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Q. What types of doctors face the worst malpractice suits?Malpractice Risk, by Physician Specialty (rand.org)Data from 1991 through 2005 for nearly 41,000 physicians covered by a large nationwide liability insurer. At least 200 physicians in each of 24 specialties, allowing analysis of malpractice risk, by specialty. category.)Malpractice ClaimsAcross specialties, 7.4 percent of physicians annually had a claim, and 1.6 percent made an indemnity payment. Among physicians in neurosurgery, 19.1 percent annually faced a claim, but just 2.6 percent in psychiatry did (Figure 1). Physician age, year, and state of practice did not affect these estimates.Specialties with higher proportions of claims do not always incur higher proportions of payments. For example, gynecology had the 12th highest average annual share of physicians with a claim but the highest share with a payment.Indemnity PaymentsAcross specialties, the mean indemnity payment was $274,887, and the median was $111,749 (Figure 2). Specialties most likely to face indemnity claims were not always those with the highest average payments.The difference between mean and median reflects a skewed distribution toward large payments in some specialties. Obstetrics and gynecology accounted for the most payments of at least $1 million, followed by pathology, anesthesiology, and pediatrics.Career Malpractice RiskMost physicians can expect to face at least one malpractice claim over a 30 year career. By 45 years of age, 36 percent of physicians in low-risk specialties are likely to have had at least one malpractice claim, compared to 88 percent of those in high-risk categories. By this same age, just 5 percent in low-risk specialties and 33 percent in high-risk ones are likely to have made at least one indemnity payment. By 65 years of age, 75 percent of physicians in low-risk specialties and 99 percent of those in high-risk ones are likely to have had at least one malpractice claim, and 19 percent of those in low-risk specialties and 71 percent of those in high-risk ones are likely to have had at least one indemnity payment.Findings and ImplicationsThese results confirm malpractice rates in many high-risk specialties found in earlier research based on self-reporting. The results indicate higher malpractice rates than previously reported in low-risk specialties, possibly because of the stigma of a claim in these fields. The results also indicate that many will never have to make an indemnity payment. Nevertheless, the risk of a claim, the possibility of a claim leading to a payment, and the size of a payment contribute to high levels of perceived malpractice risk among U.S. physicians. ■Malpractice Risk According to Physician Specialty | NEJMTop 10 Specialties Sued: 2013 Malpractice ReportNearly 1,400 physicians who were sued for medical malpractice share their experience in Medscape’s recent Malpractice Report.According to the report, the top 10 medical specialties experiencing the most lawsuits were:Most malpractice claims against primary care physicians are a result of missed diagnoses, particularly of cancer and myocardial infarction in adults and meningitis in children, as well as medication errors.Other highlights from the malpractice report include:35% of lawsuits were “failure to diagnose” (17% “failure to treat”)74% of physicians were surprised to be sued24% of physicians sued were dismissed prior to deposition– 45% went to depositions– 21% went all the way to trial61% took up to 2 years to conclude57% of plaintiffs received no monetary award– 18% received up to $100,000– 16% received up to $500,000– 2% received over $2 million62% of responding physicians said the lawsuit result was fair.In almost all cases, the insurer paid the full payout amount.29% of physicians said they no longer trust patients and treat them differently.93% of sued physicians said saying “I’m sorry” would not have helped.Respondents to the malpractice survey advise other doctors to: follow up even when you don’t think you have to; practice more defensive medicine; document more often and more thoroughly; and get rid of rude, demanding, noncompliant patients.Click here to view the full Malpractice Report by Medscape.Medscape Malpractice Report 2015: Why Most Doctors Get SuedPaid Malpractice Claims Among US Physicians by Specialty, 1992-201410 Worst Medical Specialties with Highest Malpractice RatesOur list of 10 worst medical specialties with highest malpractice rates, should give you some insight into which medical jobs are probably the hardest to perform. Being sued can’t be a pleasant experience, and according to statistics by the age of 65 years, 99% of physicians in high-risk specialties are projected to face a malpractice claim. If you think that those belonging in low-risk specialties are in a significantly better position, you are wrong because 75% chance of being sued is still a lot. Because of this, most physicians have a feeling that lawsuit is almost inevitable, and resort to defensive medicine. “Defensive medicine in simple words is departing from normal medical practice as a safeguard from litigation”. Ordering unnecessary tests, avoiding patients with complications, eliminating high risk procedures, are some forms of defensive medicine. The main problem with defensive medicine is that it raises the cost of healthcare, but it can also pose health risks to the patient.wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock.comWhile statistics are very interesting, they still can’t explain why male doctors have nearly 2.5 times the odds of being sued for malpractice than female doctors. Problems in physician – patient communication are claimed to be the biggest cause of malpractice claims, maybe that answers the question as to why female doctors face fewer claims.For our list, we are using data from a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. We are ranking specialties by the annual probability of facing a malpractice claim, however the study presents data for all the specialties in the form of a graph, only giving exact numbers for some specialties – this is why we will mention only the percentages that are explicitly stated in the text of the study; but this poses no problem for correct ranking. Before we begin with our list of 10 worst medical specialties with highest malpractice rates, it is important to mention that while the specialties on our list have the highest rates of malpractice, they do not necessarily have the highest indemnity payments. For example, pediatrics have a rate of just 3.1% and are not on our list, while at the same time they have the highest average payment of $520,924, which is pretty high considering that average across specialties is $274,887, albeit if you think about it, it is quite logical, because jurors are more likely to be harsh towards a doctor whose mistake caused an injury of a child, than for example towards a doctor that messed up someone’s plastic surgery.10. Oncology (9.14%)Some claims against oncologists are delay in