Decision on cancer test reviews in 10 days: judge

A Newfoundland Supreme Court judge said Wednesday he will decide within 10 days whether two expert reviews of a controversial St. John's medical lab should be kept from the public.

Lawyers for Eastern Health have asked Justice Wayne Dymond to rule that the reports, commissioned in 2005, should be kept confidential on grounds of protecting a peer review process within the authority.

However, lawyers for a commission of inquiry into flawed breast cancer tests have argued that releasing the reports is critical to a full investigation of why the lab produced inaccurate results for hormone receptor tests.

The commission, headed by Newfoundland Supreme Court of Appeal Justice Margaret Cameron, is expected to start hearing evidence in February.

Arguments before Dymond concluded on Wednesday morning.

Over the last week, Eastern Health has argued the two reviews — one by a B.C. pathologist, the other by an Ontario technologist — are protected under the provincial Evidence Act.

The authority argues that protection from public scrutiny allows experts to candidly suggest ways to improve the health-care system.

But lawyers for the commission say they could not find evidence that the reports were formal peer reviews, or constituted quality assurance.

Last week, Dr. Donald Cook, clinical chief of pathology at the Health Sciences Centre in St. John's, said he did not consider the report he commissioned to be a peer review.

In a document presented to the court, the lawyers quoted a letter written by pathologist Beverly Carter, who described the reports as "fairly damning."

The Newfoundland and Labrador government ordered the inquiry last year, amid disclosures that included Eastern Health's awareness that the error rate in the St. John's lab had been several times higher than it had admitted in late 2006.