Customer Reviews

Waking Up Blind - Lawsuits Over Eye Surgery

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As with any industry, there's a place in American health care where big money and big ego cross paths. But in medicine, that intersection is often found in the body and mind of individual Americans.

A distinguished ophthalmologist and clinical professor at Emory, Tom Harbin provides the authoritative account of the rise and rise of Dwight Cavanagh. Performing eye surgeries in impressive numbers, Cavanagh made himself into a money machine for Emory. Not only did the institution receive reimbursement for the procedures; Cavanagh was also adept at winning grants. The whole department prospered. The University built state-of-the art facilities. Everybody seemed to win. Cavanagh was the ophthalmological equivalent of a rock star.

Except that whispers began to spread about whether the patients really needed all those operations. In one case, Cavanagh operated on the wrong eye, blinding a poor man who hadn't clearly needed surgery in the first place. After too many operations on too many borderline patients, the hard-working, honest physicians alongside Cavanagh finally mustered the courage to question the rock star's practices. Cynically, the Emory administration closed ranks, and it was the honest critics whose careers were stunted.

Harbin tells this true story with a novelist's pace and an insider's authority. Waking Up Blind succeeds because it's a gripping story told by an authoritative physician with a graceful and unobtrusive style. It's also an engaging account of how Big Ego and Big Health Care can actually compromise patient outcomes. Arriving in the midst of the national health care debate, Waking Up Blind couldn't be more timely.

Shortly before 6 pm on September 12, 1983, I found myself sitting in the surgery suite at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. What I did not know at the time, but learned later, was that a horrible mistake was about to happen right after I left. The next patient in line, an elderly African American man named Sargus Houston was scheduled to have surgery performed on his right eye, but the surgery was done on the left. That accident set in motion a chain of events that was to alter the lives of countless individuals, including my own, over the next several years. The facts are now spelled out publicly for the first time in Tom Harbin's book (Waking up Blind: Lawsuits Over Eye Surgery, Langdon Street Press, 2009). I was a direct witness to some of the happenings detailed in the book, but mostly what I knew about these events as they were playing out was revealed via the grapevine of whispers in the shadows of the hallways at Emory University. I was only a bystander, but not an emotionally neutral one; more akin to an eyewitness to a mugging.

A quarter of a century has passed since these events occurred, and I am now retired from Emory University. Over the years I heard rumors via the grapevine that numerous lawsuits pertaining to the events I had witnessed had been settled, and that Emory University had been forced to pay out millions of dollars to various injured parties. However, the results of these settled lawsuits were sealed, and I had resigned myself to accepting the reality that the details about what had happened, the good, the bad, and the ugly, would never see the light of day. I am gratified to see that Tom Harbin's book has now shined a spotlight on what was kept hidden for far too long. I have written a longer essay detailing my personal account of some of the happenings that are detailed in the book, and that is posted on my blogsight at [...]

My hope is that this book will start a dialog among my former colleagues at Emory University about what can be done now to right some of the wrongs of the past. Perhaps there can still be redemption through remembrance.

Like several of the reviewers I was unable to put this excellent expose book down. I was forwarned by another ophthalmologist that he turned the pages so fast they almost burst into flames. I read the book in one sitting finishing at 3:00 AM. Reading this is an absolute must for any ophthalmologist, most physicians and any reader that likes the medical genre.

I am a board certified ophthalmologist that trained at Emory's Ophthalmology Department. I left Emory the year before Dwight Cavanaugh (who does not deserve to be called "Doctor") arrived. I applaud the courage and integrity of Dr. Tom Harbin whom I know by reputation as a physician's physician.

This book made me so ashamed of Emory, ashamed of many of the staff physicians that trained me, ashamed of the way that physicians and putative leaders of the field of ophthalmology and Emory University betrayed the trust of their patients and the general public.

I believe it is a travesty of the highest order that Dwight Cavanaugh still has a license to practice medicine, still holds a very high appointment at a medical school department of ophthalmology, and exposed to medical students and residents. In my opinion he should not only have his license taken away from him but he should be in jail for felony "battery" on his unsuspecting and trusting victims.

I am buying 6 of these books and sending them to ophthalmology friends of mine with the admonition to send it to other ophthalmologists after they have read it.

As a further disgusting footnote during this entire mess that Cavanaugh created I was repeatedly ask to donate funds to Emory's Ophthalmology Department to finance all the "wonderful things" that Cavanaugh was doing. This at a time that the development department was fully aware of the many lawsuits and unecessary surgery that Cavanaugh was doing.

