Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Doctor Speaks Out In Attempt To Atone For Lying Under Oath To Protect Colleague
"I did it because there was a cultural attitude I was immersed in: You viewed all attorneys as a threat and anything that you did was OK to thwart their efforts to sue your colleagues," Dr. Lars Aanning says in an interview with ProPublica. Aanning broke his silence over what he'd done decades earlier partly to give an explicit example of why physician testimony can't be trusted in court.
Almost two decades ago Dr. Lars Aanning sat on the witness stand in a medical malpractice trial and faced a dilemma. The South Dakota surgeon had been called to vouch for the expertise of one of his partners whose patient had suffered a stroke and permanent disability after an operation. The problem was that Aanning had, in his own mind, questioned his colleague's skill. His partner's patients had suffered injuries related to his procedures. But Aanning understood why his partner's attorney had called him as a witness: Doctors don't squeal on doctors. (Allen, 9/23)
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