Medical Radiation: The Excruciating Testimony of the Father of Scott Jerome-Parks
What is the Initiative to Reduce Unnecessary Radiation Exposure from Medical Imaging, and why is FDA launching it?
What types of medical procedures are addressed by the Initiative to Reduce Unnecessary Radiation Exposure from Medical Imaging? What is the timeframe for the actions FDA is taking as part of the Initiative to Reduce Unnecessary Radiation Exposure from Medical Imaging? What is ionizing radiation? Do all medical imaging studies use ionizing radiation? How often are patients who undergo medical imaging exposed to unnecessary radiation? Are patients who undergo mammography at risk for unnecessary radiation exposure? What should providers and patients do to avoid unnecessary radiation exposure? Should members of the public be concerned about radiation exposure from body scanners at airports?
The Health Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee held hearings, "Medical Radiation: An Overview of the Issues", and heard testimony from James and Donna Parks, Gulfport, Mississippi, among others:
"We are here [to] testify at this hearing to make public our son's terrible ordeal and death due to a radiation accident. When our son learned that the over-exposure to radiation was to take his life, he felt he had a mission to prevent this atrocity from happening to others. He asked that all of us work to make his suffering and death have some meaning. He confided to us that he was worried about his wife, and must stay alive until he knows she will be OK. After more than two years of hideous agony he let himself die hoping that his ordeal might save many others from the same terrible suffering. Scott's primary care giver, his wife Carmen, suffered through every moment of every day for over two years as she helplessly saw her husband go blind, and deaf, and lose his teeth with his face contorted with gangrene tissue over his ear and scalp. He suffered constant, acute pain and vomiting every day with constant hiccupping that he had to cope with as best he could. Perhaps unfortunately, his brain was least affected during all but the last stages, and he was aware of all that was happening to his body. The last time we saw Scott, at our Christmas family gathering for him, he was a caricature of what our son used to be. He became a helpless invalid at the end. He did whisper to me that 'Carmen will be OK. I'm ready to go.' What we can give you are only snapshots in time since we could visit Scott only every 3 or 4 months. The person who knows every detail of the tragedy is Carmen but she must remain silent because of a gag order tied to the financial settlement. It is the hospital's way of making serious accidents a guarded secret. Our son's widow should be here testifying to this panel, but she must remain silent."
"My wife and I have devoted our entire professional careers to working in hospitals; Donna as a registered nurse and I a psychiatric social worker. After all of our years of service, we are particularly appalled that a hospital killed our son. We know how hospitals work. We know that medical accidents happen. We know that hospitals have a vested interest in making serious accidents go away as quickly and quietly as possible. Hospitals in general cannot be relied upon to report or make public serious medical accidents without strong external sanctions.""From our point of view, we have two recommendations to be considered."
"1. The United States must develop a strong, mandatory database and force all medical institutions to report all serious medical accidents. It would be a repository for evaluating trends and identifying medical problems throughout the nation. In order to work it must have the ability to force compliance on threat of fines and imprisonment. The Veterans Administration has developed a model system of reporting and responding to medical accidents called NCPS that is working well within the 158 VA hospitals. A system like that should be developed for all medical facilities. At present only a few states have any semblance of reporting capability and there is almost no coordination among states. We are pleased to learn that the FDA is taking a regulatory role in Radiology that will include IMRT operations."
"2. We ask that medical equipment manufacturers of deadly machines develop failsafe interactive expert systems that can interact with human technicians to reduce, or eliminate human errors. It is further recommended that such dangerous equipment never be operated by anyone not fully trained and qualified. Oncologists and supervising physicists must learn to micromanage every aspect of the Radiology Department. It is outrageous that any untrained and unskilled personnel can get anywhere near such dangerous equipment."
The New York Times stories on Scott Jerome-Parks:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/health/24radiation.html?pagewanted=all
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/27/health/policy/27radiation.html
Medical Radiation: An Overview of the Issues |
Hearings - Subcommittee on Health | |
Friday, 26 February 2010 08:19 | |
The Subcommittee on Health held a hearing entitled "Medical Radiation: An Overview of the Issues" on Friday, February 26, 2010, at 10:00 a.m. in room 2123 of the Rayburn House Office Building. This hearing examined the potential benefits and risks of the use of radiation in medicine. |
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