Coal industry pays lawyers, doctors to lie and let workers to die penniless

Today's post is shared from workerscomphub.org Photo by Earl DotterIn a devastating must-read set of reports, the Center for Public Integrity and ABC News describe how coal companies have fought a cutthroat campaign of secrecy, misinformation, false diagnoses, and defiance of court orders to stop workers from getting workers’ compensation for black lung disease. The coal industry’s tactics mirror those of Big Tobacco, the lead and soda industries, the NFL, and pulp and paper giant Georgia-Pacific, which is conducting secret research and selectively withholding information to cast doubt on more than 60,000 legal claims filed by construction workers and others who Georgia-Pacific exposed to asbestos in the 1960s and ‘70s and are developing mesothelioma, a cancer nearly always caused by asbestos, today. Black lung, a disease caused by inhaling coal dust over time, scars and shrinks the lungs and can be highly debilitating and deadly. In its severe form, black lung is supposed to automatically qualify miners for workers’ compensation. Yet in a series of three in-depth reports, the Center for Public Integrity reveals how the coal industry and its lawyers have fought tooth and nail to hide information on workers’ health from doctors, courts, and patients themselves in order to maintain doubt about people's’ eligibility for compensation. ABC News interviewed Dr. Paul Wheeler, head of The Johns Hopkins Hospital’s black...

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Johns Hopkins medical unit rarely finds black lung, helping coal industry defeat miners' claims

Today's post was shared by FairWarning and comes from www.publicintegrity.org

There is an unmistakable pattern in Wheeler’s readings. The Center identified more than 1,500 cases decided since 2000 in which Wheeler read at least one X-ray; in all, he interpreted more than 3,400 films during this time. The numbers show his opinions consistently have benefited coal companies: Wheeler rated at least one X-ray as positive in less than 4 percent of cases. Subtracting the cases in which he ultimately concluded another disease was more likely, this number drops to about 2 percent. In 80 percent of the X-rays he read as positive, Wheeler saw only the earliest stage of the disease. He never once found advanced or complicated black lung. Other readers, looking at the same images, saw these severe forms of the disease on more than 750 films. Where other doctors saw black lung, Wheeler saw tuberculosis, histoplasmosis or a similar disease on about 34 percent of X-rays. This number shoots up in cases in which others saw complicated black lung, which is so severe it triggers automatic compensation. In such cases, Wheeler attributed the masses in miners’ lungs to these other diseases on two-thirds of X-rays. Asked if he stood by this record, Wheeler said, “Absolutely.”