Any DUers following the black lung cover up and Johns Hopkins

[malaise]

http://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/10/30/13637/johns-hopkins-medical-unit-rarely-finds-black-lung-helping-coal-industry-defeat

Across Laurel Creek and down a dirt road in this sleepy valley town is the modest white house where Steve Day grew up. For more than 33 years, it was where he recuperated between shifts underground, mining the rich seams of the central Appalachian coalfields and doing his part to help make Peabody Energy Corp. the nation’s most productive coal company. Now, it’s where he spends most days and nights in a recliner, inhaling oxygen from a tank, slowly suffocating to death.

More than a half-dozen doctors who have seen the X-ray and CT images of his chest agree he has the most severe form of black lung disease. Yet his claim for benefits was denied in 2011, leaving him and his family to survive on Social Security and a union pension; they sometimes turn to neighbors or relatives for loans to make it through the month.

The medical opinions primarily responsible for sinking his claim didn’t come from consultants-for-hire at a private firm or rogue doctors at a fringe organization.

They came from a respected household name: the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions.


What has remained in the shadows is the work of a small unit of radiologists who are professors at the medical school and physicians at the hospital. For 40 years, these doctors have been perhaps the most sought-after and prolific readers of chest films on behalf of coal companies seeking to defeat miners’ claims. Their fees flow directly to the university, which supports their work, an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity and ABC News has found. According to the university, none of the money goes directly to the doctors.
----------------
The working poor have very few friends. These scumbags get rich killing people.

[Judi Lynn]

1. Your link is appreciated. Thank you. n/t

[malaise]

2. Hi there

[newfie11]

3. Is there anyone in this country not sold out to big corporations... Nt

[malaise]

8. Yes there are a few people

Bob Casey is fighting this
http://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/11/05/13685/senators-push-reform-black-lung-program-failed-sick-miners
<snip>
U.S. senators are crafting legislation to reform the black lung benefits program, using a series of reports by the Center for Public Integrity and ABC News as a guide, Sen. Robert Casey said Monday.

“The system didn't work” for ailing miners, Casey said. “Their government failed them as well as their company failing. So we have, I think, an abiding obligation to right this wrong.”

Casey, D-Pa., said he is working with Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., to identify gaps in a bill previously introduced by Rockefeller and to strengthen the legislation to better protect miners.

The U.S. Labor Department is helping the senators with the bill, the department's top lawyer said Monday.

Meanwhile, government and union officials kept the pressure on Johns Hopkins Medicine, which announced Friday it was suspending its program of reading X-rays for black lung, pending a review, in response to the Center-ABC investigation. Doctors in a unit at Johns Hopkins Hospital have amassed a long record of reading coal miners' X-rays as negative for severe black lung, the Center-ABC probe found.

[Enthusiast]

24. Very few.

[B Calm]

4. My grandfather had black lung from working the coal mines

in the early part of the last century. The coal mine owner threaten the miners to vote republican or he would have to layoff miners. That's when my grandfather discovered he was a democrat.

[malaise]

6. This is so sad

Read the comments at the end - I agree Dr Wheeler should lose his license - greed and arrogance are a terrible combination.

[MerryBlooms]

5. Holy shit

Just fucking heartbreaking.

[malaise]

7. THis is way more than heart breaking

This is arrogance and corruption on steroids.

[MerryBlooms]

9. yes

My first reply contained lots of swearing and frog marching orders. After I cleaned up all the anger, I was left with the sadness.

[xchrom]

10. yes -- sad this is happening. nt

[abelenkpe]

11. Those coal companies should be driven out of business

And charged with crimes which put the owners in jail. The doctors that enabled this should also be jailed.

[jsr]

12. And Johns Hopkins defends the corrupt asshole.

[malaise]

13. Read everything

It was quite profitable for the hospital.

[get the red out]

14. Disgusting

Both my grandfathers suffered from black lung from the mines. This is just disgusting.

I will be lucky if I don't flip the bird at the next "Friends of Coal" license plate owner I see. I had no idea about this.

