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Judge orders return of silicosis records
Firm delivers 1,900 X-rays from Houston
By Neal Falgoust Caller-Times
August 23, 2005 - U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack threatened to hold a Houston attorney in contempt of court Monday after learning that the attorney had removed medical records in a massive silicosis lawsuit from a secure depository.
Jack then ordered federal marshals to escort the attorney, Scott Hooper, from her courtroom while he made arrangements to have the documents returned from Houston to Corpus Christi. Hooper also was ordered not to leave Corpus Christi until the documents arrived, which they did.
By about 4:30 p.m., more than 1,900 X-rays had arrived back at a local attorney's office. It was unclear exactly how many X-rays Hooper had removed.
The documents, which were placed in the depository during the discovery process for the lawsuit, included X-rays of people who claim to have been injured by exposure to silica dust.
A federal grad jury in Manhattan is investigating the procedures doctors used in diagnosing those plaintiffs and have contacted Jack's court about reviewing discovery evidence in the depository. Jack had ordered those documents to remain in the depository because of the pending federal investigation.
"I have to be real careful about what happens to these documents," Jack said. "If you have to pilot a jet to get them back here, you will do that."
After the hearing, Hooper criticized Jack, saying his firm had done nothing wrong by taking documents that it voluntarily placed in the depository. He also said she did not have the authority in the cases to order the documents remain in Corpus Christi.
"This is a continued abuse of her authority," Hooper said of Jack's threat.
Monday's hearing was the latest in a series involving thousands of plaintiffs who are claiming they were exposed to silica dust and suffer from a potentially fatal lung disease called silicosis. Jack scheduled Monday's hearing in a 249-page order she issued in July, in which she criticized the plaintiffs' attorneys and the doctors who worked with them in diagnosing the clients. Jack said the sloppy work done by the doctors seemed to be aimed more at making money rather that seeking justice.
"These diagnoses were about litigation rather than healthcare," she wrote.
A federal grand jury is looking into whether the doctors' behavior involved criminal misconduct. Jack has said the doctors' testimony during a February hearing raised "great red flags of fraud."
A congressional committee also has written to the doctors seeking explanations of the diagnoses.
The cases were filed in several state district and federal district courts around the country, but primarily in Mississippi and Alabama. Because Jack did not have proper jurisdiction in some of the cases, she has sent them back to the state courts for further proceedings.
Defense attorney Fred Krutz said Monday his team intends to use Jack's July ruling to fight those state-court battles. It has asked the Mississippi Supreme Court to consolidate the cases in front of one judge and will attempt to have Jack's order carried into state court.
"Any judge looking at the record will conclude the same thing that Judge Jack did," he said.
Contact Neal Falgoust at 886-4334 or falgoustn@caller.com
Living with COPD
By: Diana Palotas, RNews
3/4/2006 - Where Nancy Felluca goes, her oxygen tank goes too, even to work out.
Felluca said, "My life must have changed. It probably changed before I was on oxygen and I didn't realize it. And when you get to be the age I am in..."
When she was in her early 70s, Felluca started slowing down and losing her breath. She has chronic bronchitis and emphysema -- together they're called COPD, or Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease.
Felluca said, "My lungs will never get better. But to increase my energy it has been great for me."
One pulmonary rehabilitation program at Rochester General is just for patients like Felluca. This is what they have to do to get better.
Laurie Callahan of the rehabilitation program said, "The point of the program is to help patients understand their lung disease, learn ways to control their shortness of breath, and also gain strength and endurance."
Patients with COPD can take a breath in but they can't exhale their air normally. They learn breathing techniques, and this helps break their fear of losing their breath. Then the trick is to stop sitting and get moving. Exercise helps the muscles get in shape so COPD patients use less oxygen.
Callahan said, "A muscle not used actually burns twice the oxygen. So when you have someone that is short of breath and they have to get up to make a meal or go to the bathroom, their shortness of breath doubles."
Pulmonary rehab meets three times a week for a month. By week two, patients feel the difference.
COPD
There is a new rehabilitation program designed to help patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. Diana Palotas explains the disease and talks to one woman going through the program.
Callahan said, "We have people who sleep in their living rooms who are then able to get up the stairs to their bed, and it's been a few years."
The program is proving to drive down health costs by reducing hospitalizations and visits to the doctor, along with a decrease in illness and infection.
Felluca said since starting the program, she feels more energetic and more sure of herself. She doesn't expect to climb mountains, but she does hope to dance at her grandson's wedding, without her oxygen.
She said, "I want one dance when they introduce us as grandparents. So I have to start working on that."
