More radiation "victims"

[Jim Muckerheide <muckerheide@mediaone.net>]

Group, FYI

CINCINNATI (AP) -- A judge has rejected a proposed $4.27 million settlement in
a lawsuit filed by
relatives of cancer patients who were given experimental radiation treatments
in the 1960s and 1970s.

The plan rejected Monday by U.S. District Judge Sandra Beckwith had been
submitted by lawyers for
the defendants: the federal government, the city, the University of Cincinnati
and several researchers.

The lawsuit stems from treatments performed on 90 patients at General
Hospital, now called
University Hospital, in the 1960s and early 1970s. It was a city hospital
before it became part of the
University of Cincinnati Hospital in 1979. 

Researchers conducted the treatments to determine if they could halt tumor
growth. The plaintiffs
complained that they weren't told that the Defense Department had contributed
$651,000 to the
experiments to see if the treatments would provide information about how
radiation could affect
battlefield troops. 

Plaintiffs say the treatments caused pain and hastened the death of their
relatives. 

Defendants say the treatments were beneficial in some cases, and that any
effect they had on death
could not be determined because the patients were in advanced stages of
cancer. 

The proposed settlement would pay each family $36,000 to $66,000, require
placement of a
memorial plaque on the university's campus, and require the federal government
to apologize. 

Beckwith's objections included a question about whether it might be a problem
to lump all the
patients together as one class since evidence shows they received varying
doses of radiation. The issue of whether to make it a class-action case also
is under appeal to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals. 

There was no comment from either side; lawyers did not return telephone calls. 

=====
Regards, Jim Muckerheide
jmuckerheide@delphi.com