Judicial inquiry called over flawed N.L. cancer tests

The Newfoundland and Labrador government has ordered a judicial inquiry into flawed hormone receptor tests that affected the care of hundreds of breast cancer patients.

Health Minister Ross Wiseman made the announcement Tuesday, one day before a St. John's lawyer is poised to argue in Newfoundland Supreme Court for certification of a class action suit now involving about 100 patients.

The "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," Wiseman said in a statement.

Meanwhile, dozens of Newfoundland and Labrador breast cancer patients have in the past week joined a pending class action lawsuit sparked by faulty laboratory testing.

St. John's lawyer Ches Crosbie said he gained more than 20 new clients in the last few days, some over the Victoria Day weekend, amid revelations that the Eastern Health regional authority withheld information on erroneous hormone receptor testing.

On Friday, Eastern Health executives apologized for holding back that information, which included a finding 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 receive, with hundreds being excluded from anti-hormone drugs like Tamoxifen, which has been clinically shown to improve survival rates.

Crosbie said Monday he now has "close to 70" clients, with other lawyers representing about 30 other patients.

Crosbie, who is preparing to argue for certification of the suit, said Eastern Health's admissions will strengthen his case.

"One of our allegations in the statement of claim is that they were less than forthcoming and mishandled the provision of information to the public," he said.

Eastern Health says it has fixed problems in its pathology testing, and that the public can be confident in its work.

Many factors

However, Crosbie is not satisfied that Eastern Health has not identified what the problems— which a review found happened between 1997 and 2005— actually were.

On Friday, laboratory chief Nebojsa Denic said many factors were at play.

"So we couldn't pinpoint really and to say, 'OK, we can blame in this particular case, one thing or another,' " he said.

Crosbie said that explanation will not suffice.

"In other words, he admitted they still don't know what went wrong," Crosbie said. "So somebody better find out."