Lethal Medicine by Harvey F. Wachsman

Author:Harvey F. Wachsman
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466891708
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

6

COVER-UP

When we began to investigate the Emanuel Revici case, as we studied his records and finally questioned him under oath in depositions and at trial, we began to suspect that this was more than a simple case of malpractice. We knew that, at Revici’s urging, Rena Menska had abandoned her regular physician and refused to undergo surgery. We knew what her physical condition was at the time she began seeing Revici, and we knew how her condition progressed because of evidence we obtained from the two hospitals at which she had been examined. We knew a great deal about what had happened, and we learned more from Ms. Menska’s relatives and from other doctors who had treated her. And as we probed further, we found that certain things in Revici’s records were not consistent with what we knew to be the facts. That’s because, at some point after the patient’s death, he doctored his records in an attempt to insulate himself from legal liability.

It is customary, in preparing our cases, to subpoena medical records and other documents from the physicians and hospitals involved. The records we received from Revici, however, were extremely suspicious. They were fuzzy photocopies, with some sections darker than others, and some entries apparently written with different pens. We obtained another subpoena ordering him to produce originals of these records so that we could examine them, but Revici claimed that they were no longer in his possession, that he had given them to the state. When we contacted the state, we were told that that they had never received any such records.

One obvious inconsistency in his records related to Ms. Menska’s having died as a result of infection from the radiation treatments she had been given at the hospital. The notation was dated prior to the patient’s actual death.

Also, Revici contended that one of the reasons his treatment of Ms. Menska was unsuccessful was that his program requires approximately fifty office visits and that she had seen him only twenty times. On thirty other occasions, she had called him and they had spoken by phone, but that, he said, was insufficient to provide optimal results under the Revici method.

Then there was a key point: a notation dated at a point early in Revici’s treatment that her liver was enlarged. If her liver had truly been enlarged at that time, if the cancer had already affected her liver almost two years prior to her death, then it would be impossible to prove proximate cause. Cancer of that kind is almost always fatal, and Revici would be able to claim that, at the time Ms. Menska began seeing him, she was already too far gone to help. If she had cancer of the liver, she would have died regardless of the medical care she had received.

Then there was the matter of the photocopied medical school diploma we discussed earlier.

We questioned Revici on all these issues. He told us that he was certain of how many times he had actually

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