Dr. Death Update
This guy is accused of killing 87 people under his care in Australia.
I mentioned him weeks ago. He has been branded Dr. Death by Australian authorities. He is a medical doctor who ran from charges in this country to Australia and then killed 87 more patients with incompetence. His cohorts in the States gave him glowing reports which allowed him to 'practice' once again. Except in this case ... practice didn't make perfect. It made more death.
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Australia Considering Murder Charge Against Notorious 'Dr. Death,' Who Fled to Oregon
BUNDABERG, Australia (AP) - Marilyn Daisy says she has been "living in hell" since part of her left leg was amputated by an Indian-trained surgeon linked to the deaths of 87 patients and nicknamed "Dr. Death" by his former colleagues.
The Royal Commission of Inquiry is investigating why Dr. Jayant Patel, a 55-year-old U.S. citizen, was allowed to practice medicine at the rural Bundaberg Base Hospital in Queensland state despite having been cited for negligence in Oregon and New York.
His Oregon medical license was revoked in April. He surrendered his New York license in 2001 after first being cited for negligence there in 1984.
The commission has recommended that Patel be charged with the murder of a former patient, who died five days after Patel removed part of his esophagus, and negligence causing bodily harm in the case of Daisy, who allegedly was left without care for several days after Patel operated on her.
In recommending the murder charge, the inquiry said there was no doubt the surgery on James Edward Phillips was "likely to endanger human life." Several doctors had refused to operate on Phillips because of complications, according to testimony from a doctor and a nurse who worked with Patel.
Last month, the hospital's director of medicine, Peter Miach, testified before the commission that he found Daisy nearly comatose in her hospital bed several days after the amputation, and Patel allegedly had forgotten about her.
Miach said he moved the 44-year-old Aboriginal woman, who also had diabetes and was suffering from kidney failure, to his unit and treated her for several weeks before transferring her to a larger hospital in the state capital, Brisbane.
Daisy said she does not remember much about the surgery but was shocked when she heard the allegations.
"I was devastated," she told The Associated Press. "Dr. Miach said that I was left for dead, and that really sort of scared me a lot."
Daisy is one of several patients expected to testify before the inquiry when it moves to Bundaberg on Monday.
A lawyer for Patel said Monday that the medic is being used as a scapegoat for an ailing state health system.
The health service in Queensland state has been "chronically underfunded for many years, it's got a bureaucratic culture rather than a health-focused culture, and it's got a a shoot-the-messenger culture," the lawyer, Damian Scattini, told The Associated Press. "This is the creation of a handy scapegoat."
Scattini also suggested there may be an element of racism in the singling out of Patel, who was born in India but is now an American citizen.
"He's Indian so he's not going to gather a lot of sympathy with the Queensland country voters - there's definitely an element of that here," he said.
Patel left Australia in April when the allegations against him first surfaced, and he now is believed to be in Portland, Ore. He has not commented on the allegations.
Patel has been linked by the Queensland state health department to the deaths of at least 87 of the 1,202 patients he treated during his two-year tenure at the Bundaberg hospital. Several dozen other alleged malpractice cases are also under investigation.
Queensland state police are investigating whether to act on the commission's recommendations and bring criminal charges against Patel, but Australian legal experts doubt whether the disgraced surgeon can be extradited and tried.
If prosecutors file a murder charge against Patel, he could face extradition under a 1974 treaty between the two countries. If tried and convicted under Australian law, Patel could face a maximum sentence of life in prison.
Angus Corbett, a senior lecturer in medical negligence law at the University of New South Wales, said filing criminal charges would not be easy.
"Even the best-trained and most capable doctors will commit medical errors or will do things which can be categorized as an error," he said, but such errors are "not sufficient to result in a criminal charge."
Prosecutors trying to win a criminal case against a negligent doctor would have to prove that the doctor acted in a manner that was "so negligent that no reasonable doctor would have undertaken that activity in that way," Corbett said.
"It really goes to the mix of evidence about the state of his mind. Did he have an intent to cause death or grievous bodily harm or did he act so recklessly that he didn't care if he caused grievous bodily harm?"
Doubts have also been raised about whether Patel's alleged offenses would warrant a murder charge in Oregon, a factor that could complicate attempts to bring him back to Australia.
Ivan Shearer, an extradition expert at the University of Sydney law school, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. last week that Australia could not try Patel on murder charges unless the U.S. court that authorized his extradition agreed with those charges.
Queensland officials met last week with Patel's lawyers in an unsuccessful attempt to persuade the doctor to return to Queensland of his own free will to face the commission and clear his name.
Daisy called the government's efforts "ridiculous."
"Who in their right mind will come back voluntarily and say that they've done these things to people," she said. "I don't think he'll come back. I think he'll have to be pulled back by his hair."
But Daisy, who says she has suffered emotional and financial hardship since her amputation, wants someone to be held accountable.
"I had a very active, happy life and now because of everything, I'm (in) financial hardship, I'm struggling to exist," she said. "You could say I'm living in hell, really."
...AP
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