🚀 go-pugleaf

This article is from Stan Isaacs <hplabs!hpccc!isaacs>
 and was received on Thu Jul 10 12:24:00 1986
 
    According to Paul Giles in 'BASIS" (The Bay Area Skeptics Information
 Sheet), who has a lawyer friend familiar with the Haimes case, Judith
 Haimes did sue for loss of her psychic powers, and a jury did award her
 $1 million damages, but not for loss of psychic powers.  In fact, the
 judge instructed the jury not to discuss or take into account her claims
 of psychic powers because they could not be proven, and that there is no
 scitntific evidence indicating such powers exist.  Actually. the malpractice
 award was because BEFORE the routine CAT scan, she was injected with a
 dye, and no one bothered to find out if she would have an adverse reaction
 to this dye.  She did, and it caused her an amount of very real brain damage.
 The suit was about brain damage, not just lost psychic powers.

   The S.F.Chronicle, by the way, apparently at least had a note at the end
 of its article about the allergic reaction and the judges instructions; the
 headline was, however, "Psychic Wins Damage Award for CAT Scan"!

 -- Stan

[A clear cut case of "yellow journalism" (or is it "sensationalism"?)  --Dave]