A Fallen Hero - Video Inside

NYC opens free clinics for 9/11 illnesses

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/09/21/nyc_opens_free_clinics_for_911_illnesses/

By Henry Goldman, Bloomberg | September 21, 2007

NEW YORK - Two free New York City health clinics devoted to the treatment of thousands of individuals made ill by toxic materials dispersed during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the World Trade Center opened yesterday.

Clinics in Chinatown and in Elmhurst, Queens, join one already in Manhattan's Bellevue Hospital to aid first responders, office workers, and residents of lower Manhattan and Brooklyn with respiratory, gastrointestinal, and psychological ailments caused by the attack and its aftermath.

The clinics are part of a 15-point plan that Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced in February to address health problems experienced by more than 3,000 firefighters, at least 4,000 rescue and recovery workers, and thousands more who lived and worked in areas where airborne toxic dust and smoke settled.

"There are thousands of residents, commercial workers, and others who have reported experiencing acute breathing problems, worsening asthma, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other mental illnesses which require sustained treatment," Bloomberg told a US Senate health committee in March, when he asked for $150 million to help fund the clinics.

Court To Hear Ground Zero Liability Case

http://www.nysun.com/article/63721

By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN
Staff Reporter of the Sun
October 1, 2007

A federal appeals court's reading of an obscure Cold War-era law, passed amid fears of a Soviet nuclear attack, will decide whether the thousands who toiled at ground zero can hold the city liable for their exposure to toxins.

The U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, which sits in Manhattan, will hear oral arguments today on whether the city is immune from lawsuits brought by the thousands of firefighters, police officers, and construction workers who searched for survivors and cleaned up on the site of the World Trade Center.

Many of the workers say they now suffer from respiratory ailments linked to arsenic, asbestos, and other toxins found in the air and dust at the site. One estimate, by the lawyer who managed the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund, Kenneth Feinberg, places the cost of settling the suits at more than $1.5 billion.

At issue is a U.S. District Court ruling from last year that allows as many as 10,000 of those workers to press forward with suits against the city. The city is asking a three-judge panel of the federal appeals court to overturn that decision, which was handed down by Judge Alvin Hellerstein, who sits in Manhattan.

The conditions at ground zero have long been under the microscope, with workers alleging that the Environmental Protection Agency put out falsely optimistic air quality reports and that government agencies failed to ensure that workers were wearing respirators. In May, the city's medical examiner amended a woman's death certificate to state for the first time that toxic dust from the site had been a "contributory" cause of death.

But today's arguments, and ultimately whether the suits are upheld or thrown out, will not turn on any single fact about the conditions at ground zero or the city's actions in the days following the terrorist attacks. Instead, the court's decision could hinge entirely on its reading of the New York State Defense Emergency Act.

That law, enacted in 1951, grants immunity from lawsuits to the government and companies responding to an attack. While the enemy the Legislature had in mind was the Soviet Union, Judge Hellerstein's ruling found that the passage of history had not made the law irrelevant. The city, the judge wrote, was certainly entitled to immunity in the days immediately following the attack.

However, the judge said it was an open question whether that immunity extended months later, as work at ground zero continued: "As the emergency condition fades … the need for immunity diminishes and the obligations and duties otherwise imposed once again must be protected," Judge Hellerstein wrote.

A brief filed on behalf of the workers stresses that in the months after the September 11, 2001, attacks, ground zero became a work site where ordinary workplace regulations and responsibilities applied.

During the nine-month cleanup operation, the plaintiffs' brief argues, "the site had been radically transformed from a place of chaos and public emergency to an orderly construction site not unlike those the City of New York has often seen."

The city, on the other hand, contends that it is entitled to immunity for the entire duration of the recovery operation.

The city's brief stresses the law's Cold War history, noting that lawmakers in 1951 were anticipating cataclysmic attacks, from which any recovery would be slow.

"The rescue and recovery from a nuclear attack would greatly exceed — perhaps by years — the roughly nine-month period of the 9/11 rescue and recovery operation," the brief argues.

The panel hearing the case today is to consist of Judges Jon Newman, Sonia Sotomayor, and Richard Wesley.

A lawyer from the firm of Patton Boggs, James Tyrrell, will argue on behalf of the city.

The plaintiffs will be represented today by Kevin Russell of Howe & Russell, P.C., and Brian Shoot of Sullivan Papain Block McGrath & Cannavo, P.C.

