Latest news with #medicalethics
Daily Mail
12 hours ago
- Health
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Respected surgeon groped the breasts and bottoms of female colleagues and pulled down a ward sister's top, trial hears
A highly respected surgeon groped the breasts and bottoms of female colleagues including a doctor and several nurses, a court heard today. Dr Amal Bose, 55, allegedly pulled down a ward sister's top, exposing her bra and breasts, and told her: 'I thought that is where you put my cup of tea.' On at least two occasions when female staff were on their knees completing a hospital task, a jury heard the 'rude and arrogant' surgeon told them: 'I like it when you are down there.' 'Creepy' Dr Bose told one nurse that his fantasy was to tie her up and tried to persuade her to go back to a hotel room to 'show her a good time', it was alleged. However medical staff felt unable to challenge the 'toxic and sexualised' culture he created due to his 'position and authority as a senior consultant', according to the prosecution. Instead hospital workers would attempt to dismiss his behaviour by saying 'That's just Amal', the trial heard. When he was arrested on March 21, 2023, Dr Bose was recorded on police video telling the officer: 'It was only flirting.' He went on trial today charged with 14 counts of sexual assault on female colleagues. The surgeon is accused of assaulting six women between 2017 and 2022. They accuse him of feeling their breasts, slapping their bottoms and, in one case, slipping his hand inside a nurse's wrap-around skirt to touch her groin, Preston Crown Court heard. Dr Bose denies all the charges. The trial heard that doctors at the hospital swapped 'banter and sexualised joking' on WhatsApp groups with names such as Cardiac Sluts and Work Slags. Huw Edwards, prosecuting, told jurors that all the assaults took place at Blackpool Victoria Hospital in Lancashire. 'This was an abuse of his position and authority as a senior consultant at the hospital,' he said. 'It was a toxic and sexualised environment that he created by his behaviour with his sexualised jokes and comments and his slapping nurses' bottoms and grabbing their breasts. 'The complainants we have here were employed by the hospital in roles significantly below Dr Bose who were not in a position to challenge his behaviour. 'It was a toxic and sexualised culture under his leadership. 'His behaviour was a well-known fact in the department and new staff were advised on how to deal with it. 'People would say "that's just Amal".' Mr Edwards said nine of the 14 counts involve the same woman. Dr Bose allegedly targeted her repeatedly, on occasion 'flicking' her breasts, slapping her bottom and making inappropriate comments about how he would like to touch her groin. The woman, who cannot be identified, 'struggled' so much with his behaviour that she asked to be put on a four-day week and only returned to full-time working after Dr Bose was suspended, the prosecutor said. A nurse claimed Dr Bose told her his fantasy was to tie her up. One night after a staff party he tried to persuade her to go back to his hotel room where he would 'show her a good time', it was alleged. A ward sister told police she met Dr Bose a corridor and told him she had moved his cup of tea. He allegedly pulled down her top, exposing her bra and breasts. When she retorted 'That's enough of that' she said he smirked and told her: 'I thought that is where you put my cup of tea.' Dr Bose had a leading reputation in his field which made it harder for colleagues to make a complaint against him, Preston Crown Court (pictured) heard today The court heard that Dr Bose was thought of as a top class doctor with a leading reputation in his field and that this made it harder for people to make a complaint against him. One junior doctor who worked under him told how she was shocked when he grabbed her breasts from behind. When she later complained to him about his behaviour he said he could not remember it. Mr Edwards said the woman later asked to be moved, adding: 'Tellingly, she did not want to take her compliant further because she feared it might affect her career. 'He was a man is a position of power.' Dr Neil Britton, a consultant anaesthetist at the hospital who worked with Dr Bose, told the court he was 'creepy especially around female members of staff'. 'I know all workplaces have a level of banter but it was quite different with Dr Bose,' he said. 'There was a lot of sexual jokes although I can't remember exactly what they were. 'But if he saw that his jokes were making someone uncomfortable it would seem to encourage him. 'I do know he told me that one female member of staff needed "a good shag". 