Newfoundland government promising review of faulty breast cancer tests

At least three dozen women in Newfoundland and Labrador who received a false negative on a faulty breast cancer test have died, a senior medical examiner says, but it's not known how many of them died as a direct result of their cancer.

A letter signed Wednesday by Charles Hutton, a pathology expert who serves as the province's deputy medical examiner, says that at least 36 women who had a false negative on the error-prone hormone receptor test have died.

The women missed out on potentially life-saving treatment such as hormone therapy, but it's also unclear how many of them, if any, died because of that.
The letter was written to lawyer Ches Crosbie as part of a class-action lawsuit against the province's Eastern Health Authority over the faulty tests.

Premier Danny Williams told the legislature Thursday that the province, out of a "moral responsibility," would undertake a review to determine how more than 300 women received the wrong results from their hormone receptor tests from 1997 to 2005.

"We want to make sure that the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, but most importantly the people who are affected here - the patients, the people who have suffered, their families - they all need to know the answers," Williams said.

Williams said the province is seeking legal advice on how best to go about a review, but promised it would be done without delay.

"It is a very sensitive issue and a very delicate issue, and there's issues of confidentiality of information here that are very important because it's a medical matter," he said.

"We're going to do something. It's a question of going about it and doing it right."

In 2005, the authority arranged for Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto to repeat more than 2,000 hormone receptor tests dating back to May 1997 after oncologists discovered inconsistent results in breast tumour samples.

Gerry Rogers, a St. John's filmmaker who made the Gemini Award-winning documentary "My Left Breast" on her ordeal with breast cancer, said she welcomes any initiative to find out how so many women received the wrong results on their breast cancer tests.

But the revelation that at least 36 women who received a false negative on their tests have died is distressing, she said.

"It's sad to think that these women weren't given that opportunity for another treatment that maybe could've either prolonged their lives or saved their lives," Rogers said.

In his letter, Hutton also suggests that it's likely there are more than 36 deceased breast cancer patients who received a false negative because that figure comes from only 105 deceased patients confirmed by Mount Sinai.

There are 71 more deceased breast cancer patients who have not had their tests redone because requests to do so by their families have not been made.

The hormone receptor tests are considered critical in evaluating a breast cancer patient's treatment because, if the women are found to be estrogen-and/or progesterone-positive, they may respond to hormone therapy such as Tamoxifen.

If not, they may be given other treatment, such as chemotherapy.

"If no mistakes had been made, it's quite possible those women would still be alive," said provincial NDP Leader Lorraine Michael.

"We can't say they definitely would be, but one can imagine that certainly a percentage of them would be."

Crosbie, who represents 47 of about 80 women behind the class-action lawsuit, will argue for its certification in a St. John's court next week.