Football legend stumps with pols for stricken 9/11 heroes

http://www.silive.com/news/index.ssf/2007/10/football_legend_stumps_with_po.html

by Staten Island Advance
Thursday October 04, 2007, 4:13 PM

Rep. Vito Fossella and former Giant George Martin talk in Washington D.C.Retired Super Bowl champion and New York Giants co-captain George Martin recently embarked on a four-month, 3,200-mile walk hoping to raise more than $10 million for sick Ground Zero rescue workers.

Today he stopped pounding the pavement for a little bit to rally with Rep. Vito Fossella, Rep. Carolyn Maloney and Rep. Jerold Nadler in Washington, D.C., during a press conference to raise awareness for those stricken heroes of 9/11.

"It is my honor to walk across this great nation to generate awareness about and funding for the healthcare needs of those who have fallen ill as a result of their selfless sacrifices in the aftermath of September 11, 2001," said Martin. "We need to do all we can as a nation to help the rescue and recovery workers of Ground Zero recover from and manage their illnesses."

Fossella, Maloney and Nadler recently introduced comprehensive, bipartisan legislation, The 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, to address the health impacts of the 9/11 attacks, including ensuring that everyone exposed to the toxins of Ground Zero have access to medical monitoring and, if needed, treatment.

Said Fossella: "George Martin is proving that he is a champion both on and off the field. He is helping bring attention to the suffering of sick and injured 9/11 responders and raising money to allow them to get the care they need."

N.Y. willing to talk settlement in 9/11 suit: report

http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN1644472920071016

Tue Oct 16, 2007 11:29am EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York City is willing to enter discussions to settle a lawsuit with 9,000 rescue and cleanup workers at the World Trade Center disaster site who may be sick from inhaling toxic dust, a newspaper said on Tuesday.

The New York Daily News cited a letter from a lawyer for the plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit of workers who say they suffer from respiratory illnesses from the September 11 site.

"The City of New York and the contractors have indicated that they want to negotiate a global or aggregate settlement on behalf of all our WTC clients," reads the letter from lawyer Marc Bern to his clients, the Daily News reported.

"If we receive an aggregate settlement offer from the defendants, it will be up to you and our other clients to accept or reject the offer and, if you accept it, to agree on how the (money) would be divided," Bern wrote. "The defendants would have nothing to do with that decision."

Bern told Reuters he had no comment on the newspaper report and representatives of the city's Law Department were not immediately available for comment.

The city has the benefit of a $1 billion federal fund that was established in case the city was found to have liability

The newspaper said victim advocates were skeptical that would be adequate to cover care for long-term illnesses of thousands of people and to compensate the roughly 150 families who blame the death of a relative on work at Ground Zero.

"If you do the math, it's not that handsome a settlement for the 9/11 responders," the newspaper quoted John Feal, a responder and Ground Zero activist, as saying.

Many rescue and cleanup workers report lingering illnesses that may be attributed to breathing toxic ash, dust and other contaminants from the remains of the World Trade Center after it was destroyed in the September 11, 2001, attacks.

The city has tried to have a federal judge dismiss the lawsuit.

Bern's clients have until the end of the month to decide whether to give him permission to begin settlement talks, the Daily News reported.

Heroes need better deal

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2007/10/17/2007-10-17_heroes_need_better_deal.html

Wednesday, October 17th 2007, 4:00 AM

Some harsh realities are hitting 9,000 Ground Zero rescue and recovery workers who have sued seeking compensation for illnesses they suffered responding to the collapse of the World Trade Center. And family members of responders who died are facing the same unpleasant truths.

Each has received a letter from the attorneys who are battling for payments from the city and from the contractors who cleared the rubble of the twin towers. The letter broaches the idea of negotiating a settlement that would at long last put money into the accounts of very deserving people.

But, as predicted, the numbers are obscene. The city has $1 billion to pay settlements, money allocated by Congress. It sounds like plenty, but it's not. The lawyers are claiming 40% of the pot - an astonishing $400 million - leaving $600 million to be divided among everyone else.

With about 9,000 claimants, the average payout would be some $66,000 per worker, not nearly enough to cover medical bills and lost wages, particularly in the case of deaths.