'I remember he would take a lot of young students into his office and they seemed to be always female.' Dr Britton it 'made me feel sick' when he was told what language one member of staff was subjected to. But he agreed with defending barrister Tom Price KC that 'banter and sexualised joking' were part and parcel of many workplace environments, especially in highly pressurized ones like hospitals. He was also asked if he knew of a WhatsApp group called Cardiac Sluts to which he said: 'No.' But he admitted to belonging to another group called Work Slags to which he sent a picture of a camper van which bore the legend Dr Wiggles Weiner Wagon. He captioned it: 'Got a picture of Amal's new car at the weekend.' Several messages on the group referred directly to Dr Bose but also contained pictures of things like a supposed scented candle called Sweaty Bollocks. Mr Price said: 'It shows the level of humour in the department, doesn't it?' Dr Britton agreed but said no one in the group was 'uncomfortable about it'. Another doctor who gave evidence, Dr Gillian Hardman, told the court that one female colleague told her: 'The first time he groped me I just went to the bathroom and cried.' Dr Hardman - who is not one of the alleged victims - described Dr Bose as 'rude and arrogant'. She admitted there was some sexual banter on the wards and that it continued on WhatsApp groups like Work Slags.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Critics of Georgia's abortion ban push for clarity after another case makes international news
Sen. Nabilah Islam Parkes speaks at against Georgia's abortion law at the state Capitol. Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder Georgia Democrats are calling for clarity in the state's abortion law as the case of Adriana Smith continues to grab headlines worldwide. Undiagnosed blood clots in Smith's brain left the 30-year-old nurse brain dead months ago, but doctors have kept her organs functioning through medical devices. Family members told media outlets Smith's body was being kept alive despite no chance for her to recover because she is pregnant and removing her from life support could violate the state's ban on most abortions after six weeks. Georgia's top lawyer disagrees with that interpretation of the law. 'There is nothing in the LIFE Act that requires medical professionals to keep a woman on life support after brain death,' Attorney General Chris Carr said in a statement. 'Removing life support is not an action 'with the purpose to terminate a pregnancy.'' But a public statement does not come with the force of law, said Sen. Nabilah Islam Parkes, a Duluth Democrat, and when it comes to the practice of medicine, legal gray areas can lead to tragic outcomes. Speaking at a press conference Thursday at the state Capitol, Islam Parkes called on Carr to issue a legally binding opinion to answer a series of questions she said would spell out when doctors could treat a pregnant woman in a way that could harm or kill the fetus: Is a hospital legally required to maintain a brain dead pregnant woman on life support? What precisely constitutes a medical emergency under the law? Under what conditions does a pregnancy meet the threshold of incompatibility with life? How does the law affect legal standing of advanced directives and end-of-life planning for pregnant Georgians? 'These questions are not theoretical,' Islam Parkes said. 'They're urgent, because as long as this law remains vague, we will continue to see families traumatized, providers criminalized and patients left behind. Doctors are being forced to make impossible choices, families are trapped in grief and fear and women are dying.' Islam Parkes was referencing two high-profile deaths, Georgians Amber Thurman and Candi Miller, who both died in 2022 after suffering complications from taking abortion pills. Thurman died in a hospital after doctors waited nearly a day to perform a routine procedure to remove fetal tissue from her uterus; Miller died after family members said she was afraid to seek medical care because of the recently enacted law. Democrats said there are likely more cases that do not end in death. of Gwinnett said she had already picked out a name for her unborn daughter, Sawyer Nicole Christian, but in March, a day after Maruscak held a gender reveal party, she discovered her daughter's heart had stopped beating. 'In a matter of seconds, we went from preparing to welcome her into our lives to trying to figure out how to say goodbye,' she said at the Capitol press conference. 'My doctor was sympathetic, but because of the restrictive abortion laws, my care was limited to a list of abortion clinics. No follow-up plan, no guidance and no support. Over the next two days, I called clinic after clinic, continuously having to repeat and relive that Sawyer did not have a heartbeat. My insurance recommended me to go to the emergency department because of increasing septic symptoms, so I did. I spent seven hours there in pain, in grief, and in shock, only to be discharged with no treatment, no resolution and no care.' Maruscak said she spent more than a week carrying her daughter's remains. 'What happened to me is not rare. It is not an outlier. It's happening every day,' she said. 'One in four women experience a miscarriage. Over half of them need medical intervention to complete it safely. This is not just a political issue, it's a medical one.' Senate Minority Leader Harold Jones made no bones about the party's ultimate goal of repealing the six-week abortion ban, which went into effect in 2022 after the United States Supreme Court overturned the federal right to abortion and left the matter to states. 