Northeast Echoes
PATRICIA MUKHIM
The Mawmluh Cherra cement plant in Cherrapunjee emits fumes that allegedly increase air pollution and trigger respiratory problems, besides raising temperature levels. Picture by Eastern Projections
Development up close
Celebrated author and former BBC correspondent Mark Tully was in Shillong on a day’s visit. He and wife Gilly were aghast to see trucks loaded much beyond their capacities cutting right through the heart of Shillong city. To a visitor, the sight might be revolting but not to the natives who are used to breathing in smoke and fumes emitted by these trucks as they grunt and groan to negotiate hairpin bends and climb steep slopes. “How could people allow such blatant invasion of their rights? This is the first and only place in India where I have seen such a thing happening,” exclaimed the troubled Indophile. Tully had probably decided to make a quick visit to this once renowned Scotland of the East, to escape the heat and dust of New Delhi. He was hardly prepared to see a hill station that had lost its charm and whose denizens no longer bothered to preserve their beloved city as it once was.
Tully also visited Cherrapunjee and stopped in the vicinity of the Mawmluh Cherra cement plant. What he saw agitated him even more. The area surrounding the cement plant is almost barren. On the few trees that are there, every leaf and every blade of grass is coated with cement dust. Pollution control mechanisms are archaic and possibly not even functioning. Workers at the plant inhale cement dust everyday and many might be suffering from silicosis. But in the absence of health research facilities at the spot, we continue to live in perfect bliss.
Mining morals
In Meghalaya, cement production has become an end in itself. In the past four years, as many as a dozen firms have applied for permission to set up plants and started operations in Jaintia Hills. Almost all of these firms have their corporate offices outside the region. The only reason they come to set up shop in the Northeast is to avail themselves of benefits accruing from the North East Industrial and Investment Promotion Policy (NEIIPP) 2007 and its earlier avatar, the NEIP 1997. This policy is based on a simplistic rationale that industrial growth in the region must necessarily be laced with incentives or it will not take off. The policy is, however, silent on the environmental impacts of industrialisation in a region that is known for its bio-diversity and ecological fragility.
When this aspect was pointed out to DoNER minister Mani Shankar Aiyar, he contended that Dehradun, too, was a mining zone for several years but now boasts of an enviable green cover.
What Aiyar did not say, was that in Dehradun, there are neither coal nor limestone mines. People only quarry and dig out stones and sand. Also, Dehradun has a “green army” comprising soldiers whose one-point agenda is to keep the valley green. Meghalaya has no such environmental missionaries. It only has mining mercenaries who go about their “exploitation” mission with rare zeal.
The use of the word “exploitation” in defining the activity of digging out coal, limestone and other minerals is fraught with ambiguities. Do you exploit or do you judiciously mine a resource and responsibly restore the environment to its former position? The mineral-rich areas of Meghalaya are already over-exploited. So have the coal mining areas in Assam.
Green footnote
Sadly, there are no action plans to reclaim empty mines and restore the green cover. This is not an impossible task. There are countries which have done this exceedingly well, Sweden being one of them. But there has to be a blueprint for such measures. All discussions revolving around the “development of the Northeast” are silent on the environment, except as a footnote to make it a selling point for tourism. The silence is almost conspiratorial, as if the very mention of the word “environment” would halt the hundreds of industrial projects in the pipeline.
While one is no proponent of an alarmist attitude which scrutinises every development project through the prism of suspicion, there are fears that need to be brought to the fore. The Northeast has not defined its paradigm for development. Today, in Meghalaya, it is the cement lobby which virtually runs and controls the government. So what democracy are we talking about? Our futures are collectively mortgaged to these business houses. We have lost the right to demand a clean environment.
Lives in jeopardy
In India, there is a dichotomy between democracy and development. While in western democracies, people are intelligently engaged in defining their own development, it is absurd to expect anything like that in India. Here people are so disempowered that they cannot be expected to play the role of arbiters. So the definition is left to those in politics and the bureaucracy.
Both these actors are least bothered about the long-term impacts of their action plans. Bureaucrats, particularly, have short-term interests because those in the higher echelons do not live here and are not affected by environmental adversity. However, despite the involvement of people in defining their own development, in countries like the US, there are quite a few projects that are quietly smuggled through without much debate.
Debate factor
In India, today, and the Northeast in particular, many more projects are passed without public debate. Here the dictum is: politicians know best what is good for the people and bureaucrats should jolly well implement what their bosses order them to do. Bureaucrats forget that they are not paid by politicians but by public money collected from the taxes paid by ordinary citizens. Also, they forget they are “civil servants” or servants of the people.
As a parting shot, Tully said, “The more I see India from close quarters the more I feel it is pursuing the wrong path of development. There is an urgent need to redefine development which carries peoples’ views on board and does minimal damage to the living environment.”
Coming back to Meghalaya, what is rather intriguing is that while cement projects are cleared with relative ease, other more important schemes — such as the Shillong bypass and the Umroi and Baljek airports which aim to provide better connectivity — are left unattended to and orphaned for over 20 years.
The absence of a bypass is what allows trucks to cut right through the city.
Trucks have claimed several lives as they hurtle speedily through narrow and crowded roads. Yet not a single citizen has protested against the laws that allow these dangerous machines to traverse the city and jeopardise human life.
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