for What???? --- Old Age??? What old age???? Sadly, I have arrived.

In the early 1980's one of the members of my PHD Committee -- a Gay Anthropologist -- introduced me to AIDS at the time it was called GRID, and together we founded an AIDS service organization. At the time -- about 1983, I was the only person he knew who had essentially made the Academic Medical system work for me, and had been reasonably successful, and he wanted to do more than just teach anthropology. And what interested me in him was that he had done his field work in India, and I was bound and determined to spend a long season there, having then studied it for 30 years. We founded a home delivered meals program that used church related volunteers. What that meant was not only did home bound AIDS Patients get fed really good food every day -- but they also got a human visit. (You have to imagine me and my Committee Member out in my back yard clipping Grape Leaves off the wild vines, and then par-boiling them, and stuffing them, and then having them delivered to home bound persons with AIDS. I should add that I used political connections to get access to the DNR's Deer Kill, and got the butchers at a Catholic Hospital to turn Deer into Venison Roasts.) -- no Hot Dish or sausage and Mac in our program. Almost all my work was before the drug cocktails came available, and thus some folk actually survived -- but everything I knew about Cancer went into the model we created. We have to make politics of what we know by whatever means. And we can't do that unless we talk about all the lessons learned. It looks to me like the blogosphere is filled with cancer survivors, and we ought to "use the power."

[John Casper]

Sara, thanks for the response.

[readerOfTeaLeaves]

EW, Thanks for your insights. Howie K must live a small, mean, and timid life. You evidently live a much larger one.

I live in a region of the US where there have been quite a few Ukranian emigrants, some from the area affected by Chernobyl. I'm told this group of immigrants is placing heavy demands on local health care agencies, due to their high cancer rates. Personally, I think the MSM view of Reagan having 'defeated' the Soviet Union is myopic and flawed. With more time and perspective, I have a strong hunch that the disintigration of the Soviet Empire will be much better understood to result from corruption, crap science, and poor engineering. All 3 combined in Chernobyl, and we've all seen the results. I can say plenty of rotten things about the Soviets, but primary among my reasons for viewing them darkly is that they have no tradition of environmental protections.

I know downwinders in two states: Utah, and Washington. If you ever have the courage, read "Refuge," by Terry Tempest Williams (a Mormon who writes about being among the Clan of One Breasted Women -- mostly Mormons, who lived and worked downwind of nuclear testing in Nevada/Utah in the 1950s and 1960s).

There are powerful voices emerging -- not only on blogs, but in a wide range of publications -- writing about the nexus between environmental degradation and cancers. If Tempest Williams can write with compassion and outrage about cancers affecting devout, law-abiding Mormon's in her part of the US, it's symptomatic that these are no longer 'lefty' topics.

I rather suspect that Sen. Harry Reid is well aware of these dynamics, as many Mormon women have developed breast cancers that have become extremely aggressive in their childbearing years, when the body's metabolism jolts during pregnancy. Whether many other political leaders grasp the nexus between the environment and increasing cancer rates is unclear.

You've put your experience to good use. And given the times in which we live, you have plenty more work ahead of you.

[readerOfTeaLeaves]

EW, Apologies for a second post, but I happened to come on to your site late, late in the night and commented without having fully read Waas' article, and also Kurtz. Although I can see your frustration with Kurtz, my view (with more sleep and a new read) has changed. I think that many readers (unfamiliar with Kurtz, as I am) will read the article with rapt attention -- impressed by Waas' dedication, decency, courage, perseverence, integrity and the magnitude of what he was up against.

I retract my previously posted remarks about Kurtz; however, I have the sense that Kurtz has not spent very much time in hospitals, nor does he seem to fully grasp that many people who have undergone serious health problems lose their tolerance for bullshit.

There are growing numbers of cancer survivors, which is the good news. I know several "former Glo Girls" who are doing quite well, but their personal experiences have focused their attention to environmental issues, whereas Waas focused on military and national security topics. Friends and family who have had to grapple with such serious decisions have zero tolerance for being lied to, and place a very high value on accurate information. That's the nexus I don't think Kurtz quite grasps, but you and Waas are both articulate enough to help educate him.

Apologies for two long comments.

[Dr Jeff Aitkin]

My friends father died of Asbestos related illness and cancer. I inspired me to delve into the available research and information on how these terrible events might be avoided or life extended.

From what i have read of the published medical data and research, particularly that conducted in China and Japan there is a great deal of evidence to support complimentary immune therapy, especially with infections and cancer. I've been following with some interest the development of a complimentary cancer treatment that has been designed in liason with the University of Newcastle (Australia) and although a somewhat different approach to the above outlined treatment the concept and the deliberate and effective use of natural elements in the product are similar. If you have an interest in this field or perhaps just want to keep abreast of a new treatment you may find www.mc-s.com.au fairly worthwhile reviewing.