'As that fight continues, we must stand with and demand clarification from our governor and attorney general,' Jones said. 'What rights do women have under this law? Georgians have been asking this question. We as legislators have been asking this question and the people standing here today have been asking this question, yet Georgia's leadership has stayed silent.' The author of Georgia's abortion bill, Acworth Republican Sen. Ed Setzler, accused Democrats of playing politics in an attempt to drum up headlines. 'My heart goes out to Adriana, her family, and the young son inside of her who is struggling for his life,' Setzler said. 'Nabilah Islam Parkes and the Democrats are sickening at the depths they will go to drag Adriana's hurting family, who is trying to save the life of their grandson, through a sick political debate about expanding abortion.' 'The Democrats are making attacks as loudly as they can to try to seize media attention,' he added. Conservative radio host and Georgia Life Alliance board member Martha Zoller said tragic cases like Maruscak's are not the result of the state's abortion ban – sometimes referred to by supporters as the 'heartbeat bill' – but of hospitals misunderstanding or misapplying it. 'Once you've had a miscarriage or you're in the process of a miscarriage, there is no heartbeat, so there should be no reason for care to be withheld or anything like that,' she said. 'That's the over-legalization of the medical care business with not allowing providers to be providers and to do what's best for patients. And that has nothing to do with the heartbeat bill. That has to do with the structure at the hospital. The care for a miscarriage is not denoted as something that's a method of abortion in the heartbeat bill, and once you've had a miscarriage, there is no heartbeat, so the heartbeat bill doesn't come into play.' 'It's a travesty that the Democratic caucus continues to mislead women and scare them for their own political purposes,' she added. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
New York Times
5 days ago
- Health
- New York Times
Robert Jarvik, 79, Dies; a Designer of the First Permanent Artificial Heart
Dr. Robert K. Jarvik, the principal designer of the first permanent artificial heart implanted in a human — a procedure that became a subject of great public fascination and fierce debate about medical ethics — died on Monday at his home in Manhattan. He was 79. His wife, the writer Marilyn vos Savant, said the cause was complications of Parkinson's disease. In 1982, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave the University of Utah permission to implant what was designed to be a permanent artificial heart in a human. On Dec. 2 that year, Dr. William C. DeVries led the pioneering surgical team that implanted the Jarvik-7 model, made of aluminum and plastic, in a 61-year-old retired Seattle dentist, Barney B. Clark. Dr. Clark at first declined to receive the Jarvik-7, Dr. DeVries was quoted as saying in a 2012 university retrospective, but he changed his mind on Thanksgiving after he had to be carried by a son to the dinner table. Dr. Clark's chronic heart disease had left him weeks from death. If the surgery didn't work for him, he told doctors, maybe it would help others. During the seven-hour surgery, according to the retrospective, Dr. Clark's heart muscle tore like tissue paper as it was removed after so many years of being treated with steroids. Upon awakening, Dr. DeVries said, Dr. Clark told his wife, Una Loy Clark, 'I want to tell you even though I have no heart, I still love you.' Dr. Clark survived for 112 days, attached to a 400-pound air compressor, roughly the size of a dishwasher, that helped the Jarvik-7 pump blood through his body. But he never left the hospital, and he experienced seizures, kidney failure and a broken valve on the heart that needed replacing. Dr. DeVries said in 2012 that Dr. Clark had probably received too many antibiotics, which can make it more difficult to fight off infections. He died on March 23, 1983, from complications related to a bacterial infection of the colon. William J. Schroeder, 52, a retired federal worker who was the second patient to receive the experimental Jarvik-7 artificial heart, lived for 620 days before dying in 1986. Another early recipient of the Jarvik-7, Murray P. Haydon, lived for 488 days before dying at 59. Their survival demonstrated that people 'could live long term on the plastic and metal device,' The New York Times reported upon Mr. Schroeder's death. But the newspaper added that strokes and other complications that recipients suffered 'impaired the quality of their lives and blunted initial enthusiasm for the heart.' Dozens — by some accounts hundreds — of reporters showed up at the University of Utah hospital to cover Barney Clark's surgery. Some celebrated the news, comparing the breakthrough to man's first walk on the moon. Others, however, criticized