Junk science sinking the judicial system

By Carole K. Cones Copyright 1999 The Record (Bergen, NJ) February 3, 1999

Is America's judicial system starting to slide backward into the
morass of a Dark Age, where rationality is banned and the junkiest of
junk science warmly embraced?

It's hard to conclude much else after a federal judge recently
ordered a Washington jury not to consider the latest scientific evidence
in the case of a woman who claimed her silicone breast implants caused
her to contract a crippling disease.

The jury dutifully obeyed the instructions of Judge William B.
Bryant and awarded Brenda G. Meister, a 56-year-old Arlington, Va.,
lawyer, a staggering $ 10 million.

Meister had claimed that the breast implants she received 21 years
ago triggered scleroderma, a debilitating illness and one of a group of
connective tissue diseases that cause the body's immune system to turn
upon itself. The diseases strike a great number of American women, the
vast majority of them as they enter middle age.

But a host of recent studies by such respected medical institutions
as the Harvard Medical School, Johns Hopkins, the University of
Michigan, and the Mayo Clinic have shown conclusively that such diseases
strike women with silicone breast implants in virtually the same
proportion as they strike women without breast implants.

In other words, the silicone breast implants have no connection with
the disease, which means they didn't cause Meister's problems: hardened
skin, swollen fingers, calcium deposits the size of tennis balls in her
hips and back.

That is not to minimize her problems, of course. Sleroderma is a
horrible disease. But silicone implants don't cause any of her symptoms.

Meister's $ 10 million windfall came a month after a panel of
distinguished scientists appointed by a federal judge in Alabama issued
a well-publicized report that found no links between breast implants and
the various connective tissue diseases.

They made their recommendations after spending more than a year
reviewing all of the germane scientific literature, more than two dozen
studies and similar blue-ribbon panel reviews conducted by the
governments of Germany, Australia, and Great Britain.

In the face of such overwhelming evidence, juries around the nation
have handed down verdicts denying awards to plaintiffs in almost all of
the breast implant cases that went to trial in the last few years.

In fact, Bristol-Myers-Squibb Co., the defendant in the Washington
case, hadn't lost a breast implant case in six years.

Judge Bryant helped end that winning streak by ruling that the jury
couldn't consider the recommendations of the Alabama panel because their
report was issued after he started his trial.

. I MAGINE, for a moment, you're in a 17th-century courtroom. Four
people are about to be sentenced to death for their overriding belief in
enlightened reason as opposed to blind faith. Suddenly a messenger
bursts through the door and shouts, "Wait, you can't do this. Galileo
has just proved the defendants are right, the world is round after
all."

An earlier version of Judge Bryant calmly replies,"Sorry, Galileo's
discovery came after this trial started. I can't allow the jury to
consider it."

One is tempted to say,"only in the District of Columbia"because
jurors in the nation's capital are notorious for granting exorbitant
damage awards against big corporations under an unusual theory that puts
"affordability"ahead of"culpability."

But in this case it is judge, not the jury that erred.

But Judge Bryant is not alone. Unfortunately, judges like Bryant
preside in too many courtrooms across America. Some are appointed for
life and hang on well into their dotage. Others are elected , often
after campaigns heavily funded by the very plaintiffs attorneys that
will later appear before their bench championing junk science over
truth.

America sorely needs judicial reform. Unfortunately, the only
reformers allowed to take part in this particular reform are all members
of the American Bar Association.


Freelance journalist Carole K. Cones frequently writes about health and
medical issues concerning women. This article was prepared for the
Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service Forum.

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