uprisingradio.org � ProPublica: ‘Burn the Data’: Did a Company Try to Hide Risks of MRI Dye Omniscan?

9.3.13

uprisingradio.org � ProPublica: ‘Burn the Data’: Did a Company Try to Hide Risks of MRI Dye Omniscan?: That alleged request surfaced this week in a groundbreaking trial over the dye, which is injected into patients to sharpen MRI scans and has been owned since 2004 by GE Healthcare. At issue is whether GE did enough to protect patients from a rare but devastating side effect of the dye: a disease that causes large areas of the skin to become thick and hard. ProPublica investigated the dye in 2009 and 2010, revealing that GE ignored the advice of its own safety experts to “proactively” restrict its use.

GE’s lawyer, John Fitzpatrick, didn’t dispute the request to burn the data in his opening statement to the jury on Tuesday. But after this story was published, the company told ProPublica that the scientist’s boss denies having told her to destroy data. Fitzgerald also confirmed that an outside researcher will testify that he would not have published a study stating the dye was safe if he had been shown certain internal company research.