Re: $5.4M Radiation Case Settlement Ok'd

[Bob Flood <bflood@SLAC.Stanford.EDU>]

At 08:27 AM 5/7/99 -0500, you wrote:
>
>I have had several Radiation Workers here at a power reactor come in to
work and
>fail the contamination monitors on the way out of the plant. It seems that
their
>doctor have them "someting" to check on their heart....

In my nuclear power experience, the gatehouse portal monitors were
configured so that everyone passed through them entering and exiting the
site. The vast majority of alarms happened on people ENTERING the site, and
were due to the diagnostic or therapeutic use of radioactive material. The
sad part was that the majority of these people found out that
radioactivcity was involved from the plant HP staff, not from their doctors
or the medical staff conducting the tests/procedures.

And my wife has been through a few thyroid studies and my kids have had
bone scans, and never a word has been said about radioactive material.

This common failure to disclose or inform does raise a very interesting
question about informed consent as it applies to this case - was it really
any different from the way that treatments are given today?

By the way, it seems to me that the settlement in this case was a purely
business decision. With 90 plaintiffs and multiple defendants, it appears
to me that the defendants would have spent more than $5.4 million to WIN
the case in court, so this decision was a matter of controlling costs. It's
the American way!

===================================
Bob Flood
Dosimetry Group Leader
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
(650) 926-3793
bflood@slac.stanford.edu
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