diagnosis of cancer, incorrect chemotherapy dosage, suboptimal pain management for a dying patient, negligence for informed consent.Romaset/Shutterstock.com9. Pulmonary medicine (9.32%)Failure to diagnose pulmonary embolism or lung cancer, premature extubation of a ventilated patient, injury of a patient during bronchoscopy are just some examples of pulmonary medicine malpractice claims.Photographee.eu/Shutterstock.com8. Urology (10.49%)When it comes to urology, the number 8 on our list of worst medical specialties with highest malpractice rates, surgical procedures with postoperative complications are the most common reason for malpractice claims, prostatectomy usually resulting in the most expansive claims. Taking into account that average rate of malpractice claims for all physician specialties is 7.4%, and that urology’s got rate above 10%, it’s not surprising that it is on our list of 10 worst medical specialties with the highest malpractice rates.Image Point Fr/Shutterstock.com7. Obstetrics and Gynecology (11.02%)Events during labor and delivery, missed diagnosis of fetal anomalies, shoulder entrapment with brachial plexus nerve injury, neurological impairment, wrongful birth or death are common claims against Obstetricians/Gynecologists.Africa Studio/Shutterstock.com6. Gastroenterology (11.64%)Medication errors relating to heartburn, errors in diagnosis associated with colonic malignancies are some of the most prevalent claims.Image Point Fr/Shutterstock.com5. Plastic Surgery (12.7%)Some plastic surgery malpractice injuries are: scarring, disfigurement, caving of the surgical site, infection, paralysis, and as with any major surgery – death.iconogenic/Shutterstock.com4. Orthopedic Surgery (14.16%)Total knee/hip replacement, knee arthroscopy, exploration and decompression of the spinal canal, shoulder arthroscopy, and rotator cuff repair, are some procedures that are associated with malpractice claims.Minerva Studio/Shutterstock.com3. General Surgery (15.31%)Annual probability of facing a malpractice claim for general surgery, the number three on our list of worst medical specialties with highest malpractice rates, is 15.3 percent. Surgery on the wrong body part or wrong patient, unnecessary disfigurement, nerve injuries, misdiagnosis, unsterilized equipment are some causes of general surgery malpractice claims.Stoyan Yotov/Shutterstock.com2. Thoracic-cardiovascular Surgery (18.9%)Common errors during Thoracic-cardiovascular surgery are accidental injury of neighboring organs, infection in the chest cavity, sponges or surgical instruments being left in the patient’s body, and of course in the worst cases death. Annual probability of facing a malpractice claim for thoracic-cardiovascular surgery is 18.9%.sudok1 / 123RF Stock Photo1. Neurosurgery (19.1%)If we were to take malpractice claims statistics as a measure of how difficult a surgeon’s job is, we’d come to the conclusion that neurosurgeons have the toughest job. However, it is significant to notice that the difference with thoracic-cardiovascular surgery is just 0.2%, which may be considered negligible and therefore a tie between the two specialties. With the annual probability of facing a malpractice claim of 19.1%, and average indemnity payment of $344,811 neurosurgery is on the top of our list of 10 worst medical specialties with highest malpractice rates.Herrndorff/Shutterstock.comWhen the Doctor Faces a LawsuitWithin months of completing my training, I received the call that every doctor dreads.“You’ve been named in a malpractice lawsuit,” said the hospital administrator on the other end of the line.The family of a patient I had seen briefly a year before believed that a colleague’s decision not to operate hastened her demise. Now their lawyers, combing through the medical records, believed that a single sentence in my note brought that doctor’s decision into question. As a second or maybe even third opinion, I had written that the woman was a “possible candidate” for surgery.The truth was that when I saw her she was a possible candidate, but only tenuously so. In fact, her health deteriorated so rapidly that by the time she finished seeing all the specialists and returned to her original surgeon, the chances of her surviving any treatment, no matter how heroic, were almost nil.Though I knew all that, in the weeks after that telephone call I couldn’t help questioning myself, going over the case in my mind as soon as I woke up, then again and again late into the night. I froze with fear every time I was asked for my opinion on a diagnosis or treatment plan and became a master at evasion, littering my assessments and write-ups with words like “maybe,” “perhaps” and “will await further work-up.” And I wondered if my colleagues knew, if the blot on my record had already soaked through the fabric of my professional reputation.In the end, the family dropped the case; I never met with any lawyers or went to court. But memories of the all-encompassing threat of a claim came flooding back when I read a recent study of how litigation affects doctors.Medical malpractice lawsuits have existed in the United States for more than 150 years, though today, most medical errors are never pursued in court, and a large majority of claims never result in any kind of payment to patients. And even though the direct and indirect costs of such suits account for only 2.4 percent of total health care costs, that’s still $55 billion yearly. To say nothing of the even more important social costs, an issue addressed last month in The Journal of the American College of Surgeons.Researchers surveyed more than 7,000 surgeons and found that nearly one in four were in the midst of litigation. Surgeons involved in a recent lawsuit were more likely to suffer from depression and burnout, including feelings of emotional exhaustion and detachment, a low sense of accomplishment and even thoughts of suicide.“Malpractice is at the top of the list of major stressors for most physicians,” said Dr. Charles M. Balch, the lead author and a professor of surgery at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. “It’s right up there with financial distress, serious work-home conflicts and life-and-death circumstances.”Other studies estimate that, depending on the specialty, anywhere from 75 percent to 99 percent of practicing doctors will over the course of a lifetime be threatened with a lawsuit. “We are not talking about some small subset of physicians who are vulnerable because they are weak,” said Dr. Tait D. Shanafelt, a co-author and associate professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. “Malpractice affects a wide swath of our colleagues and their patients.”Doctors who have been sued may end up practicing defensive medicine, ordering unnecessary tests and medications or refusing to treat patients with more complex illnesses altogether as a safeguard against future litigation. Those same doctors can also become burned out, which can lead to even more errors, and more malpractice claims.