Nothing more starkly proves the point than the large payments issued by the Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund, an entity that went out of business before most of the Forgotten Victims of 9/11 realized they were sick. The fund made an average payment of more than $2 million to survivors of people killed in the attack, and an average payment of almost $400,000 to the injured or sick.

Lawyers representing responders and city attorneys have been locked in pretrial skirmishing, the city attempting to establish immunity from damages for injuries suffered in an emergency. But the courts have shown little patience for that claim, signaling that it behooves everyone to pay out the $1 billion before, as one judge put it, more people are dead.

So the lawyers have begun circling a settlement. This would require approval from most of the 9,000 people in the suits. They may think settling makes more sense than years of litigation whose only certainty is higher legal fees. That's purely their decision.

But it still stinks. After 9/11, the city estimated damage claims could run to $2 billion. But no one put up that much cash; the city's own liability was capped by Congress, and even the responders' lawyers now seem to believe that pursuing the contractors would only drive upstanding businesses into bankruptcy.

The solution: Congress must reopen the compensation fund. "We need federal moneys to take care of an obligation that the city really cannot handle, and we need that money now," Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday. Washington must act.

NYC rejects listing worker as 9/11 death

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071019/ap_on_re_us/attacks_health

By AMY WESTFELDT, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 42 minutes ago

NEW YORK - He became the face of post-Sept. 11 illness after his death in early 2006, galvanizing lawmakers and health care advocates to lobby for research and treatment for thousands who said the debris-filled air at ground zero made them sick.

James Zadroga, the 34-year-old retired police detective who died of respiratory failure after working hundreds of hours at the World Trade Center site, was often cited by those advocates as a "sentinel case" — the first health-related casualty linked to ground zero, suggesting there would be more to follow.

The city's medical examiner stunned that community this week in a letter declaring that Zadroga's death had nothing to do with the toxic air he breathed while working at ground zero.

Rejecting another medical examiner's autopsy that called Zadroga's death "directly related" to his post-Sept. 11 work, New York City Chief Medical Examiner Charles Hirsch said in a letter to Zadroga's family that his death was not caused by exposure to trade center dust.

"It is our unequivocal opinion, with certainty beyond doubt, that the foreign material in your son's lungs did not get there as the result of inhaling dust at the World Trade Center or elsewhere," said the letter to Zadroga's father. It was signed by Hirsch and another medical examiner, Michele Slone. The letter was obtained Thursday by The Associated Press.

Hirsch offered to explain his findings personally to Zadroga's family, who planned to meet with him Friday.

Zadroga became a symbol for the plight of ground zero workers whose health rapidly deteriorated in the months after they worked at the site of the 2001 terrorist attacks. He arrived after the twin towers collapsed and spent 470 hours sifting through the smoldering ruins. By the first anniversary of the attack, the nonsmoker was plagued by a constant cough.

He died in January 2006. A New Jersey medical examiner ruled that Zadroga died of inflammatory lung disease, had material "consistent with dust" in his lungs and damage to his heart and liver.

The autopsy was the first scientific evidence blaming a death directly on ground zero exposure. Lawmakers and health advocates regularly cite Zadroga's case as a key example of post-Sept. 11 illness when lobbying for billions of dollars for research and continuing care.

"It's shocking ... how can they be so callous?" said Zadroga's father, Joseph Zadroga, who broke down in tears last year before a congressional panel convened to study Sept. 11 health. "He had the acid reflux. He had short-term memory loss. ... He was on strong medications for the pain in his lungs."

Mayor Michael Bloomberg distanced himself from the medical examiner's office in a statement Thursday, saying the independent agency made its own decisions. The city is defending itself in a lawsuit filed by thousands of workers who say they were not properly protected from the dust that made them sick. Bloomberg has also lobbied the federal government for millions of dollars to treat and monitor the ailing workers.

The medical examiner's "determination in this case does nothing to change New York City's commitment to make sure that all who were affected by 9/11 get the health care they need," Bloomberg said.

Michael Palladino, president of Zadroga's union, suggested the ruling was related to the ongoing lawsuits against the city.

"I'm shocked and appalled that the medical examiner's office would send a letter to Mr. Zadroga, and stating that their unequivocal opinion, with certainty, beyond doubt, is that he didn't die from the World Trade Center, when in fact they can't tell me what he died from," he said. "I don't trust it."

