Phony Medical Testimony, or Phony NYT Article?

Check out Jonathan D. Glater's Nov. 29 New York Times piece: "Reading X-Rays in Asbestos Suits Enriched Doctor." Most readers of this front-page story would conclude that its subject, Dr. Ray A. Harron, 73, a graduate of New York Medical College who practiced as a radiologist for more than 30 years, is a crook.

Here is an edited excerpt from the article; its indications are damning:

About a decade ago, Dr. Harron gradually stopped seeing patients and instead adopted what turned out to be a much more lucrative practice: reading X-rays full time. He reviewed as many as 150 X-rays a day, or one every few minutes, and produced medical reports for $125 each. Some of his reports supported claims by more than 75,000 people seeking compensation for lung injury caused by inhalation of asbestos. For his work, he probably earned millions of dollars over the years.

In the eyes of defense lawyers fighting some of those claims, Dr. Harron was not a professional rendering an independent opinion, but a vital cog in a multibillion-dollar lawsuit machine. They contend that Dr. Harron's X-ray evaluations are unreliable at best, fraudulent at worst.

The defense lawyers are not the only ones who have questioned Dr. Harron's work. This summer, a federal judge found that Dr. Harron "failed to write, read, or personally sign" reports supporting 6,350 claims by people saying they had inhaled silica, another potentially dangerous material.

Critics of plaintiffs' lawyers have portrayed the sweeping product liability litigation over asbestos and silica as an effort to game a system set up to compensate injured workers. Defense lawyers have criticized expert witnesses and diagnosing doctors in the past for supporting lawsuits that the lawyers say lack merit.

While Dr. Harron rarely appeared in court, his medical reports were clearly crucial to tens of thousands of claims. Court documents in the asbestos and silica litigation show the critical role that can be played by doctors, who are less often maligned than the lawyers who hire them.

Litigation involving asbestos, and more recently, silica, has grown into a huge business. Over the last 30 years, more than 700,000 claims have been filed involving inhalation of asbestos, a fire-retardant material that can cause a particularly pernicious form of lung cancer, and more than $70 billion has been spent on asbestos litigation - $49 billion as compensation, according to the Rand Corporation.

Article Author: Uriel Wittenberg

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