“Burnout may be what reinforces the connections between malpractice, defensive medicine and poor-quality care,” said Amitabh Chandra, a professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and an economist who has written extensively on medical malpractice.The study authors propose that one way to disrupt the negative cycle is to improve communication between patients and doctors, so that patients are aware of the risks that can occur despite a doctor’s best efforts. Another important step is instituting programs that continue those conversations even after an error occurs. “We need supportive work environments and more programs that allow doctors and patients to resolve issues directly,” Dr. Balch said.But change will require looking at malpractice reform in a new way, one that gives weight not just to the economic costs but to the ways reform might affect how patients and doctors interact.“Ultimately we are dealing with doctors who are working under enormous pressures,” Dr. Chandra said. “For them, the emotional costs are colossal.”Physicians React: Life After a LawsuitSandra LevyHow Does a Malpractice Lawsuit Change Doctors' Lives?Getting sued changes some physicians' lives and the way they view patients. When doctors are sued for malpractice, they often feel anxiety, anguish, depression, a sense of betrayal, and shame. The emotional distress they experience can last a lifetime.A lawsuit can drag on for months, or even years. When the case is pending, many physicians suffer. They don't eat well, they don't sleep well, and they are frequently depressed.After the lawsuit is settled or resolved, many doctors leave their practice, retire early, practice defensive medicine, and look at patients as potential adversaries for the remainder of their careers. Even when doctors win their court case, they may have lost substantial earnings in time away from their practices during court depositions and hearings. Physicians may also suffer in their personal lives.Spurred by a recent article in Medscape, in which five doctors described the emotional stress they went through during their malpractice trials, a lively discussion ensued."Three close college friends were never the same after their stupid lawsuits. It has to be a variant of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and while we're having a shortage of docs (especially primary care...), our legal system is removing good docs from the front line," said an internist.Sued More Than OnceAn ob/gyn who was sued three times expressed the emotional toil that ensued:All cases were settled, mainly because it was cheaper and because I was not sure that I could tolerate the emotional effects of a trial. I did continue to practice and didn't always see patients as adversaries, but I do think it took its toll. I retired at 60 after practicing for 30 years in ob/gyn with a main hospital that serviced an underprivileged community. I retired from exhaustion and burnout. I loved my work, and if it were possible to practice with shortened hours and without risk for lawsuits, I would still be working.Yet another physician who has experienced more than one lawsuit said:I was sued for something that was done by another medical provider without my knowledge. After over 3 years of stress, I was found not liable and dismissed. Two years later, I was just starting to feel like my life was getting back on track. Another suit was filed by the relatives of a deceased nursing home patient who had a court-appointed guardian. I cared for that patient for several years. Those relatives never once came to see him. The suit was dismissed, but my anger remains. Now it is no longer enough to provide good care and relate well with patients and families. Apparently, we are now supposed to relate well to family members we do not even know exist. I am actively planning for retirement and now work primarily on administration. If I had it to do over again, I would never have gone to medical school.A cardiologist who worries about lawsuits said:Now that I'm in private practice, I have fear of being sued, which does force me to spend extra hours every day to make sure I documented well. Between this and the pressure of sustaining productivity in private practice, it does affect other aspects of my life. I do ask myself whether I did the correct thing going into medicine...but my answer is "yes, I did"...the problem is, maybe I'm practicing in the wrong country. It's almost impossible to get sued in other countries, and it is based on true medical neglect. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way in this country, and this is why we have sky-high medical costs, medical fraud, and sometimes a lack of trust in your own patients.A Call for Tort ReformSeveral respondents were adamant that tort reform is needed to protect physicians. An internist said:We desperately need tort reform. To paraphrase Atul Gawande, 'I do approximately the same number of surgeries a year as ground balls fielded by a major league third baseman. If that third baseman makes two errors, he wins the gold glove. If I make two errors, then patients end up injured, or worse.' Point being, we all make mistakes, and of course there needs to be a way to compensate those who experience bad outcomes. Unfortunately, our current system results in unnecessary stress, loss of productivity, defensive medicine, and logjams in our judicial system.Another call for tort reform came from a dermatologist:All of these cases and replies are further evidence of how bad tort law is in this country. If, like most of civilization, a plaintiff MUST PAY damages to the winning defendant, it is highly probable that none of these suits would have taken place. The pathetic Band-Aids of tort reform would not change the fact that the doctor and all of his other patients and the whole of society, other than the plaintiff and his client, LOSE as soon as a suit is filed, even when the defending doctor "wins," the dermatologist added.Some physicians took an even stronger stand. An otolaryngologist commented:Doctors shouldn't complain about the high cost of malpractice insurance. They should threaten to withhold their precious lifesaving skills until unscrupulous patients and their predatory lawyers back off. The legal system is not set up to be fair to doctors, and the reason is that doctors have allowed it to evolve that way. We only have ourselves to blame, really.A family medicine doctor reported, "I know directly of at least one case where the case was lost, and the subsequent emotional toll on the physician was catastrophic. Another I know of indirectly where the loss of the malpractice suit was followed by massive clinical depression."Finally, an ophthalmologist whose lawsuit lasted 7 years said:I had seen a patient for ptosis of the upper eyelids who also complained of excessive tearing of his eyes. I had found that this was due to laxity of his lower eyelids and recommended repair at the same time. He declined. After the surgery, he sued me because I caused his eyes to tear even though my records documented that the