Zadroga's father had asked Hirsch to review his son's case, hoping the medical examiner would add Zadroga's name to the official Sept. 11 death toll, as he did for a lawyer who died of lung disease five months after the attacks.

Hirsch decided in May that Felicia Dunn-Jones' exposure as she fled the collapsing twin towers contributed to the lung-scarring disease that killed her. He added her name to the attacks' death toll. Her name was read for the first time at this year's Sept. 11 anniversary ceremony, and officials plan to list her name on the Sept. 11 memorial.

Zadroga and others had hoped for similar recognition for his son. Hirsch has rejected at least other four families' requests to amend the death certificates of people who died of illnesses they attribute to post-Sept. 11 exposure.

To all concerned members of the truth movement:

After just speaking with Joe Zadroga, the father of NYPD hero James Zadroga, I am, and never have been as mad as one man can be. The chief ME of NYC is a perfect example of the injustice served to "ALL" 9/11 responders over the last 6 years. All the media attention in the world will not bring James back, but your support for the Zadroga family will help ease the pain of a great family and his beautiful 7 year old daughter Tyler. Any donation will go directly to the Zadroga family and any email of support mailed to me at [email protected] will go directly to Joe. I implore all Americans to stand up now and help these brave souls while federal, state and local governments deny, lie, neglect and walk all over their great work and service at 9/11 and ground zero.

God bless.

One pissed off American
John Feal
President of the Fealgood Foundation

I want everyone to unleash hell on this number.

[size=-1]520 1st Ave[/size]
[size=-1]New York, NY 10016[/size]
[size=-1](212) 447-2030

DO IT!
[/size]

Family in 9/11 Dust Case Visits Medical Examiner

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/20/n...ion&adxnnlx=1192905471-PHcSKCZrlt/QBF7swlsazw

By ANTHONY DePALMA
Published: October 20, 2007

The family of a New York City police detective who died years after working at ground zero met for several hours yesterday with New York City medical examiners who had concluded that the detective’s death could not be linked to the toxic dust there.

Dr. Charles S. Hirsch, the chief medical examiner, sent a letter on Tuesday to Detective James Zadroga’s father, Joseph Zadroga of Little Egg Harbor, N.J., stating “with certainty beyond doubt” that the material found in Detective Zadroga’s lungs “did not get there as the result of inhaling dust at the World Trade Center or elsewhere.”

After the meeting, Mr. Zadroga slipped out a side door and drove off without saying anything. The family’s lawyer, Michael Barasch, refused to give any details about the meeting or why the medical examiner had contradicted a New Jersey pathologist who concluded last year that Detective Zadroga’s death was caused by respiratory failure “directly related” to ground zero dust.

“Two rational men can disagree,” Mr. Barasch said. “So the family will leave it to the court of public opinion and let the public decide what makes the most sense here.”

Ellen Borakove, spokeswoman for the medical examiner’s office, said that Detective Zadroga’s family had asked Dr. Hirsch a few months ago to examine the autopsy report because they wanted Detective Zadroga’s name to be added to the official list of victims of the attack.

“Dr. Hirsch gave his personal assurance to the family that he would keep the details of the meeting private and confidential,” Ms. Borakove said.

Ms. Borakove said the medical examiner had also done re-examinations for three or four other families of people whose deaths were suspected to be linked to ground zero work, and had rejected such a conclusion for all of them. She said that one other review, still pending, was for Cesar A. Borja, a police officer who died in January of pulmonary fibrosis.

His family claimed he had become ill after rushing to ground zero and spending many hours there. But records indicated his exposure to the dust was far more limited.

Dr. Gerard Breton, the New Jersey pathologist who conducted the autopsy on Detective Zadroga, said in an interview yesterday that he was not changing his opinion that the detective’s death was linked to his exposure to ground zero dust.

Dr. Breton said that after completing the autopsy last year, he did not have access to the sophisticated equipment needed to analyze the tissue samples and sent them to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.

Dr. Breton said that the institute identified the foreign material from Detective Zadroga’s lungs, and that he concluded the material was consistent with ground zero dust.

Barnegat man's work at WTC leaves him ill, facing foreclosure

http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/local/ocean/story/7510753p-7408953c.html

By EMILY PREVITI Staff Writer, 609-978-2014
Published: Saturday, October 20, 2007

BARNEGAT TOWNSHIP - Charles Giles has endured failing health, mounting medical bills and limitations to life as he knew it before Sept. 11, 2001.