For an Emory trained Ophthalmologist this is pure schadenfreude.

Ophthalmologists and local grandees behaving badly in Atlanta. Old letters. Depositions. Does this sound promising? Tom Harbin has transformed such potentially leaden non-fictional material into a narrative that is as difficult to put down as the best sort of Grishamite thriller. In fact, I didn't put the book down. I read it straight through, finishing at about 5 AM and paying dearly the next day. I confess to knowing a couple of the major participants, and I've had my own very unhappy collision with a branch of the Emory Clinic in Atlanta that seemed to be, like the Emory department that Dr. Harbin anatomizes, the medical equivalent of a puppy mill. My own contact with Emory medicine, though, was not a plus in terms of my wanting to read the book. Indeed, I had to overcome an aversion to revisiting this environment. I was able to do so because of this book's narrative power: a cumulative portrait of evil emerges along with that of the growing corruption of a scientific/academic institution that pulls all manner of political levers to cover up and protect that evil and to punish the courageous few who persist in pursuit of truth and common decency. Among the latter are two heroes whose careers are derailed, and the book is dedicated to them. A third hero is the narrator/implied author, Dr. Harbin. No doubt he is on dangerous legal ground making such revelations, but he seems to hold nothing back. I was initially inclined to say that his riveting prose, appropriately, is surgical, but it is more than that. Our Founding Fathers revered as their models the unpretentious courage, lucidity, and incorruptibility of the leaders of the ancient Roman republic. I am certain that these Romans as well as our Founders would recognize Dr. Harbin as a peer.

This book is a long awaited ring of truth calling to the hearts of those who were and are close to those involved. The story of institutional corruption is gripping but also sickening, this is not fiction and it is a living scandal that continues today and has many more victims than Dr. Harbin's book describes. Any interested reporter has but to place one call at random to any doctor's office in Atlanta to validate this story and numerous other allegations by respected professionals against Emory. Dr Harbin writes from all of our hearts and souls as Americans, read this book and cry out against the abuse of power and profit at the heart of our nations soul, among the very leaders of communities we look up to.

Robin du Bois

Because of the current interest in healthcare by the President and Congress, Dr Harbin's book is important and timely. Because it is well-written and very interesting, the book is also entertaining. In my opinion, it's almost "Capotesque" in it's capacity to lead the reader through an unbelievable adventure which almost makes one feel that this factual disaster is actually a novel.
This will be my Christmas gift to my friends in the medical community as well as to those who enjoy a "page turner."
Well done !

This book describes in fascinating detail the difficulties two courageous doctors encountered in dealing with the cover up of unnecessary surgery and substandard medical care in a university department of ophthalmology. Very few people have moral courage. When the misdeeds are done by your superior who has administrative and financial power over you, and the institution financially benefits by suppressing corrective action, it requires superhuman courage to withstand the abuse meted out to whistle blowers. This is a problem that occurs not only in universities, but in corporations, governments,churches, and indeed every type of organization. This book tells this individual story very well, but it is also a contribution to the greater literature of moral and ethical behavior.

Medical ethics is the bone marrow that animates and sustains the practice of medicine-surgery while the bedrock on which it rests is TRUTH.
The author of this book concentrates on almost every aspect of medical ethics in that physicians must always
place the interests of patients first & foremost while avoiding any conflicts that might encroach on the covenant that exists between
patient & physician.
Granted courses in medical ethics are taught in medical schools today but more time and effort must be devoted to placing the study of this important subject
at the center of all curriculum. Hopefully,this book will inspire medical educators to increase both time and exposure of the subject
of medical ethics not only to medical students,residents and fellows but also to physicians in practice via continuing medical education.
We must instill into the entire medical profession the moral and ethical standards that we owe to the general public and our patients.
Although I do not personally know the author I would consider it an honor to be his friend and colleague.
TRUTH ALWAYS, ALWAYS TRUTH!

Harry D. Carrozza,MD,FACS. Tucson Az.

What a great plot for a novel: prominent doctor from famous hospital operates on the wrong eye. Famous hospital tries to cover up and ignore errors. Doctor moves to another state and continues operating.
Not fiction.Fact.It happened in Atlanta not too long ago.

Dr. Harbin, himself a prominent eye surgeon, documents this frightening story. Told with objectivity and facts, his narrative style enriches these tragic events.

This is an extremely well written account of failed governance in a major medical institution. Even after the tragic consequences for patients the administrators and trustees failed to act on those responsible. It was the conscientious whistle blowers who were punished. Waking up Blind should be read by any person with authority in any organization, be it medical, educational or corporate.