Cancer inquiry hearings postponed to February

Public hearings have been delayed for a judicial inquiry that will probe what went wrong with hundreds of breast cancer tests in a St. John's lab.

The Commission of Inquiry into Hormone Receptor Testing had been scheduled to begin hearing evidence this month.

In a release Thursday, the commission said that hearings have been postponed until February, as commission staff and lawyers prepare documents and conduct pre-hearing interviews.

The Newfoundland and Labrador government called for the inquiry last May, amid a storm of controversy involving the Eastern Health regional authority. Among other things, Eastern Health was shown to have known that the error rate of hormone receptor tests was several times higher than it had publicly revealed.

The tests are done to determine whether a breast cancer patient is a candidate for hormonal therapies, like Tamoxifen, which have been clinically shown to improve a woman's chances of surviving the disease.

An affidavit filed with Newfoundland Supreme Court, as part of a since-approved class action lawsuit, showed that the error rate of hundreds of tests was 42 per cent. In late 2005, the authority had said the error rate was about 10 per cent.

In December, lawyers for Eastern Health went to Newfoundland Supreme Court to ask that quality assurance reports involving its labs be withheld from the inquiry. The authority is arguing that auditors had been assured their comments would not become public.

The court has not yet dealt with that application.

Justice Margaret Cameron, a member of the Newfoundland Supreme Court of Appeal, will lead the commission of inquiry into the hormone receptor testing.

Exact dates for the start of the inquiry have not yet been set.