Soon, he might add homelessness to the list.

When Giles, then an EMT, responded to the disaster scene at the World Trade Center more than six years ago, he didn't think it would later cost him his home.

But days of inhaling fumes at the site continue to provoke health problems that have prevented Giles from working. The problems were compounded by unanswered medical claims.

Family hardships that began with cutting out cable TV have culminated in their home's foreclosure in March and impending sheriff's sale Oct. 30.

Ocean County sheriff's records show Giles appealed the sale and that the sheriff's office twice delayed the sale originally set for Aug. 21. Judge Fred A. Buczynski pushed the date from Sept. 18 to Oct. 30.

Giles said he hopes to block the sale by filing suit against Wachovia Bank for alleged missteps in their dealings with him but acknowledged that it would likely take a "miracle" to prevent the auction.

Giles' attorney did not return calls for comment.

Wachovia Bank spokespeople declined to comment because their confidentiality policy prohibits talking about clients.

Giles said he missed his first mortgage payment in November 2006, four years and eight months after he closed on the house (the family moved from Bergen County to Barnegat Township in 2002). He has $216,320 left to pay for his home, plus $9,318.57 in legal costs related to foreclosure proceedings, according to Mary Batot, principal clerk for foreclosures in the Ocean County Sheriff's Office.

"If my 9-11 case was processed when should have been, none of this would have been happening," Giles said.

Giles has faced red tape with multiple agencies: Safe Horizon, New York's Crime Victims Board, New York's Workers' Compensation Board and others. As he waits, medical costs keep mounting.

Giles took oral steroids for five years to treat worsening asthma, which caused bone loss and eventually required replacement of his right hip. He anticipates at least two other surgeries: replacement of the other hip and his right knee are pending and a lung transplant is possible. In addition to incurring bills, complications -14 prescriptions, fractioned pulmonary function and hip replacement and another two or three pending surgeries - have prohibited the father of two from working. With doctors' visits and $400 worth of prescriptions, Giles said he faces more than $1,000 in medical bills each month. And his disability ran out this fall.

Giles, who started working as an emergency responder 16 years ago, is quick to emphasize he would choose to respond to the emergency again. The self-described workaholic still craves the challenges of the job and currently serves on the board of the Pinewood Estates Volunteer Fire Company.

"I want to work," Giles said. "I feel like I let my family down."

Giles said he, his wife and their 12 and 15-year-old daughters would likely seek a local apartment if their home is sold at the end of this month. The family wants to stay in Barnegat, Giles said, so the girls can finish school there and to stay in the warm embrace of the community that has extended services to them.

These recent developments in Giles' plight come on the heels of a decision by the New York City medical examiner to reject the Ocean County Medical Examiner's ruling that the death of New York Police Department Detective James Zadroga, 34, of Little Egg Harbor, was directly related to his work at Ground Zero. Zadroga retired to his parents' home in Little Egg Harbor after getting sick.

9/11 Worker's Kin Rejects Death Ruling

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gedchpIl6oM7F3AwCEyXaLDuYMzgD8SCKM3O1

By AMY WESTFELDT – 3 days ago

NEW YORK (AP) — Fresh from ruling that World Trade Center dust did not kill a police detective, a medical examiner offered the man's relatives other reasons Friday for his death, an explanation the family found "not acceptable," their lawyer said.

Chief Medical Examiner Charles Hirsch would not publicly elaborate on his findings in the death of James Zadroga, who had worked hundreds of hours in the toxic dust at ground zero after the Sept. 11 attacks, Hirsch's spokeswoman said. Hirsch asked the family not to disclose what he told them, said Michael Barasch, the Zadrogas' attorney.

"Dr. Hirsch felt that there were other reasons for Zadroga's death. The family disagrees with it. I disagree with it," Barasch said. The doctor "came up with reasons that were not acceptable to us," the attorney said.

Zadroga became gravely ill within four years of the attack, was relegated to a wheelchair and wound up taking a potent mixture of prescription drugs to treat his illness. He died last year of respiratory failure at age 34, and health care advocates have cited his death as a "sentinel case" — the first health-related casualty linked to ground zero, suggesting there would be more to follow.