problem was preexisting. Even his wife sued me separately for lack of consortium. He also alleged lack of informed consent. The charges stated that I coerced him into signing the consent on his gurney on the way into the operating room. The fact that the surgical consent was signed 7 days earlier in my office and was witnessed did not influence the judge who allowed the suit to go forward. Seven years of grief and heartache.Finally, the suit was dismissed the night before trial because the plaintiff's attorney admitted that they had tried all those years to get an expert witness to represent him and couldn't do so. He ultimately had gone to another hospital and had the lower lid laxity repaired (which I had recommended), and his tearing problem resolved.A wary physician had this advice for colleagues: "Don't give the plaintiff attorney any information. He/she may be fishing for discovery without the cost of discovery. In my case, it was a friendly phone call asking for my side of what happened. I took the call. Wrong. Call your malpractice carrier immediately. Follow the advice of the attorney assigned to you."Five Doctors Tell 'How I Survived After Being Sued'It's Easy To Predict Which Doctors Will Face Malpractice SuitsOJO_IMAGES VIA GETTY IMAGESA tiny fraction of doctors are responsible for a surprising number of malpractice claim settlements, according to new research published in The New England Journal of Medicine.Just one percent of doctors were linked to 32 percent of malpractice settlements paid out between 2005 to 2014, according to anonymized data collected from the U.S. National Practitioner Data Bank, which tracks nationwide information on all practicing physicians’ malpractice suits and their settlements.What’s more, the greater the number of claims a doctor settled, the chances they’d pay out another one in the future were exponential. Doctors who settled two malpractice suits had about twice the risk of being involved in a third settlement when compared to those with just one settlement. And doctors with three paid malpractice settlements were three times more likely to be accused of malpractice and pay out again.The highest risk doctors — those with six or more paid settlement claims — had more than 12 times the risk of a recurring settlement payment.While the study’s findings are meant as a wake-up call for hospitals and liability insurers, they are also an important reminder to patients that a minority of doctors may still be practicing despite disturbing track records.Who is most likely to face malpracticeCertain kinds of doctors are more likely to be involved in recurring malpractice settlements. Neurosurgeons, orthopedic surgeons, general surgeons, plastic surgeons and OB/GYNs were about twice as likely to have repeat malpractice settlements compared to internal medicine doctors, even after the researchers controlled for the inherent risk of things like surgery.Male doctors were also 40 percent more likely to have a recurring settlement compared to their female colleagues, while physicians younger than 35 only had about one-third the risk of recurrence compared to older ones. As these young physicians grew older, their risk of recurrence increased.In all, the study analyzed 66,426 paid malpractice claims for 54,099 doctors over ten years. Almost one-third of the claims centered around patient deaths. Fifty-four percent were suits about serious physical injury. Most malpractice lawsuits ended in settlements and averaged $371,054; only three percent resulted in verdicts.How patients are protectedBy federal law, when a hospital is thinking about giving a doctor admitting privileges in their institution, they have to look up his or her malpractice and disciplinary history in the Data Bank. Only hospitals, medical boards and federal investigators are allowed to query the databank in full, so patients don’t have access to this information.In one sense, patients can feel assured that the hospital has already vetted a doctor and knows their full history, good or bad. But the law doesn’t stipulate what hospitals do with that information, or how it should inform their decision-making process, which explains why some high-risk doctors are still working.The study’s lead researcher David Studdert, a medicine and law professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, says he intended his findings to be a call to hospitals, liability insurance companies and other institutions about this minority of high-risk doctors. Studdert calls his work an important step in developing a predictive, national tool that could one day identify high-risk physicians before they start accumulating malpractice claims.“Can you identify high risk physicians early on?” Studdert said. “If the answer is yes, then [institutions] want to hook into some kind of intervention program that can get in and reduce those risks.”If our study provokes a debate about what the right level of transparency is for multi-claim physicians, I think that’s a good thingDavid Studdert, senior researcherWhat malpractice actually meansOverall, very few doctors are sued for malpractice. Over the 10-year period Studdert analyzed, only six percent of all practicing American doctors were linked to a paid malpractice settlement. And just because a doctor chose to settle a malpractice suit, it doesn’t necessarily mean he or she is admitting to malpractice, he pointed out. It could be a strategic move to avoid the costs of a lengthy lawsuit. It also could be that an investigation revealed he or she delivered substandard — but not negligent — care, and the settlement is an acknowledgment of that.“It may be that the physician is delivering substandard care, it may be that physician has poor conversational skills or some combination of those things,” Studdert said about recurring claim settlements. “But either way it’s a little bit of a warning sign and suggests at the very least that someone should be looking into the quality of care that clinician is delivering.”Some states make data malpractice settlements and disciplinary action for doctors available through the state medical board, either on a website or by submitting a formal request, according to The Washington Post. Consumer sites like docinfo.org or healthgrades.com, which spit out reports on disciplinary actions and settled lawsuits, are also avenues for research, notes the Post. But the information probably won’t give you much insight into why that claim was settled, or for what.Say you’ve got an upcoming breast cancer surgery and you want to research your surgeon. You may not know if the claim settled against your doctor was for breast surgery or something else completely unrelated to the type of procedure you’re getting, says Studdert, which makes this kind of data imperfect.Arthur Caplan, founding director of the division of medical ethics at NYU’s Langone Medical Center, pointed out that another problem with the available public databases is that they show only settled claims — not ongoing lawsuits. Patients could try to ask the doctor or surgeon face-to-face how many malpractice suits they’ve settled or how many are ongoing, he added, but while they should expect an honest answer, there are “no guarantees.”“I don’t think the potential patient can do much except get second opinions,” said Caplan.While Studdert’s findings are aimed at hospitals and other medical institutions, he understands the curiosity and worry it might arouse in patients. But he hopes his analysis demonstrates that malpractice lawsuits are a highly concentrated phenomenon among a small percentage of practicing doctors, and that the claims are skewed even more toward a few physicians who are sued again and again.“If our study provokes a debate about what the right level of transparency is for multi-claim physicians, I think that’s a good thing,” he concluded.5 of the worst medical malpractice cases (today.mims.com)

