Any DUers following the black lung cover up and Johns Hopkins [View all]

[malaise]

http://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/10/30/13637/johns-hopkins-medical-unit-rarely-finds-black-lung-helping-coal-industry-defeat

Across Laurel Creek and down a dirt road in this sleepy valley town is the modest white house where Steve Day grew up. For more than 33 years, it was where he recuperated between shifts underground, mining the rich seams of the central Appalachian coalfields and doing his part to help make Peabody Energy Corp. the nation’s most productive coal company. Now, it’s where he spends most days and nights in a recliner, inhaling oxygen from a tank, slowly suffocating to death.

More than a half-dozen doctors who have seen the X-ray and CT images of his chest agree he has the most severe form of black lung disease. Yet his claim for benefits was denied in 2011, leaving him and his family to survive on Social Security and a union pension; they sometimes turn to neighbors or relatives for loans to make it through the month.

The medical opinions primarily responsible for sinking his claim didn’t come from consultants-for-hire at a private firm or rogue doctors at a fringe organization.

They came from a respected household name: the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions.


What has remained in the shadows is the work of a small unit of radiologists who are professors at the medical school and physicians at the hospital. For 40 years, these doctors have been perhaps the most sought-after and prolific readers of chest films on behalf of coal companies seeking to defeat miners’ claims. Their fees flow directly to the university, which supports their work, an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity and ABC News has found. According to the university, none of the money goes directly to the doctors.
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The working poor have very few friends. These scumbags get rich killing people.