Eastern Health statement of defence denies patients harmed

Eastern Health has filed a statement of defence in Newfoundland Supreme Court insisting its officials did not harm patients or do anything wrong in the controversy over faulty hormone receptor tests —a position cancer patients are having a hard time accepting.

The court documents filed Wednesday are in response to a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of about 100 cancer patients, after hundreds of hormone receptor tests were called into question due to faulty laboratory testing at Eastern Health's facilities in St. John's.

In the statement, the authority maintains patients were not harmed by the faulty hormone receptor tests. It states Eastern Health officials believe they met the standard of care of similar laboratories across Canada, and it's requesting the class action suit be dismissed.

The authority has admitted that 42 per cent of a series of hundreds of hormone receptor tests were inaccurate. The tests are used to determine what treatment cancer patients should receive. In the flawed tests at Eastern Health, hundreds of patients were excluded from anti-hormone drugs such as Tamoxifen, which have been clinically shown to improve survival rates.

'My life has been drastically shortened': patient

Donna Howell, a breast cancer patient in St. John's and a nurse for 28 years, told CBC News she finds the health corporation'sposition unbelievable.

"There had to be a mistake somewhere, and for me, as a result of these mistakes, my life has been drastically shortened," Howell said.

Howell believes a mistake by Eastern Health delayed treatment that could have helped her, after the corporation told her that her hormone receptor test was negative.Two year later, after her cancer returned, she was told the test had actually been positive. She said she missed two full years of treatment with Tamoxifen, a drug she said could have helped.

Howell said cancer has now spread throughout her bones and liver.

Richard Rogers, a lawyer representing some of the patients in the suit, said the patients' claims are too powerful to dismiss.

"It was perfectly obvious that the testing was skewed," Rogers told CBC News. "And the results were coming back wrong and it was delaying people getting life-saving treatment, and that can't be changed and that can't be defended against."

In May 2007, the province ordered a judicial inquiry into the faulty hormone receptor tests at Eastern Health.

"Government recognizes it is of the utmost importance for those directly involved and the general public to understand what happened to ensure that this situation does not reoccur," Health Minister Ross Wiseman said at the time.

Formed in 2005 by amalgamating smaller health authorities, Eastern Health is the largest integrated health organization in Newfoundland and Labrador and directly serves more than 290,000 people in the eastern portion of the province.

The corporation also came under fire recently after the work of one of its radiologists, on the Burin Peninsula on the south coast of the province, was called into question.