‘I don’t care about the law’: Coal’s doctors of choice
October 30, 2013 by Ken Ward Jr.
Part 2 of the Center for Public Integrity’s remarkable expose on the black lung benefits process, “Breathless and Burdened,” is out this morning. And as the headline explains, it focuses on the medical unit at Johns Hopkins University which — in its work for coal companies — rarely finds black lung disease, helping the industry to defeat miners’ claims for federal benefits.
Investigative reporter Chris Hamby writes:
The Johns Hopkins University often receives attention for its medical discoveries and well-regarded school of public health, and its hospital recently was ranked the nation’s best by U.S. News and World Report.
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.
His story continues:
Their reports — seemingly ubiquitous and almost unwaveringly negative for black lung — have appeared in the cases of thousands of miners, and the doctors’ credentials, combined with the prestigious Johns Hopkins imprimatur, carry great weight. Their opinions often negate or outweigh whatever positive interpretations a miner can produce.
For the credibility that comes with these readings, which the doctors perform as part of their official duties at Johns Hopkins, coal companies are willing to pay a premium. For an X-ray reading, the university charges up to 10 times the rate miners typically pay their physicians.
Yet as part of its year-long investigation, the Center for Public Integrity said it found “strong evidence” that the deference the system gives to Johns Hopkins doctors “has contributed to unjust denials of miners’ claims.” Some of their evidence, especially regarding the top Hopkins’ doctor, Dr. Paul Wheeler:
— In the more than 1,500 cases decided since 2000 in which Wheeler read at least one X-ray, he never once found the severe form of the disease, complicated coal workers’ pneumoconiosis. Other doctors looking at the same X-rays found this advanced stage of the disease in 390 of these cases.
— Where other doctors saw black lung, Wheeler often saw evidence of another disease, most commonly tuberculosis or histoplasmosis — an illness caused by a fungus in bird and bat droppings. This was particularly true in cases involving the most serious form of the disease. In two-thirds of cases in which other doctors found complicated black lung, Wheeler attributed the masses in miners’ lungs to TB, the fungal infection or a similar disease.
— The criteria Wheeler applies when reading X-rays are at odds with positions taken by government research agencies, textbooks, peer-reviewed scientific literature and the opinions of many doctors who specialize in detecting the disease, including the chair of the American College of Radiology’s task force on black lung.
— Biopsies or autopsies repeatedly have proven Wheeler wrong. Though Wheeler suggests miners undergo biopsies — surgical procedures to remove a piece of the lung for examination — to prove their cases, such evidence is not required by law, is not considered necessary in most cases and can be medically risky. Still, in more than 100 cases decided since 2000 in which Wheeler offered negative readings, biopsies or autopsies provided undisputed evidence of black lung.
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