Troubling questions about surgeon general nominee Dr. Henry W. Foster Jr.'s knowledge of the "Tuskegee Study" have refocused public attention on one of the most infamous chapters in U.S. medical research.Over 40 years, beginning in 1932, 400 Alabama men -- all poor and black -- were denied medical treatment while the U.S. Public Health Service documented the long-term effects of syphilis. The health service told the men their syphilis was being treated but gave them placebos.During the 1960s, Dr. Foster served as professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Tuskegee Institute -- the focal point of the experiment. He also sat on a local medical board that was briefed about the research in 1969.Last month, a conservative group attempting to block Dr. Foster's nomination accused him of having known details of the experiment some three years before its disclosure sparked public outrage.But Dr. Foster steadfastly maintains that he did not learn about the experiment until 1972 and that he then immediately called for "appropriate treatment" for the subjects.Beyond the questions of what Dr. Foster knew and when he knew it, the controversy underscores an ugly fact: In the name of medical science, blacks have been exploited in numbers that far exceed their proportion in the U.S. population."There are a lot of articles that say African-Americans have a distrust of the medical establishment because of the Tuskegee [syphilis experiment], but I think it's broader than that," says Dr. Vanessa Northington Gamble, a physician and medical historian who is also an associate professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin Medical Center."There's a long history of blacks and medical experimentation that predated Tuskegee."Tuskegee symbolizes the abuse, but I think that blacks who have never heard of Tuskegee fear experimentation."No one was more misled than a group of parents in Baltimore about 25 years ago who thought they were enrolling their boys in a free Johns Hopkins child-care program.More than 7,000 young boys -- "95 percent from underprivileged Negro families" -- were used as guinea pigs in a three-year experiment that could have branded them as latent criminals for life, according to a story that appeared in the now-defunct Washington Daily News.Funded by the National Institutes of Health, the project extracted blood samples, ostensibly to test for anemia and other medical problems.In reality, the blood was drawn to screen boys with an extra "Y" chromosome, making them XYY males instead of normal XY males. This was done because a theory, which remains unproved to this day, holds that males with the extra Y chromosome are more likely to become criminals later in life.This genetic testing was done without the parents' knowledge or consent, according to the newspaper article.Although men with XYY chromosomes tend to be taller than the norm, it has not been demonstrated to cause any type of psychological abnormality.A similar experiment was conducted on another 6,000 young men, approximately 85 percent of whom were black, housed in (( Maryland state institutions for abandoned or delinquent children.According to the Washington Daily News, the children's confidentiality was not protected and the blood-test results were passed to the courts to use as they saw fit.Because blacks make up 44 percent of all prisoners -- almost four times their proportion in the general population -- prison experimental abuse is more likely to disproportionately affect African-Americans.To more than 100 prisoners in Oregon, there was more than just a potential for abuse. In a sense, the inmates were victims of an age-old fascination -- some would even say obsession -- with black sexual prowess.Between 1963 and 1971, radioactive thymidine, a genetic compound, was injected into the testicles of more than 100 prisoners at the Oregon State Penitentiary to see whether the rate of sperm production was affected by exposure to steroidal hormones.A Dr. Heller (whose first name is not given in the medical literature) noted, "I have a negro [sic] volunteer at present."What befell this "negro volunteer"?"After a novocaine injection, a 1mm cut was made in each testicle. The seminiferous tubercules [which carry semen] were severed by the stroke of a razor blade. . . ."Then, "radioactive thymidine [thymidine H3] was injected into the testicular matrix [testes]. The injection site was marked by a black silk suture."In another prison case, inmates were used in flawed bloodplasma trials between 1967 and 1969 throughout Alabama.The study was managed by Dr. Austin R. Stough at Kilby, Draper and McAlester prisons. According to a New York Times account, there was no informed consent and no accurate records were kept.Dr. Stough was expelled several times from hospitals and prisons after men became sick and died from a variety of diseases stemming from his experiments.At the California Medical Facility between January 1967 and April 1968, prisoners were paralyzed with succinylcholine, a neuromuscular compound. Because their breathing capacity was shut down, many likened the experience to drowning.When five of the 64 prisoners refused to participate in the experiment, the institution's special treatment board gave "permission" for prisoners to be injected against their will.The 1964 Declaration of Helsinki, an international agreement governing medical experimentation, makes an important distinction between research that will benefit the subjects -- therapeutic research -- and studies that will not.Problems occur when dangerous experiments lose their therapeutic nature. They are conducted without the consent of the subject and when patients are not allowed to avail themselves of new therapies, even as they are being experimented on.In 1962, Dr. Chester M. Southam of the Sloan-Kettering Institute injected at least 396 inmates at Ohio State Prison -- almost half of them black -- with live human cancer cells.One of the sponsors for Dr. Southam's research was the National Institutes of Health, which also sponsored the Tuskegee syphilis study.Years later, however, Dr. Southam made a tactical error when he injected 22 elderly hospital patients with cancer