Dana-Farber chief reacts to $13.5m award in patient's death

Well said. If doctors are on the malpractice hook for unforeseen events or even if they follow the standard of care, then there will eventually be little incentive for providing any care at all which might seem "experimental," which malpractice juries would interpret as "risky." As a husband of a cancer survivor who benefited from a clinical trial, I shudder to think that some researcher in the future might not agree to start a trial of a promising treatment out of the fear of a jury of his peers mistaking an acceptable risk for negligence. I think we as patients, and spouses of patients, will ultimately suffer.

i am on the other side of the fence. I am a medical negligence paralegal and screen cases for possible medical negligence. I agree that clinical trials are just that, a trial of healing. I have seen negligence in providers who failed to test for cancer even though the symptoms are there. I've had cases where the radiolgist used the wrong guage needle on a breast biopsy, missing the core. The test results were negative, yet the cancer kept growing. A correct needle biopsy done later was to late and the girl died of stage 4 breast cancer at the age of 23. I had a lung cancer case where the pcp did not recognize symptoms, he died of a treatable cancer at the age of 44.
Dee

This is what happens when ambulance-chasing lawyers convince the grieving family of a poor soul taken too early from this Earth to go for broke and sue the heck out of the one institution willing to go the extra mile to save their loved-one's life.
This case makes me sick, not just for the fact that some sharks in suits will be enriched on the back of a dead cancer patient (although this makes me sick enough), but for the future patients who might be deprived of a shot at a cure because wonderful institutions like Dana-Farber might be less willing to take a chance on an experimental cure, knowing that scumball lawyers are out there willing to destroy anyone or anything in order to make a buck.
My son was 2-years-old when he was diagnosed with brain tumors.
It is because of the amazing and courageous work of dozens of clinicians and scientists at Dana-Farber and Children's Hospital Boston that my son is a tumor-free, happy first grader.
I am sorry for the family of the patient who died in this case, but whatever share of the $13.5 million the lawyers see fit to give you will not bring your loved-one back, but it might go towards adding to the toll this terrible disease takes.