Rejecting another medical examiner's autopsy, Hirsch said in a letter to Zadroga's family this week that his death was not caused by exposure to trade center dust.

Hirsch agreed with a New Jersey medical examiner's finding that there was foreign matter in Zadroga's lungs. The New Jersey medical examiner had said the granular material in his lungs was consistent with dust, but Hirsch emphatically ruled out environmental exposure as the cause.

Experts say that one alternate medical theory for foreign granular matter in the lungs is a history of intravenous drug injections. In 1981, Hirsch co-wrote a key medical paper on the subject.

Zadroga was taking intravenous painkillers and had taken steroids, all prescribed by doctors for his respiratory problems, before his death, Barasch said Friday. He never took drugs that were not prescribed for him, he added.

"If the drugs contributed to his death, it makes no difference as far as what our perspective is. He was taking all the medication for all the toxins he inhaled," Barasch said. "This was a squeaky clean New York City detective who was in tip-top shape."

Zadroga spent 470 hours working in the smoking twin towers' rubble, using only a paper mask. He developed a cough within weeks and retired within three years.

He became the face of post-Sept. 11 illness after his death, galvanizing lawmakers and health care advocates to lobby for research and treatment for thousands who said the debris-filled air at ground zero made them sick.

"What was in his lungs was consistent with what was down at ground zero," said Michael Palladino, president of the Detectives' Endowment Association, Zadroga's union. "It just can't be a coincidence that this 34-year-old kid who was healthy prior to 9/11 became deathly ill post-9/11."

Palladino and others derided Hirsch's ruling Friday, saying his conclusions defied other experts who performed Zadroga's autopsy or treated him while he was alive. Palladino said a police medical board had concluded that Zadroga could leave his job on medical disability because of illness caused by his post-Sept. 11 work.

Zadroga's family, who had become public advocates for the health of ground zero workers, had asked Hirsch to review the case and officially add Zadroga's name to the Sept. 11 victims' toll. In May, the medical examiner added the first health-related casualty to the victims' list, a woman who died of a lung-scarring disease five months after she was caught in the dust cloud formed by the twin towers' collapse.

Gerard Breton, the New Jersey pathologist who performed Zadroga's autopsy, said that Zadroga had inflamed lung tissue, an enlarged heart and material that appeared to be dust in his lungs.

"It is felt with a reasonable degree of medical certainty that the cause of death in this case was directly related to the 9/11 incident," he wrote in March 2006. On Friday, he told The Associated Press, "I stick to that report." He declined further comment.

Senate votes to extend 9/11 health aid

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/wn_report/2007/10/25/2007-10-25_senate_votes_to_extend_911_health_aid.html

Thursday, October 25th 2007, 4:00 AM

The Senate has approved a $55 million fund to help care for people exposed to toxins from the Sept. 11 attacks.

The funding would extend monitoring and treatment from first responders and emergency personnel to residents, workers and others who breathed the contaminated air in lower Manhattan.

"Passage of this bill by the Senate is great news for those who still suffer from the lingering effects of the 9/11 attacks," Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) said Wednesday.

The bill, approved Tuesday night, comes as an addition to the $50 million already allocated in the 2008 fiscal year.

The measure encourages the development of long-term solutions to screen and treat everyone affected by the post-9/11 risks.

Health problems suffered by the thousands who were affected range from asthma to posttraumatic stress.

"The message of this vote is clear," said Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). "America is here for you in your time of need."

The bill will now go to the House.

Doctor: Drug use caused 9/11 cop's death

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/politics/5245688.html

Oct. 25, 2007, 1:40PM
Doctor: Drug use caused 9/11 cop's death


By AMY WESTFELDT Associated Press Writer
© 2007 The Associated Press


NEW YORK — The city's medical examiner concluded that the misuse of pills, not the dust of ground zero, caused the lung disease that killed a man who became a nationally known example of post-Sept. 11 illness, the examiner's spokeswoman confirmed Thursday.

Chief Medical Examiner Charles Hirsch concluded that retired police detective James Zadroga got the lung disease that killed him by injecting ground-up pills into his bloodstream, leaving traces of the pills in the lung tissue, spokeswoman Ellen Borakove told The Associated Press.

"It is our opinion that that material entered his body via the bloodstream and not via the airways," she said.