cells during experiments at Brooklyn's Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital.He was temporarily stripped of his license for doing to these private patients what he had done to so many prisoners.Thanks to U.S. Energy Secretary Hazel R. O'Leary, the public can now gain a better sense of the extent to which U.S. citizens -- blacks in particular -- were victimized by radiation experiments.The Los Angeles Times revealed from U.S. Department of Energy documents that at least 82 charity patients were exposed to full-body radiation at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center.Exposed to radiation 10 times the level believed at the time to be safe, 25 patients died. Three-quarters -- 61 -- of the patients in the study were low-income black men and women.Also, the New York Times revealed that the consent signatures were forged.At the heart of protection against unethical medical experimentation is the principle of "informed consent." Essentially, that means a person must not only give his or her consent, but must truly understand the risks and possible benefits of participation in an experiment.This principle had long been part of medical ethics, but was codified into the Nuremberg Code in 1947 by the tribunal that judged the Nazi war doctors.As an added layer of protection, the National Research Act of 1972 specifies that every medical institution involved with human experimentation must have an investigative review board.In addition to medical researchers, community representatives also are required to be on that body.Despite these safeguards, abuses continue.When 1.7 million soldiers -- 22 percent of whom were black -- went to the Persian Gulf in 1990, they found that their human rights were the first casualty.The tangled branches of the illness now often called "gulf war syndrome" may have its roots back on American soil. Persian Gulf-bound soldiers were forced to take experimental vaccines under federal law (C.F.R., section 50.23 (d)).The law stipulates that soldiers cannot refuse to participate in the government's medical experiments.For blacks, even death is no protection against being victimized.In Philadelphia, the coroner's office has removed eyes and brains from the bodies of the dead without prior consent or permission from next of kin.Typical is the story of Doris Jackson, who told CBS' "America Tonight" that when her son died in a motorcycle accident in 1987, the medical examiner's office refused to let her see his body. When she was finally granted permission, the brain had been removed. No one had asked for her consent.Ms. Jackson had fallen victim to Pennsylvania's doctrine of "implied consent."This oxymoronic phrase describes a law that assumes the patient or subject has given his or her permission to have organs removed unless there are signed documents to the contrary.The catch is that because so few affected people know about the law, the coroner takes the organs of many people who would have vehemently objected. California, Florida, Michigan, Ohio and Texas have similar laws.Dr. Cyril Wecht, chief of pathology at St. Francis General Hospital in Pittsburgh, says that in Philadelphia, the medical examiner does not tell families of the intention to take the organs, effectively denying them an opportunity to object."If you get a call saying your husband's been killed at work, will you say, 'First thing, I better get in touch with the medical examiner, then I'll call my family, my minister or rabbi'? Who the hell is going to think of anything like that?"Researchers will say that they "harvest" organs without the permission of the family to further medical knowledge. But this is only part of the truth. The incentive for a doctor to take organs without permission is more subtle -- and more powerful -- than cold cash.Inducements take the form of staff privileges and academic appointments."It is rarely in terms of direct payments, quid pro quo. Indeed, the emollients have been direct and far more important, such as obtaining a medical school or graduate school appointment, advancement or promotion," Dr. Wecht declares."Getting your name on research papers, the self-aggrandizement of sucking up to the bigwigs out there. Definitely, those things have been done."Harriet A. Washington is a contributing columnist to Emerge Magazine, from which this article is adapted. She writes frequently on health issues.

This answer may contain sensitive images. Click on an image to unblur it.Yes.. Biology 101 tells us that when a sperm cell and an egg cell meet, that is conception: life begins.Source: LiveAction, 12 Amazing Facts that prove the preborn’s humanity in the first trimester1) Preborn babies have their own unique DNAScience tells us the human embryo is a “developing individual” while in the womb. Physical changes occur quickly from the moment of fertilization.Modern science indisputably recognizes the preborn child as a new human being. As Dr. Micheline Matthews-Roth of Harvard Medical School says: “It is scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at conception, when egg and sperm join to form the zygote, and this developing human always is a member of our species in all stages of its life.” Dr. Jerome Lejeune – the scientist who discovered Down syndrome – agreed: “Life has a very long history, but each of us has a very neat beginning – the moment of conception.” (More science on life’s beginning here.)Recombinant DNA technologies, discovered after abortion was legalized throughout the U.S. indisputably prove that the unborn child “is a whole human being from the moment of fertilization, that all abortions terminate the life of a living human being, and that the unborn child is a separate human patient under the care of modern medicine.”Countless medical textbooks – from various science specialties – agree. From the very first moment, a human being is a human being.2) Organs begin to develop within three weeksAt two to three weeks, a baby’s brain is the “first organ to appear,” and the baby’s kidneys are present at only five weeks.Baby at 8 weeksIn fact by eight weeks, all of the baby’s organs are in place and only need time to become fully developed.3) A baby’s heart begins to beat as early as 16 days, and is certainly by 22 days.Here is a video of the baby’s heart beating at four weeks and four days.