UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Tuesday, April 11, 1995
7A
Misread Pap smears end in tragedy
The Associated Press
MILWAUKEE — Honoring Karin Smith's dying wish, an inquest jury is recommending homicide charges against those who misread the Fap smears that could have saved her life and that of another woman.
The district attorney is expected to decide this week whether to file charges against the laboratory, a technician and the doctor in charge of the lab in the case of Smith and Dolores Geary, both of whom died of cervical cancer.
District Attorney E. Michael McCann charged that the women were victims of indifference and blatant errors. An expert testified at the inquest that the laboratory missed unmistakable signs of cancer.
The American Medical Association said it knew of only one previous case in which criminal charges were filed against a doctor for a mistake, and none against laboratories or technicians.
Smith died March 8 at age 29 after asking McCann to launch the investigation. She testified before a congressional committee a year ago that she was dying because her health maintenance organization didn't have the Pap smears diagnosed correctly.
"It was her wish for someone to pursue this because she felt it went beyond negligence," said her father, Jorgen Knudsen.
"She didn't want it to happen to anyone else," said her mother, Marlene Knudsen.
McCann said the inquest jury of six laymen was the first in Wisconsin to consider criminal charges for a fatal misdiagnosis.
Lawsuits and other civil actions are the usual course of action in cases of negligence and errors. The Smith and Geary families settled lawsuits against the women's HMO and the lab; Smith and her husband got $6.3 million, the Gearys, $3.5 million.
AMA general counsel Kirk Johnson said the usual punishment for negligent doctors or technicians is for licensing boards to take away their credentials.
"They're basically just banished from their profession. It's a pretty serious sanction." Johnson said.
In the only prior case of criminal charges against a doctor, Dr. Gerald Einaugher of New York was ordered last month to spend 52 weekends in jail for reckless endangerment and other offenses in the death of a nursing home patient. He mistook a dialysis tube
for a feeding tube and pumped food into her abdomen.
Johnson questioned the need for criminal charges without willful misconduct, saying the criminal justice system isn't set up to handle such cases.
"It seems to me, you have a state medical board ... designed to deal with this very kind of thing. If you can find this element of willfulness and knowledge, obviously a criminal case can be made," he said. "It sounds like what you have here is very bad practice or negligence, and you have a pretty effective remedy" in lifiting doctors' licenses.
During last week's three-day inquest, experts testified that cancer was evident in the Pan smears
— gynecological tests for cervical cancer — years before Smith and Geary had their diseases diagnosed.
Florida liability law keeps boy,11, in hospital for 10 years
The Associated Press
MIAMI — Justin Bates was a baby when he was rushed to a hospital with an asthma attack 10 years ago. He has been there ever since, unable to see, speak or walk.
A bureaucratic battle that has gone from the courts to the statehouse has kept the semi-comatose boy, now 11, institutionalized while his family tries to bring him home.
"They've taken my son, and they don't want to give him back," Cynthia Mendat said Wednesday from
her Coral Springs, Fla., home. "They're spending money to fight me from having him."
Mendat has tried for years to get the money needed for home care for her son, who suffered severe brain damage in 1985 when his oxygen supply was cut off because of an improperly inserted ventilator tube.
A jury in 1900 found Broward General Medical Center at fault and awarded Justin $6.3 million.
But the hospital is run by the North Broward Hospital District, a county agency. And Florida law says government entities cannot
be held responsible for more than $200,000 without legislative approval.
In the past two years, the agency has beaten attempts in court and in the Legislature to make it pay. A legislative committee votes today on a bill to give Justin and his family at least part of the jury award.
Two previous claim bills have been killed.
"There's no amount of money that could compensate her for losing her child, essentially," saidouse Claims Committee member Feren. "But dealing with
taxpayer dollars, we have to try to come up with something that's fair and reasonable to provide for the child and mother."
Justin's case has been cited as an example of how laws that try to protect taxpayers by limiting the liability of government agencies can backfire against the neediest people. Broward said its other patients would suffer if it had to make the full payment for the boy.
Justin needs 24-hour medical assistance. His mother has no insurance, and without the jury award, she cannot afford to bring him home.
Disputes rise about monitoring gay clubs
The Associated Press
NEW YORK — A decade after many of New York City's gay bathhouses and sex clubs were shut down to prevent AIDS, they're back, along with fierce arguments among gay men about what to do about them.
Some activists say the government should monitor sexual activity in such clubs because the survival of a new generation of gay men is at stake. They want forbid all oral and anal sex, whether condoms are used.
Opponents of a crackdown say there's nothing wrong with men having sex in bars and clubs as long as they're using condoms. They say men are just as likely to have unsafe sex with a lover in a bedroom as with a stranger in a back room.
In the mid-1980s, New York, San Francisco and other cities closed bathhouses and other clubs where oral and anal intercourse without condoms had been common long before AIDS.
Now, while the city doesn't have an official count, activists
The action followed a brusping debate pitting club supporters, including many gay political leaders, against other prominent gay men, such as "And the Band Played On" author Randy Shilts. He felt the clubs had to be closed to slow the AIDS epidemic.
estimate that there are 30 to 50 clubs in New York where sex is occurring.
Many are a new type of club that emerged at the end of the 1980s, "essentially mutual masturbation or group masturbation places," said Jim Eigo, a writer and AIDS activist who was one of 400 people at a community forum held to debate the issue last month.
"There's very little anal sex, and all the anal sex that I see in these clubs is protected," he said.
The debate flared in February, when the West Side Club opened in New York. It's a 1970s-style bathhouse with private cubicles where patrons' sexual practices can't be monitored.
Gabriel Rotello, former editor of the now-defunct gay magazine Outweek, wrote in New York Newsday that during a visit to another sex club, Zone DK, he had witnessed a murder-suicide — two men having unprotected sex.
Rotello and others are campaigning to force the clubs to comply with the state health code, which prohibits oral, anal or vaginal sex in commercial establishments.
Neither Paul Gallucio, who owns the West Side Club, nor Michael Fesco, promoter of Zone DK, returned repeated calls.