Survivor appeals for legal standing at breast cancer inquiry

A St. John's breast cancer survivor is seeking the right to ask her own questions at a judicial inquiry into inaccurate laboratory test results.

Speaking with power and emotion, filmmaker and activist Gerry Rogers told Justice Margaret Cameron on Wednesday that she deserved to have standing at the inquiry, which the Newfoundland and Labrador government called this spring.

Cameron, who sits on the Newfoundland Supreme Court of Appeal, will study why hundreds of breast cancer patients received inaccurate results of hormone receptor tests, which may have affected their treatment.

Rogers, who was diagnosed in 1999 and later adapted her experience into the award-winning documentary My Left Breast told Cameron that her own lab work was wrong, which affected her own treatment.

Rogers asked why nothing was done when problems at the St. John's laboratory were identified by a pathologist in 2003.

"Why were I and every other woman with breast cancer not notified then that there could be a problem with our pathology?" Rogers asked.

"That was an extra two years that women could have been put on the proper treatment. If action had been taken, could lives then have been saved?" Rogers said, struggling to maintain her composure.

The government called the inquiry after court documents showed that Eastern Health was aware that the error rate of hormone receptor tests which are used to determine whether a patient is a candidate for the anti-hormonal drug Tamoxifen was several times higher than it had earlier admitted.

The Newfoundland Supreme Court has certified a class action lawsuit, which is pending.

Rogers said Eastern Health, the regional authority which manages the laboratory, failed to communicate its testing problems with breast cancer patients.

"The way Eastern Health handled those of us who have been patients was cold, callous and disrespectful," Rogers said.

"It created a climate of confusion, fear, and mistrust."

Rogers is one of seven people who have asked for standing at the inquiry, which has not yet struck a schedule for hearings.

All of the other applicants are lawyers representing patients, insurance companies, physicians and health authorities.

Cameron, who said she expects hearings to continue into March, is expected to give her final report to the provincial minister of health by July 2008.