Author: Jon Merz
Date: 08-02-04 11:54
Source: Chicago Sun Times
URL: http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-med29.html
Date published: July 29th 2004
from Gary Chadwick:
Cancer patients sue after med school cuts treatment
July 29, 2004
BY ABDON M. PALLASCH AND LORI RACKL Staff Reporters
A North Chicago medical school violated medical ethics when it cut off a research treatment program for more than 50 women with breast cancer -- putting their lives at risk, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday in Cook County.
The Chicago Medical School, part of Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science, promised to treat the women "ad infinitum" -- for the rest of their lives -- according to informed consent forms signed by the women and the university.
The school's Internal Review Board ended the program in February, saying it was not satisfied that the experimental program was valuable for the patients and "safe for human subjects," university attorney Patrick Coffey said.
The lawsuit says new leaders took over the school and the review board, which ended the program "to serve its own interests."
Dr. Georg Springer, heir to a publishing fortune, started his experimental breast cancer treatment -- seeking to boost patients' immune systems -- at Northwestern University in 1974, hoping to cure his wife's breast cancer.
In 1989, he moved to the Chicago Medical School, bringing $18 million the women say Springer wanted spent on their treatment. Springer died in 1998. If the university kills the program, it ought to give the money back, say the women and their attorney, Robert Cummins.
Coffey disputes that.
"Dr. Springer made a generous donation to the university some years ago of $6 million," Coffey said. "It was not tied or restricted to this particular research program. The university has expended well in excess of the amount Springer gave to the university on this program."
Of the 19 initial patients in Springer's trials, 84 percent survived after five years, according to the suit.
Legal experts say the "ad infinitum" clause in the informed consent forms gives the women a strong legal claim. But Arthur Caplan, chairman of the Department of Medical Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, said the treatment's experimental status doesn't help.
"There are fewer obligations to continue a research trial than there would be to continue a therapy," Caplan said. "You really can't prove there's a benefit. The women can say there's a benefit, and there may be a lot of testimonials, but it's not as strong an obligation in the law to keep doing something when it's under the banner of 'research.' "
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