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From: mbr@aoa.UUCP (Mark Rosenthal)
Newsgroups: net.sci,net.legal,net.med
Subject: Re: Psychic Damages
Message-ID: <446@aoa.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 3-Apr-86 15:00:15 EST
Article-I.D.: aoa.446
Posted: Thu Apr  3 15:00:15 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 18-Apr-86 05:59:24 EST
References: <12833@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: mbr@aoa.UUCP (Mark Rosenthal)
Organization: Adaptive Optics Assoc., Cambridge, Mass. USA
Lines: 30
Xref: watmath net.sci:729 net.legal:3273 net.med:3763

In article <12833@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> weemba@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Matthew P. Wiener) writes:
    >The following story is reprinted (without permission) in its
    >entirety from the 29 March 1986 _San Francisco Chronicle_.
    >------------------------------------------------------------
    >            PSYCHIC WINS DAMAGE AWARD FOR CAT SCAN

I saw the same article in the Boston Globe.  As near as I can tell, this is
sensationalist journalism at its worst.  The article doesn't tell us much about
the facts of the case, but a paragraph buried near the end of the article gives
some information with which we can speculate.

    >After the jury heard Haimes' case, Court of Common Pleas Judge Leon
    >Katz ordered the jury to disregard Haimes' allegations about her lost
    >psychic powers and to consider only her testimony about the negative
    >allergic reaction she suffered from a dye injected during the CAT scan.

We are told nothing about how serious the allergic reaction was, or whether
doctors at Temple University Hospital could have known that the allergy
existed.  Was there perhaps a test they should have performed to determine
whether to expect an allergic reaction?  Did they negligently fail to do this?
Were there other alternatives that could have been used if an allergy had been
expected?  What effects besides "loss of psychic powers" did this reaction have?

We'll never know by reading the article.

-- 

	Mark of the Valley of Roses
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