what they called the 'Frankenstein'-like aspects of the Jarvik-7 and asked whether the medical team was trying to play God by deciding who received the artificial heart. By the mid-1980s, medical ethicists and theologians were debating whether artificial hearts improved life or extended a painful decline toward death. At a 1985 symposium of religious figures and doctors in Louisville, Ky., a Jesuit theologian noted that in the Christian view, 'life is a basic good but not an absolute good,' adding, 'There is a limit on what we may do to preserve our lives.' After five patients received the Jarvik-7 as a permanent artificial heart, Dr. Jarvik said, the device was used hundreds of times as a temporary implant for patients until they could receive a donor heart. One such patient lived 11 years after receiving his donor heart, he said; another lived 14. In January 1990, the Food and Drug Administration withdrew its approval of the Jarvik-7, citing concerns about the manufacturer's quality control. In a 1989 interview with Syracuse University Magazine, Dr. Jarvik admitted that his belief that the Jarvik-7 was advanced enough to be used widely on a permanent basis was 'probably the biggest mistake I have ever made.' Still, he defended his work. Of the five recipients of the permanent Jarvik-7, he told the magazine, 'These were people who I view as having had their lives prolonged,' adding that they survived nine months on average when some had been expected to live 'no more than a week.' 'I don't think that kind of thing makes a person in medicine want to stop,' he said. 'It just makes you all the more interested in working it through so it can be better.' Robert Koffler Jarvik was born on May 11, 1946, in Midland, Mich., and grew up in Stamford, Conn. His father, Norman, was a physician with a family practice. His mother, Edythe (Koffler) Jarvik, handled scheduling for the practice and later taught typing. From an early age, Robert was a tinkerer. As a teenager, he made his own hockey mask and began developing a surgical stapler. He attended Syracuse University from 1964 until 1968, intending to study architecture, but his interest turned to medicine after his father survived an aortic aneurysm, and he received a degree in zoology. Dr. Norman Jarvik died in 1976 after a second aneurysm. 'I knew that my father was going to die of heart disease, and I was trying to make a heart for him,' Robert Jarvik once said. 'I was too late.' He studied medicine at the University of Bologna in Italy for two years and received a master's degree in occupational biomechanics from New York University before moving to the University of Utah in 1971. He received his medical degree there in 1976, but he did not follow the traditional career path of internship and residency. He was more interested in developing an artificial heart. Working with Dr. Willem J. Kolff, director of the university's Division of Artificial Organs, Dr. Jarvik designed a series of mechanical heart. One of them, according to an article in The New York Times in 1982, was implanted in a cow named Alfred Lord Tennyson, who survived for 268 days, a record for an animal. In 1985, Dr. Jarvik married Ms. Vos Savant, who was listed in Guinness World Records in the 1980s as having the highest recorded I.Q. (228). She survives him, as do his daughter, Kate Jarvik Birch, and his son, Tyler Jarvik, from his marriage to Elaine Levin, whom he married in 1968 and divorced in 1985; Ms. Vos Savant's two children, Mary (Younglove) Blinder and Dennis Younglove, from a previous relationship; a sister, Barbara Jarvik, and a brother, Jonathan Jarvik; and five grandchildren. In 2008, Dr. Jarvik faced scrutiny from a congressional committee that was investigating whether Pfizer misrepresented his credentials in an advertising campaign in which he served as a spokesman for Lipitor, the cholesterol medication. Pfizer ended the campaign. In the late 1980s, his company, Jarvik Heart Inc., began developing smaller, less obtrusive implements, known as ventricular assist devices. Unlike the Jarvik-7, these devices do not replace a diseased heart but assist in pumping blood from the lower chambers of the heart to the rest of the body. One such device, the Jarvik 2000, is about the size of a C battery. A pediatric version, called the Jarvik 2015, is roughly the size of an AA battery. According to a 2023 study of the artificial heart market, a descendant of the original Jarvik-7, now owned by another company, is called the SynCardia Total Artificial Heart. It is designed primarily for temporary use in patients who face imminent death while awaiting transplants. The study found that the device had been implanted in more than 1,700 patients worldwide. In 2018, Dr. Jarvik received a lifetime achievement award at the annual Medical Design Excellence Awards ceremony. In an interview this week, Dr. O.H. Frazier, an innovator in heart surgery in Houston who helped develop the Jarvik 2000, called him 'a genius.' 'He had an agile mind,' Dr. Frazier said, 'and made a great contribution to the care of heart-failure patients.'