[sorefeet]

15. The hipocratic oath

"to do no harm nor injustice" means absolutely NOTHING. And if you think YOUR doctor will honor the oath, just let profits or corporate policy be challenged

[ReRe]

16. I know there have been documentaries....

.... covering the issue of black lung and maltreatment of the victims of it, but they need to make another one. Like an extended Frontline episode on PBS. Hell, get Ken Burns to do it! We have got to use these instances, these horror stories, proving the point of what privatizing of the medical field has done and is doing to this country and to our people. That's right, Ken Burns. Someone needs to tackle the issue of privatization, once and for all. Or hows about Oliver Stone? Someone respected, with their story-telling expertise, to explain to the people of the USA what privatization is and how it is killing people!

Thanks for this article, malaise.

K&R

[Dustlawyer]

17. All Asbestos and silica claims all got screwed when a Federal Judge got hold of a quack

Plaintiffs doctor several years ago. She just assumed ALL OF THE CASES were fraud. Both sides so called experts will say whatever (some, not all). These days corruption is everywhere, and the regular folk suffer for it!

[WCLinolVir]

18. Good thread. People ask me all the time why I don't work in the medical field.

And I have to educate them as to just how much bs you have to deal with. It isn't the patients, it's the politics. It's the corporate structure. It's the vow of silence you take when you see Dr. X or nurse Y injure or put a patient at risk. A scary read that should be read by all is Unaccountable-by Marty Makary, MD.
It just blows me away that the treating doctor is not demanding imaging beyond an x-ray.
I find it troubling that the judges rely upon x-ray interpretation. It should be mandatory to have a bronchoscopy which is a less invasive means of getting a tissue sample. And it should be at the expense of the mining company.
I have read that miners don't want to get x-rays for fear of having the company know, so they don't catch the disease till later. Just awful.

[Mopar151]

19. A simple question for mine operators

" Is this how you treat the people who make you your money?"

[Enthusiast]

25. They answered that question over a century ago.

Look at the history. Look at the poverty in Appalachia. How did the decades of coal mining benefit the people of Appalachia long term? Are they healthier, wealthier or more educated? Look at the statistics. The mine owners have never benefited the miners—ever. West Virginia is the most impoverished state of all. This is what happens when mine owners rule.

[Mopar151]

30. It was a rhetorical question......

Would do as well for Wal-Mart.

[Enthusiast]

35. I guess the answer is, yes, that is how they treat those that made them their money.

They could care less.

[Lugnut]

20. Black lung killed my dad.

He slowly suffocated to death in 1982.

[malaise]

21. How sad

[Blue_Tires]

22. mentioned here as well:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=3978500

[cynatnite]

23. I think it was NBC that did a special report on this not long ago...

It was outrageous to watch. I was fuming before it finished.

[a kennedy]

26. I always revered John Hopkins, now, it's nothing but a money grabbing institution of death

regarding black lung. and this is so true "The working poor have very few friends. These scumbags get rich killing people." edit for grammar

[malaise]

29. Same here

This was an eye opener

[wercal]

27. I saw a Nightline feature on this last week

A lot of people here are blaming the mining companies...but it takes two to tango. The "prestigious" Johns Hopkins hospital whored itself out, one X-ray at a time. Both the mining companies and the hospital should be staring down the barrel of a class action lawsuit.

Now onto unintended consequences. In those mountains, there is an alternative to crawling into the earth for coal...its called Mountaintop Removal Mining. Will the coal companies use black lung as an excuse to do more of this? Time will tell.

[malaise]

28. +1,000

It's way too sad

[arthritisR_US]

31. I guess they forgot their oath to do no harm...

pigs!

[malaise]

32. I find it frightening that so many human beings are willing to betray

poor people for material benefits and that sense of self importance.
THey are worse than pigs.

[arthritisR_US]

36. Others welfare means nothing in their

pursuit of the almighty dollar. I think they missed their calling, those whores of destruction.

[yawnmaster]

33. here is a statement from John Hopkins...

http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/abc_news_report_b-reads_pneumoconiosis_statement.html

[X_Digger]

34. My great grandfather and grandfather both put in 30 years in the mines.

My great grandfather (mother's side) at Matewan, War Eagle (WV), and Hurley (VA). My grandfather (father's side) was at Roseann for 28 years then 4 at the Jewell coke ovens.

http://www.coalcampusa.com/swva/buchanan/buchanan.htm

[malaise]

37. X_diggers both - hard work - a hard life

[Skidmore]

38. I heard a report on this a few days ago.

There is not a punishment horrible enough for this hospital and its doctors that would render justice for the suffering they put these miners and their families through.

[malaise]

39. +1,000