WSJ: 'Medical Courts' - Experienced judges would help juries understand technical issues.

Wall Street Journal ^ | August 25, 2005 | BETSY MCCAUGHEY

[OESY]

The Texas jury that ruled the prescription drug Vioxx was responsible for the death of a 59-year-old jogger, Robert Ernst, may have been duped by a questionable scientific theory introduced by the plaintiff's attorney, Mark Lanier. The theoretical sequence of events concocted by him to link Vioxx to Ernst's death -- a blood clot leading to a heart attack and then to a fatal arrhythmia... -- was contrary to Ernst's autopsy....

The jury's verdict shows that our system is failing to provide justice reliably in medical cases. The remedy? Specialized state medical courts, where judges stop lawyers and hired-gun witnesses (for the plaintiff or the defendant) from misleading juries with theories disguised as science....

Before the trial began, according to the New York Times, Mr. Lanier knew that the autopsy was a problem, and he told his legal team that he was going to "browbeat" the pathologist into supporting his theory linking Vioxx to Ernst's death....

But the fundamental problem, in every state, is that juries drawn from the general population, as wonderful as they are in most cases, lack the expertise to decide medical questions accurately. They often fail. How often? Up to 80% of the time....

In state medical courts, the right to a jury trial, which is guaranteed in most state constitutions, would be preserved. The difference is that medical cases would be assigned to a few judges, who would hear similar cases again and again, recognize the same patterns of fact, and become expert at keeping "junk science" out of the courtroom. Judges would also be given training in scientific evidence and call neutral expert witnesses to help jurors assess conflicting testimony. In many states, this reform could be achieved administratively, without legislation. (New York, for example, has already established 170 specialized courts without legislation.)...

[OESY]

Ms. McCaughey, former Lt. Governor of New York, is chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths (www.hospitalinfection.org).

[Voltage]

The remedy is the obvious..drug companies will take research and innovation elsewhere. Then we can import drugs from India and China.

[Redbob]

"The jury's verdict shows that our system is failing to provide justice reliably in medical cases. The remedy? Specialized state medical courts,..."

That's funny:
yesterday's WSJ editorial on this same subject blamed an inept defense.
One that never did find a way to deal with the fact Merck's internal memos showed concerns about heart attacks several years before they took the drug off the market.

Well, which is it?