News Briefs
March 1, 2003
UT Supreme Court upholds wrongful-life’ statute
The Utah Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of the state’s Wrongful Life Act, which prohibits parents of children born with genetic problems from suing the clinicians who interpreted the results of prenatal genetic tests.
The original case was brought by Utah residents Marie Wood and Terry Borman, who sued the University of Utah Medical Center in Salt Lake City after their daughter was born with Down’s syndrome.
According to the suit, the parents sought genetic counseling because they knew their child was at a higher risk due to the mother’s age. Tests performed at the medical center showed their was an 85% chance that their child would be born with the condition, but physicians told the parents that the test carried high false-positive rates and there was only a small chance the baby would be affected.
After the child was born in August of 1998 with Down’s syndrome, the parents sued, saying that physicians were negligent in performing and interpreting the tests that would have allowed them to make an informed decision about whether to go ahead with the pregnancy. They also claimed the Wrongful Life Act that prohibited their lawsuit from going forward was unconstitutional.
In a 3-2 decision, the court decided the law was constitutional because:
- Utah residents were never guaranteed the right to sue for wrongful life before the state passed a law against it in 1983.
- The statute does not interfere with a woman’s right to have an abortion.
In their suit, Wood and Borman argued that physicians could "unduly burden" women because doctors — knowing they are immune from a lawsuit — could withhold information that would otherwise lead women to terminate their pregnancies.
But the court said "this possible scenario is too tenuous to hold that the statute has the effect of placing a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman who seeks an abortion."
In a dissenting opinion, Chief Justice Christine M. Durham argued that the Wrongful Life Act does unconstitutionally deny Wood’s and Borman’s access to a court, that the physician’s negligence interfered with the couple’s right to make an informed medical decision, and that the Wrongful Life Act stopped the couple from going to the court to be compensated.
"Here, plaintiffs were injured in person and property," she wrote. "The right to be compensated for a personal injury is a property right that requires access to the courts for enforcement."
Attorneys for the parents are petitioning the court for a rehearing.
Consumer group claims doctors’ strike unlawful
The doctors’ strike orchestrated by the Medical Society of New Jersey violates federal and state antitrust laws and should be investigated, the national consumer rights’ group Public Citizen said in letters sent Feb. 4 to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and New Jersey Attorney General David Samson.
"Antitrust laws do not countenance individuals or organizations from collectively refusing to serve their clients [here, their patients] in order to gain leverage with the legislature," the letter states. "The [Medical Society of New Jersey] has plainly engaged in collective activities the express purpose of which is to cause doctors throughout New Jersey to deny medical services to their patients as a means of pressuring the New Jersey legislature to enact laws that will increase the economic well-being of doctors. It is the unlawful nature of the means, not the legislative ends, that gives rise to the violation of law."
Section 5 of the FTC Act outlaws unfair methods of competition, and the New Jersey doctors’ walkout is almost identical to a similar action taken more than a decade ago by lawyers who refused to serve indigent clients, the group claims. In that case, the U.S. Supreme Court determined that the lawyers had violated antitrust law.
The letters ask the commission and the attorney general to investigate the conduct of the society and make a public announcement that the walkout violates the law. If the society is found to have broken the law, a court could order it to cease its activity.
To verify the society’s involvement, the letters cite documents posted on the society’s web site in which the society pledges its full support to carry out the strike. The letters were signed by Alan Morrison, director of the Public Citizen Litigation Group, Sidney Wolfe, MD, director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, and Frank Clemente, director of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch. The letters can be viewed at: www.citizen.org/congress/civjus/medmal/articles.cfm?ID=8974.
NEJM retracts study after authors point to forgery
The New England Journal of Medicine announced Feb. 10 that it is issuing a retraction of a study published in its Oct. 24, 2002, issue.1
The decision to retract the study was made at the request of a number of the listed study authors who wrote the journal claiming their signatures had been falsified on documents submitting the article for publication and that they had not had the opportunity to review the original data nor seen any of the manuscripts.
In an editorial comment published on the publication’s web site and to be published in the March 6 print edition, editors Gregory D. Curfman, MD; Stephen Morissey, PhD; and Jeffrey M. Drazen, MD, wrote:
"Of the eight persons named as authors of the article, some claimed that they had never reviewed the original data, and most claimed they had not seen or approved either the original version or one or more of the three revised versions of the manuscript. One author claimed that he had seen neither the original data nor any version of the manuscript. Thus, there was an egregious disregard of the principles of authorship, as specified by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors."
According to the editors, a co-author falsified signatures of several of the authors without their knowledge during the review process. Falsified signatures appeared on the letters of transmission accompanying the original and revised versions of the manuscript.
The journal became aware of the falsifications only after the article was published and several listed co-authors wrote a letter asking that the study be retracted.2 To prevent such occurrences in the future, the journal plans to inform all authors of record via e-mail when a manuscript bearing their name is received.
References
1. Shamim W, Yousufuddin M, Wang D, et al. Nonsurgical reduction of the interventricular septum in patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. N Engl J Med 2002; 347:1,326-1,333.
2. Coats AJS, Henein M, Flather M, et al. Retraction: Shamim et al. Nonsurgical reduction of the interventricular septum in patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. [Retraction of Shamim W, Yousufuddin M, Wang D, et al. In: New Engl J Med 2002; 347:1,326-1,333.] N Engl J Med 2003:348.
UT Supreme Court upholds wrongful-life statute; Consumer group claims doctors strike unlawful; NEJM retracts study after authors point to forgery
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