It would
have been interesting to listen in on the conversation between
Solicitor General John Les and Chief Coroner Terry Smith
shortly after the May 15th Vancouver Sun headline
screamed: "Chief coroner: Province to blame for
child-death review mistakes". The secondary heading,
"Terry Smith blames underfunding, botched transition
process", is unlikely to have mitigated the Solicitor's
knee jerk.
Perhaps
Minster Les should reread
the letter the Committee for Competent Death Review sent
him in November. He might also want to double check
on 2003 email and telephone communications between Vital
Statistics and the Coroner's Office.
Apart
from those who watch reruns of Da
Vinci's Inquest, most folks don't keep a close watch
on the coroner's office, except for those who have lost
a loved one with no answers as to why. In the absence of
autopsies, the cause of death in many cases is nothing but
guesswork. Autopsies are expensive; there are fewer and
fewer of them although there is an extensive
literature on errors that are detected by autopsies.
Just do a Google search on the term "autopsy and medical
error".
The
Vancouver Sun story, in which Smith faults government
cutbacks, degenerated into techno-baffle over the difference
between individual and aggregate reviews. That is a fancy
way of saying that individual deaths can be written off
as statistically insignificant. That is not the position
Gordon Campbell took when he was Leader of the Official
Opposition in the 1990s, and it shouldn't be the position
he takes today.
About
Me |
Mail Me | Links