<a href="The Heart Begins Beating Movie</a>According to The Endowment for Human Development, “[b]etween fertilization and birth, the heart beats approximately 54 million times…”4) At four weeks, the baby’s facial features are becoming noticeable.Her eyes are developing. What color will they be? Will they take mommy’s shape, or daddy’s? Her mouth is also beginning to form. At this age, the baby’s skin is present, and it covers her tiny body. The skin is so thin you can see through to her organs and blood vessels.5) At five weeks, a baby’s circulatory system is developing, as well as the foundation for her hair, nails, and tooth enamel.This period of time includes quick and fascinating growth, as the tiny child is changing quickly – right on track with normal human development.Human child at 4 to 5 weeks. (Photo credit: Lunar Caustic)6) Preborn babies react to touchAt six weeks, a baby will move away if his or her mouth is touched: “A light touch to the mouth area causes the embryo to reflexively withdraw its head.” The Endowment for Human Development has a video of a six-week-old baby responding to touch here.D&C abortions are commonly performed when a baby is this age. Former abortionist, Dr. Anthony Levatino, describes exactly what happens in this type of abortion in the video at the bottom of this article.7) Brainwaves are detected at six weeksA preborn baby’s brainwaves can be measured at just six weeks. See the brainwaves for yourself here.8 weeks gestation (Photo credit: Lunar Caustic)8) At six weeks, a preborn baby’s ear is already appearingThese ears are preparation for the baby’s ability to respond to sound. Recently, innovative scientists discovered that babies can respond to music at a mere 16 weeks gestation – far earlier than previously believed, and just three weeks after the first trimester ends.9) Preborn babies play in the wombAt eight weeks, a baby can move his or her jaw and point her toes. Is this early practice for talking, eating, ballet or soccer?<a href="Jaw Movement Movie</a>10) Preborn babies yawn and suck their thumbsAt nine weeks, a preborn baby can suck his or her thumb. According to the Endowment for Human Development, most babies prefer to suck their right thumb!At this age, plenty is going on. A baby’s vocal cords are forming, her bones are hardening, and her toenails and fingernails are emerging. See a video of a 10-week-old baby yawning here.11) Preborn babies have fingerprintsAt nine to 10 weeks, preborn babies develop fingerprints, which remain the same throughout the baby’s life. His or her permanent identification is already developing. Her tooth buds – another form of identification – can be seen at 10 weeks.Watch a video and see a preborn baby’s fingerprints here.Annabelle, at 8 weeks, 5 days old. Her mother shared her beautiful story and photos here, illustrating the absolute humanity of all preborn children.12) A preborn baby hides from abortion instrumentsThe video “The Silent Scream” (as well as other ultrasounds) captures the D&C abortion of a baby in her first trimester. Aspiration (Suction) D&C abortions are the most prevalent type of surgical abortion in the U.S., and they are commonly performed up to 13 weeks of pregnancy. Approximately 700,000 preborn children are killed using this type of abortion every year.Former abortionist, Dr. Anthony Levatino, explains what happens, using medical animation:The conversation about abortion is changing. This doctor has performed over 1200 abortions, and now he’s revealing what…Posted by Live Action on Thursday, March 3, 2016After seeing the abortion and the reaction of the baby on ultrasound, the abortionist in The Silent Scream revealed he never performed an abortion again:“The abortionist was quite skilled, having performed more than 10,000 abortions. We discover that the resulting ultrasound of his abortion so appalled him that he never again performed another abortion.The clip begins with an ultrasound of the fetus (girl) who is about to be aborted. The girl is moving in the womb; displays a heartbeat of 140 per minute; and is at times sucking her thumb. As the abortionist’s suction tip begins to invade the womb, the child rears and moves violently in an attempt to avoid the instrument. Her mouth is visibly open in a “silent scream.” The child’s heart rate speeds up dramatically (to 200 beats per minute) as she senses aggression. She moves violently away in a pathetic attempt to escape the instrument.The abortionist’s suction tip begins to rip the baby’s limbs from its body, ultimately leaving only her head in the uterus (too large to be pulled from the uterus in one piece). The abortionist attempts to crush her head with his forceps, allowing it to be removed.”Researchers note that a preborn baby may be able to feel pain as early as five weeks. After examining scientific resources and hearing medical testimony, a task force found that “(the necessary pieces) for pain detection in the spinal cord exists at very early developmental stages.”Source: LiveAction, Research now shows that preborn babies can feel pain very early — by 8 weeks[…]study published in March 2017 found that preborn human beings have a much more advanced nervous system than previously believed. The study, “Tridimensional Visualization and Analysis of Early Human Development,” which was published in the journal Cell, was conducted to create a precise cellular and molecular cartography of the human embryo. What it discovered was that as early as the first trimester, fetuses already have adult-like nervous system patterns, even in their hands and feet — concluding that fetal pain is a real experience.“We found that the adult-like pattern of skin innervation is established before the end of the first trimester, showing important intra- and inter-individual variations in nerve branches,” states the study. According to Live Action News’ Cassy Fiano’s previous article on the study, researchers “found evidence for ‘a differential vascularization of the male and female genital tracts concomitant with sex determination.'” The researchers, using advanced cellular visualization tools, were able to take microscopic images of proteins in nerve vascular tissues down to the tiniest single nerve branches.While the study fails to report a complete conclusion as to what this means, the fact that the nervous system develops sooner than once thought backs up other evidence that proves fetuses are capable of feeling pain at as early as eight weeks gestation.It has been well-documented that preborn humans feel pain during an abortion. As early as 8 weeks gestation, it has been shown that the fetus responds to touch. Abortion proponents have long argued that this is simply a reflex because the nervous system was not thought to be well developed at this age, however, this latest study proves this theory wrong.The Silent Scream, which documents an 11-week-old fetus recoiling from abortion instruments also shows that preborn humans react to stimuli.In The Abortion Providers video, surgeon Robert P. N. Shearin states that:As early as eight to ten weeks after conception, and definitely by thirteen-and-a-half weeks, the unborn experiences organic pain […] First, the unborn child’s mouth, at eight weeks, then her hands at ten weeks, then her face, arms, and legs at eleven weeks become sensitive to touch. By thirteen-and-a-half weeks, she responds to pain at all levels of her nervous system in an integrated response which cannot be termed a mere reflex. She can now experience pain.At 18 weeks gestation, it has been shown that the preborn child will exhibit stress responses to painful stimuli.Additionally, Maureen Condic, Ph.D., an Associate Professor of Neurobiology and Anatomy at the University of Utah, testified that fetuses feel pain at eight weeks gestation when the spinal circuitry for pain detection is established.