It sounds like Mr. Craig of the State Medical Board of Licensure may have his mind made up.

Mr. Hayne has been keeping them afloat? What? It was a choice to use him wasn’t it?

Then, turns out in s few of those really serious, life-depending-on-it surgeries, we came to find out he not only botched the surgeries but was drawing conclusions about how to proceed out of thin air, and rationalizing his decisons with reasons he concocted from whole clothe. Then he’s profitting directly from selling those dead people’s organs. Whoops! well I’m sure the next 1800 will turn out great.

To be fair, nom de guerre, a large portion of med mal cases are the same crappy doctors making multiple mistakes, rather than rampant incompetence in the medical community. It should also be noted, though, that the most thorugh research on the system reveals that the med mal legal system *underserves* people who are victimized and over-protects poor doctors, at least from a results standpoint. Ya know, before we run off hating on lawyers.

Footnote 15, which notes that Hayne’s CV lists publications he neither authored nor co-authored and presentations he never gave, was incredibly damning in my eyes.

As a scientist, and a published one at that, this is personally offensive. No medical professional or scientist of conscience would tolerate Hayne’s presence in the same room. This is a very serious breach of scientific ethics and alone should be sufficient grounds to revoke his license.

And on the long list of Hayne’s ethical breaches, it’s clearly not the most severe.

just out of curiosity, doc, whattaya suppose a semi-skilled lawyer could do – in a malpractice trial – whattaya suppose he could do on the stand to a doc who admitted doing major surgery after a 120-hour week? would any juror think that MIGHT be a contributing factor to a case of, say, “you removed the wrong kidney”? or, my personal surgical fave, “the lady went in for a knee operation and you (literally) cut her a new rectum?!?”

“yep, we docs are smarter than you.”

Thanks for the responses. I think you each contribute great ideas as to when an accrediting organization would be “legitimate” in the eyes of a reasonable libertarian. I think they are:
1.) When market forces cannot be brought to bear to ensure quality of the product/service
2.) when the product/service poses potential harm to the consumer, and the harm can only be compensated ex post or avoided ex ante.
3.) when the government is the primary customer of the product/service

I think these are reasonable distinctions from ASID attempting to drive competitors out of the market, but still a ripe area for challenge.

That’s what Hayne says he does. Never takes a sick day, a vacation, of a holiday.

And spare me the chest-puffing. I defend doctors on this site all the time.

P.S. not believing someone does NOT make that someone a liar.

HAYNE – VOIR DIRE (JURY OUT) 229
1 DR. STEVEN T. HAYNE
2 having been called as a witness by the State, was sworn
3 and testified as follows:
4 THE COURT: Let the record show the jury is
5 outside the courtroom.
6 All right, Mr. Geddie.
7 MR. GEDDIE: May it please the Court, comes
8 now the State and the Defendant for the purposes
9 of this hearing and stipulate that Dr. Hayne is
10 an expert in the field of pathology, forensic
11 and clinical pathology with vast experience.
12 MR. BRISTOW: That is correct, Your Honor,
13 and I’ve also offered to stipulate with the
14 State’s attorney to the doctor’s qualifications
15 as an expert when the jury is seated.

(JURY RETURNS INTO COURTROOM AT 3:47 P.M.)
12 THE COURT: Ladies and gentlemen of the
13 jury, the next witness has been sworn outside
14 your presence.
15 Mr. Geddie, you may proceed.
16 MR. GEDDIE: Thank you.
17 DIRECT EXAMINATION
18 BY MR. GEDDIE:
19 Q. Would you state your name, please, sir?
20 A. Steven Timothy Hayne, Counselor.
21 Q. And your occupation?
22 A. I’m a physician working in the fields of
23 anatomic, clinical, forensic pathology, sir.
24 Q. And would you explain what a pathologist does?
25 A. If one’s working in anatomic or clinical
26 pathology, one commonly works in the laboratory or
27 hospital setting looking at tissues, determining if
28 disease is present or absent or what type of disease from
29 the tissue removed from patients, overseeing the

HAYNE – DIRECT 239
1 laboratory itself.
2 I work in one of the subspecialties of
3 pathology, that being forensic pathology. In forensic
4 pathology or legal pathology the two most important tasks
5 are the determination of the cause of death and manner of
6 death involved in the death of a human being. The cause
7 of death is the medical reason that person died, whether
8 it be from a gunshot wound or cancer or heart attack.
9 There are literally thousands of possibilities. While the
10 manner of death is classifying that death; whether it be
11 suicide, accident, homicide, natural, some cases pending
12 until additional information is gathered and some cases
13 undetermined. One may not come to a final conclusion when
14 all the evidence is present. There are many other tasks
15 in each of those three fields, but those are the primary
16 tasks of a pathologist working in anatomic, clinical and
17 forensic pathology.
18 Q. Would you explain to the jury your education and
19 training, first of all, to become a pathologist?
20 A. That was — first you have to graduate from
21 medical school, and then you have to do your pathology
22 training in a formal residency program.
23 Q. And where did you do your undergraduate and your
24 medical school and your pathology residency? 25 A. I did three years of undergraduate work at North
26 Dakota State University, and I graduated from medical
27 school at Brown University, then went on pathology
28 training at Letterman Army Medical center at the Presidio,
29 SanFrancisco.