New York Times
27-05-2025
- Health
- New York Times
A French Pedophile Doctor Abused Hundreds in His Care. Why Wasn't He Stopped?
Dr. François Simon was one of the many people who knew that Joël Le Scouarnec had been convicted of downloading child sexual abuse imagery in 2005 and was continuing to operate on children as a gastric surgeon. More than a decade later, the French police arrested Mr. Le Scouarnec. They would eventually charge him with the rape or sexual assault of 299 former patients, most of them children. Dr. Simon was the head of an official board that oversaw doctors in Finistère, Brittany, where Mr. Le Scouarnec was employed in the late 2000s. He was among several people in France's elaborately bureaucratic health system tasked with addressing Mr. Le Scouarnec's initial criminal conviction. Like many, in the end, he dropped the ball. He could have called for a disciplinary hearing, but instead, he sent the verdict up to the Ministry of Health's departmental branch. He told a court this month that he had believed that office could address it more urgently. His own board voted almost unanimously that Mr. Le Scouarnec's actions had not breached the medical code of ethics. 'We tried to do what we could,' Dr. Simon, who is now retired, said in a courtroom in Vannes, a Brittany port town, where he had been summoned as a witness against his will. 'I can't say there was a malfunction, but I regret it because there was a misunderstanding.' After three long months of testimony, the trial over what is considered the biggest pedophilia case in French history is coming to an end. There is no suspense regarding the verdict, scheduled to be handed down Wednesday. Part way through the trial, Mr. Le Scouarnec said he was guilty of sexually assaulting or raping all the victims, and possibly others, over 25 years of working in nine clinics and hospitals in western and central France. But questions still haunt the case, particularly about why no one caught Mr. Le Scouarnec over that time, or even suspected him; and why, after he was convicted of visiting websites featuring the sexual abuse of children, no guardrails were put in place to protect his patients. No fewer than 10 administrators were called before the court in search of answers. Most were long retired, offering foggy memories and answers filled with mind-numbing acronyms and administrative jargon. Very few took any responsibility — most blamed other wings of the bureaucracy or said that Mr. Le Scouarnec's 2005 conviction had not warranted special attention since the courts had not demanded any oversight. 'The analysis of the situation was correct at that time,' insisted Bernard Chenevière, a retired administrator from the health ministry's hospital service. 'There was no link between the initial conviction and all the incredible events that took place afterward.' The result of this inertia was a 'collective shipwreck' said Jean-Christophe Boyer, one of many child protection lawyers acting in the case. 'There was only one guilty person here,' he told the court during his closing statement, 'but there are many responsible.' The scale of Mr. Le Scouarnec's crimes came to light after he exposed himself to a 6-year-old neighbor in 2017, and her parents told the police. He stood trial and was convicted in 2020 of the rape and sexual assault of four females, including the girl next door and two of his nieces. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison. The evidence pointing to hundreds of other victims, male and female, was unearthed after investigators dug through his personal diaries as well as two spreadsheets, discovered on hard drives, that listed the names of his victims and the abuse they had suffered, sexual assault and rape, mostly related to penetration with fingers. Many were abused while sedated or recovering from operations. Their average age was 11. In court, many of Mr. Le Scouarnec's former colleagues said they had seen no signs of his perversion. They described him as quiet and friendly, and as a very good surgeon. But there was one clear warning sign: his 2005 conviction after an international F.B.I. investigation that snared thousands who had viewed child sexual abuse imagery. A French court at the time gave him a four-month suspended sentence, but demanded no psychological treatment, as it had for others. Nor did it restrict his medical practice. And