She confirmed Hirsch's findings after Zadroga's father and lawyer said Hirsch told them Zadroga's death was caused by the misuse of prescription drugs — not the more than 450 hours he spent toiling at the World Trade Center site after the Sept. 11 attacks.

A New Jersey medical examiner had ruled last year that Zadroga died from inhaling toxic ground zero dust, but the family asked Hirsch for a second opinion — and a ruling that would add Zadroga to the official Sept. 11 victims' list.

Last week Hirsch wrote a letter to Zadroga's father, Joseph, saying he believed "with certainty beyond doubt" that the dust did not cause his son's death, but Hirsch's conclusions about the real cause were not released by his office until Thursday.

His office did not say what drug or drugs were injected. Joseph Zadroga said the former detective was taking more than a dozen medications when he died, including anti-anxiety medicine and painkillers including OxyContin, but never ground up pills and injected them. He said he kept his son's medication locked in a safe in their New Jersey home and said his son was not capable of taking medicine himself.

"His mother and I were taking care of him," Joseph Zadroga said. "He wasn't ever able to correctly take his medication."

Michael Baden, a pathologist asked by the family to review the case after getting Hirsch's letter, said that slides of James Zadroga's lung tissue showed large glass fibers and other foreign particles that were mostly close to the airways, a sign of material that had been inhaled. He said that if Zadroga had been grinding down pills and injecting them, his autopsy report would have noted scars and needle tracks on his arms.

"You can't make a diagnosis, in my opinion, of intravenous injections of ground-down pills on the basis of these slides," said Baden, the chief forensic pathologist for the New York State police. He has often testified as an expert witness at high-profile trials.

After James Zadroga died in January 2006, bills were named after him in Congress to fund research and treatment for those who became ill after working in the smoking ruins of the trade center.

So far, Hirsch has changed the death certificate of only one person — a woman who died five months after the attacks — saying that exposure to the toxic dust cloud caused or worsened her lung disease.

John just told me that a "famous" medical examiner agrees with the NJ Medical Examiner.

Related info at 911blogger.com

http://www.911blogger.com/node/10696

Be sure to read Etta Sanders' letter. I'll only quote my 911blogger comment here- it seems appropriate to this thread (I'm a little burned out on the divisiveness over at 911blogger, and my language is probably too NC-17 for them anyway. The search function seems a little jacked-up when I searched for "Etta Sanders").

"NYC Downwinders"
My father died several years ago due to exposure to radioactive atom bomb fallout in southwestern Utah back in the 1950s and 1960s. His pulmonary fibrosis was very similar to what most of the uranium miners also died from. 3 of the 6 brothers all developed lung disease and none of them were smokers.

Sadly, Etta Sanders' symptoms appear to me to qualify her as a "Downwinder," although that term was traditionally reserved for residents of Nevada and Utah in the 1950s and 1960s. It is tragic that the pervasive, spherical asbestos and dust clouds put much of NYC "down-wind" on Sept. 11, 2001.

I'd like to remind everyone that the United States Government used atomic weapons on New Mexico BEFORE they dropped the "Fat Man" and "Little Boy" on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The United States Government also kept using nuclear weapons at the Nevada Test Site until 1993, when underground testing was finally stopped. "Divine Strake" was the Bush regime's recent attempt to resume "simulated?" nuclear tests in 2006. Just think for a second how long it would take to haul 700 tons of ANFO explosive to "simulate" a nuclear "bunker buster" at the NTS...

Rest assured, our "leaders" in Washington DC appear to have no qualms about putting United States citizens at risk from nuclear, chemical, and biological agents (smallpox-infested blankets were re-distributed to help solve the "Native American" problem back in the 1800s, and do some research on Dugway Proving Ground and Fort Dietrich MD- those appear to be the sources of our "anthrax" terror of 2001).

We really need to stop (meaning impeach and incarcerate) these murderous criminals and their "national SUCKurity" secrecy before it is too late.

Debate about cause of officer's death endangers 9/11 bill

http://www.ktuu.com/Global/story.asp?S=7262936

Associated Press - October 25, 2007 4:23 AM ET

WASHINGTON (AP) - The debate about a police detective's death endangers a bill to treat ailing Ground Zero workers.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, the leading Democratic presidential contender, named her September 11th health bill after Detective James Zadroga. Zadroga died at age 34 after working extensively at Ground Zero.