HAYNE – DIRECT 240
1 Q. And what is the meaning of board certified?
2 A. It usually means that you have passed some
3 minimal standard test or if you’re old enough, you’ve been
4 grandfathered into a position of recognized basic
5 expertise in the field.
6 Q. All right. Now beyond being a pathologist, to
7 be a forensic pathologist, does it take additional
8 training or education?
9 A. I rotated, myself personally rotated at the
10 medical examiner’s officers for the city and county of San
11 Francisco.
12 Q. For how long, sir?
13 A. The total? Almost a year.
14 Q. And have you received any board certifications?
15 .Yes,Counselor. 16 Q. In what particular field, Doctor?
17 A. Anatomic pathology, clinical pathology, forensic
18 pathology, forensic medicine.
19 Q. And have you had occasion to testify in the
20 courts of this state, United States, or any other state or
21 the military as an expert in the field of forensic
22 pathology?
23 A. Yes, Counselor, this state, other states,
24 federal court, as well as when I was in the military under
25 military general court marshals under the Uniform Code of
26 Military Justice.
27 Q. On how many occasions have you testified, to the
28 best of your knowledge, as an expert in the field of
29 forensic pathology?

HAYNE – DIRECT 241
1 A. I don’t keep an exact number, Counselor, but
2 somewhere around 4,000, maybe 4,500.
3 Q. Now, in the field of forensic pathology, are you
4 required to examine bodies of the deceased?
5 A. It is.
6 Q. To try to–
7 A. I’m sorry.
8 Q. To try to determine the manner of the death and
9 the cause of death?
10 A. It’s one of the tasks that one commonly
11 performs. Yes, Counselor.
12 MR. GEDDIE: At this time, Your Honor, I
13 would tender Dr. Hayne as an expert in the field
14 of, all the fields of pathology, including .
15 forensic pathology.
16 THE COURT: The Defendant’s already
17 stipulated qualification, Counselor. You may
18 proceed.
19 MR. CEDDIE: Thank you, Your Honor.

but your work on mississippi and “dr.” hayne really IS top-flight, important stuff. it’s going to actually change a broken and corrupt system, (to some degree, anyway. the important thing is the change will be for the better.), and innocent people *who would have suffered under the current system* won’t be railroaded.

and it’ll happen fairly soon, i’d bet: all bureacracies hate accountability and bad publicity. even better, now you’ve got the SOB tossing out obvious and *provable* lies (“ah work in mah sleep!!”) to defend himself. start the clock: hayne’s toast. you get most of the credit for that.

(tips hat.)

If the state of Mississippi were to pass a law saying that the state Medical Examiner (ME) must be a member of the National Association of Medical Examiners (NAME), or even that all state prosecutors only use ME’s who are members of NAME, that is significantly different from even saying that all ME’s in the state must be members of NAME. Someone could still practice as an ME without those credentials, although they’d be kinda up a creek for being believed.

Now, with the recent fracas with ASID, the thrust of their proposed legislation DOES seem to be that ALL people who practice Interior Design, according to their definition, be forced to accredit with ASID, or they will be unable to practice that business, due to some sort of punishment.

Basically, the government is free to limit who it can hire all it wants, and that’s the difference between the two kinds of situations.

I think you raise a fiar point, but it’s not always a straight comparison.

First, Dr. Hayne is essentially lying about what organizations he is a member of by saying he is “accredited.” So whether the organization is a true sign of quality or not, the issue is still relevent as to his willingness to lie.

Second, to answer your last question, I think the answer is an overwhelming yes. Certain professions do need licensure or accredidation as a means of protecting consumers and the public. It’s not always easy to distinguish between which professions need it and which don’t, but I would think that where the position requires experttise well-beyond what the average person could understand even after having received the service, that will usually militate towards the need for licensure or accredidation.

So, either you like the interior design of your home or you don’t, and that’s that, but you can’t tell how well your gallbladder surgery went just by whether or not you still have stomach pains a few weeks later (I have no idea if that is medically reasonable sounding, but I thik you get my point).

Third, and most importantly this person is being used for his expertise in a proceeding where the purpose is to determine the truth. There are no market forces to police his accuracy and effectiveness, little room for error and sadly the people who hire him often WANT his work to be inaccurate. So how else do we make sure someone is truly an expert in something other than by what other experts say about his work and what conventional, peer-reviewed, thinking has to say about his methods?

Want to add my support, this is important and valuable work. It is an uncommon mind that can dig into the details as you have and then demonstrate such persistence in fighting the good fight.

One observation: your argument depends somewhat upon the validity of accrediting organizations to establish “Dr.” Hayne’s lack of qualifications. One might argue that this is a weak point, considering the Institute of Justice and your criticism of these accrediting organizations in the past as barriers to entry erected by the practitioners to guarantee their profitability (e.g. Interior Decorators; African Hair Braiders, etc.). Of course, there is an argument that highly skilled occupations must self-regulate to ensure their members are competent, but doesn’t this leave you open to attach? How can this seeming inconsistency in your argument be reconciled?

Is it simply a fact-based inquiry on when accrediting organizations are useful and when they are not?

I ask not because I disagree with you; but b/c I fear this may be a potential weakness in your argumentation, and should be shored up.