“The debate over fetal pain is not whether pain is experienced by a fetus at 20 weeks,” she explained. “There’s essentially universal agreement on this point in the scientific community. Rather the debate concerns how pain is experienced. Whether a fetus has the same pain experience as a newborn or adult.”Abortion ends human lives, and it has been repeatedly proven that those lives are capable of feeling the pain of being dismembered or injected with a needle to stop their hearts, or suctioned from their mother’s wombs. Former abortionist Dr. Anthony Levatino explains in the video below:The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act recently passed in the US House, and has moved on to the Senate. The bill would ban abortions after 20 weeks gestation except in cases in which the mother’s life is endangered by “a physical disorder, illness, or injury, excluding psychological or emotional conditions,” in which the pregnancy is the result of rape and the woman has received counseling for the rape or medical treatment for the rape at least 48 hours prior to the abortion, and when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest against a minor and “the rape or incest has been reported prior to the abortion to a law enforcement agency or a government agency legally authorized to act on reports of child abuse.”The United States is currently only one of seven nations that permits abortion on demand after 20 weeks gestation.However, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, even if it passes, will not be able to protect all preborn children from feeling the pain of abortion, as we now know that they experience it much earlier than 20 weeks.Source: LifeNews, Abortion is Not Safer for Women Than Childbirth. Here’s WhyOne of abortion advocates’ most seemingly compelling arguments is that abortion is safer than childbirth, and women should not be forced to put their lives in jeopardy for someone else.It’s a claim that a popular new video from the pro-abortion website Vox touts heavily, but it isn’t true.First and foremost, abortion never is safer for the unborn child. An abortion almost always destroys an unborn human being’s life. It is not accurate to say that abortion is safer than childbirth for the woman, either. At the very least, researchers point out that the U.S. does not receive enough data from abortion facilities to make that conclusion. Several European studies have refuted the claim even further, concluding that more women die after abortions than childbirth.Anna Paprocki, an attorney at Americans United for Life, recently wrote an article for The Federalist, refuting the new video’s claims:After acknowledging that pregnant women are, in fact, mothers, [Vox’s Liz] Plank alleges “abortion is actually safer than childbirth” by comparing two data points from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) that the CDC itself has said are not comparable. Maternal mortality and abortion mortality “measures are conceptually different and are used by CDC for different health purposes.” In other words, Plank peddles apples-to-oranges numbers as the basis of her claim.… The problems with Plank’s defense of abortion run deeper than her euphemisms and faulty use of dissimilar CDC statistics, because U.S. abortion data is known to be incomplete and unreliable.There is no federal abortion reporting requirement. Even the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute acknowledges that the current “patchwork of surveillance efforts” relies on “incomplete” reports from states and that California—estimated to account for 17 percent, or one out of every six abortions in the country—is one of three states that “do not report to the CDC at all.” Guttmacher uses voluntary reporting from abortionists, filtered through its own ideological lens, which fails to fill these gaping holes.Other factors compound the poor quality of reporting on abortion and abortion complications. Even pro-abortion advocates have said women face significant obstacles when reporting complaints against abortion providers. Susan Schewel, the executive director of the Women’s Medical Fund in Philadelphia, explained that, in her experience trying to work with women to file complaints with the Pennsylvania Department of Health, “The women found the complaint process so onerous and the telling of their stories so personally difficult that they failed to complete the paperwork and abandoned the effort.”Abortionists have allegedly discouraged women from being truthful about their abortion complications. A former Planned Parenthood employee’s “whistleblower” lawsuit explains that chemical abortion patients who later experienced significant bleeding were told “to go to an emergency room and report that they were experiencing a spontaneous miscarriage.”Dr. Byron Calhoun, vice chair of West Virginia University-Charleston’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, published research in 2013 that explained how little data Americans have about abortion complications and maternal deaths. He wrote in the Catholic medical journal Linacre Quarterly:There are numerous and complicated methodological factors that make a valid scientific assessment of abortion mortality extremely difficult. Among the many factors responsible are incomplete reporting, definitional incompatibilities, voluntary data collection, research bias, reliance upon estimations, political correctness, inaccurate and/or incomplete death certificate completion, incomparability with maternal mortality statistics, and failing to include other causes of death such as suicides. Given the importance of this disclosure about abortion mortality, the lack of credible and reliable scientific evidence supporting this representation requires substantial discussion.One American study in 2012 received a lot of attention after its data showed that abortion is safer for women than childbirth. However, others refuted the findings, saying the pro-abortion researchers based their claims on unreliable data.There also is evidence that legalizing abortion does not reduce maternal mortality rates. In countries like Ireland and Poland that largely protect unborn babies from abortion, maternal mortality rates are lower than neighboring countries where abortion is legal. In fact, Ireland has one of the lowest maternal mortality rates in the world. A study from Chile also found that maternal mortality declined because of better access to health care, not changes in the country’s abortion laws.Another factor not often considered is women’s deaths by suicide following abortions. A study in The British Medical Journal revealed that women who’ve had one or more abortions are ten times more likely to commit suicide than those who never aborted.An abortion always destroys one life, and in America, abortions have killed more than 58 million unborn babies since 1973. How many mothers also lost their lives as a result of an abortion, however, tragically remains a mystery.