the court failed to notify Dr. Le Scouarnec's medical clinic, despite a law requiring it to do so. Dr. Thierry Bonvalot, a psychiatrist who worked in the same hospital as Mr. Le Scouarnec in the small town of Quimperlé, was tipped off by someone in the court. After confronting Mr. Le Scouarnec, he wrote to the head of the hospital. Dr. Bonvalot questioned whether Mr. Le Scouarnec 'could remain calm while interacting with young patients.' He later forwarded the letter to the local oversight board of doctors, headed by Dr. Simon. Dr. Simon had to call the court five times to confirm the conviction. He then held a meeting with Mr. Le Scouarnec. Confronted about his criminal record, Mr. Le Scouarnec described it as a blip after having split up with his wife. He said he had fallen into depression, had been drinking and scrolling through pornographic websites, and had gone to ones involving children 'by accident,' recounted Mr. Simon in court. 'I took him at his word,' he said. From there, the information traveled through multiple layers of health ministry bureaucracy — to the departmental arm, the regional arm, the headquarters in Paris, and through two doctor oversight boards. Yvon Guillerm, who was the deputy director of the regional health agency, alerted his higher-ups in Paris and was instructed to file a professional complaint with the regional oversight board of doctors, which could rule to bar Mr. Le Scouarnec from practicing medicine. But he never did. He said in court that it was his boss's job. That boss has since died. 'I am willing to admit there were a few deficiencies in the process,' he said. His boss did call the head of another hospital in the region to caution the director not to hire Mr. Le Scouarnec, who was set to begin filling in there. But that warning was not sent outside the region. Mr. Le Scouarnec, who didn't hide his conviction, appears to have benefited from administrative overlap and disorganization, as well as the desperate condition of some rural hospitals that were struggling to remain open because of a lack of medical staff. When the Quimperlé hospital closed its surgical unit, he moved 290 miles south to another region. There, the local medical board approved him, despite learning about his conviction. He was hired by a hospital director in the town of Jonzac, Michèle Cals, who told the court that the only person who informed her of the conviction was Mr. Le Scouarnec himself. But he arrived with a glowing recommendation from his last hospital, and the health ministry had approved his hiring. 'So what else did you expect me to do? Nothing?' said Ms. Cals, who retired a year after hiring him. 'At the time, there were few applications and many vacancies, everyone was looking for surgeons. If he hadn't been hired in Jonzac, he would have been hired anywhere else.' All of this meant that Mr. Le Scouarnec, now 74, could continue sexually abusing his patients. 'It reinforced my feeling of impunity,' he told the court. For Gabriel Trouvé, who was abused by Mr. Le Scouarnec when he was 5, the lack of acknowledgment of responsibility coupled with an apparent lack of introspection from officials on the stand was infuriating. 'It's scandalous, actually, because we are well aware that it's a systemic problem,' said Mr. Trouvé, now 34. He is among the members of a new collective of the doctor's victims calling on the government to launch a commission into sexual abuse and the medical system. The Justice Ministry has agreed to meet with the collective. 'The state must act on what just happened because if it doesn't, than our experience and the experience of this whole trial, will be reduced to very little,' said Mr. Trouvé. ' And that's not acceptable.' The irony, Mr. Trouvé pointed out, was that one of the few officials to show remorse was the whistle blower, Dr. Bonvalot. He offered the victims a tearful apology in court, saying that he was wracked with guilt over what more he should have done. 'I see this as a dramatic personal failure,' Dr. Bonvalot said.
CBC
22-05-2025
- CBC
$21M settlement reached between victims of Vincent Nadon and University of Ottawa
Ottawa doctor Vincent Nadon was arrested in 2018 for secretly recording dozens of his patients over nearly 30 years. His former patients at a University of Ottawa health clinic may soon be eligible to receive compensation as part of a settlement with the school.