But the New York City Medical Examiner concluded last week that the foreign matter found in Zadroga's lungs definitely did not come from dust generated at the World Trade Center site.

That conclusion will create extra hurdles for lawmakers trying to get the federal government to pay for treatment for ailing Ground Zero workers.

Many medical experts say an alternate cause for foreign matter in lungs is intravenous drug use.

Zadroga's family admits he took a potent mixture of drugs to treat his illness, but says the drugs were legitimately prescribed by doctors.

Benefit for 9/11 responder tonight

http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071026/NEWS02/710260456/1070/NEWS02

Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 10/26/07

BARNEGAT: The Pinewood Estates Volunteer Fire Company will host a benefit tonight for 9/11 responder Charlie Giles, hoping to raise enough money to halt foreclosure proceedings on his home, members of the company said.

Giles, a worker with CityWide EMS who volunteered for weeks after the attack, has been unable to work in recent years because of health problems that he traces back to his work at ground zero.

The event starts at 7:30 p.m. at the Pinewood Estates firehouse, 99 Route 72.

Smearing a hero of 9/11

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2007/10/26/2007-10-26_smearing_a_hero_of_911.html

Friday, October 26th 2007, 4:00 AM

There is mounting evidence that the city's chief medical examiner libeled the memory of Detective James Zadroga by ruling that the cop's long, arduous service at Ground Zero had nothing to do with his tragic death. Dr. Charles Hirsch appears to have committed a gross injustice that no apology can ever set right.

With the brutal, clinical efficiency of a man accustomed to working with flesh on ice, Hirsch last week summarily notified Zadroga's family that, to a "certainty beyond doubt," something other than breathing the toxic remains of the World Trade Center had turned the cop's lungs to leather. Hirsch didn't say publicly then what that fatal something might be. But now, the doctor has spoken.

Monstrously, Hirsch said yesterday that, in his opinion, Zadroga brought about his own demise by crushing pill medications and taking them intravenously. Writ large, Hirsch blamed the victim and, even worse, left the lingering, disgraceful implication that Zadroga was a drug abuser.

He wasn't. And it is a sorry necessity to have to state those words about a dedicated cop and father of a young child, who worked for 450 hours in the thick of the poisonous cloud, began coughing after two weeks and suffered a steady, irrevocable descent to suffocation at age 34. Zadroga died despite excellent medical care, and his autopsy found that his lungs were filled with substances that hung in the air over The Pile. Among them, carbon, silica, calcium phosphate - found in concrete - talc and cellulose.

The New Jersey medical examiner who autopsied Zadroga concluded the toxins destroyed his lungs. Dr. Michael Baden, a former city chief medical examiner who is now the state police forensic pathologist, reviewed and confirmed the autopsy findings. And now Hirsch says that, beyond all question, he knows better.

All agree that crushing pills and injecting the powder can introduce talc and cellulose into the bloodstream. And all agree the substances can damage the lungs. Adding up those facts, and looking at microscopic slides of Zadroga's tissues, Hirsch says he has proof positive that the fatal injury began with materials in Zadroga's blood.

Baden, who is not being paid by Zadroga's family, emphatically differs with Hirsch: "I don't know what he would have to permit him to make the strong diagnosis he did, and whatever it is, he is wrong." So much for Hirsch's "certainty beyond doubt."

As for substantiating the medical examiner's judgment, his spokeswoman offered explanations that only made Hirsch's conduct more outrageous. She said Hirsch is not questioning that Zadroga became ill at Ground Zero; he has only concluded that injecting crushed pills was the intervening cause of death.

Here, then, is Hirsch's hypothesis for what happened: Zadroga serves his city and country valiantly, becomes agonizingly ill and injects painkillers. This is just a theory, because Zadroga's family says no such injections ever took place. But let's say Hirsch is right.

In that event, the truth is Zadroga - desperately ill, fighting for breath, heavily medicated and often out of touch with reality - tried to ease his own suffering as best he could.

Suffering that befell Zadroga only because he responded to 9/11.

Suffering brought on by inhaling the pulverized remains of the fallen twin towers.

Suffering that caused the death of a New York hero.

Suffering that was cavalierly trashed by a medical examiner whose continued tenure in office must be closely reviewed.

Dr. Charles Hirsch needs to be tried as a criminal for falsifying documents. I wonder how much pressure he was under to do so.