Knocking on Heaven's Door: The Path to a Better Way of Death (46 page)

(1997): 412–416.

000
10 percent to 30 percent
:
J. Bischkopf, et al., “Mild Cognitive Impairment—A Review of Prevalence, Incidence and Outcome According to

Current Approaches,”
Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica
106, no. 6 (2002):

: 403–414.

000
The eye of even a healthy sixty-year-old and surgeons operating on aged
hearts can feel them crinkle
: Atul Gawande, “The Way We Age Now,”

New Yorker,
April 30, 2007, 50–59.

000
Some cells undergo destructive metabolic processes
: Steven Austad,
Why
We Age
(New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997), 134.

000
The ends of our cellular DNA
: Leonard Hayflick,
How and Why We Age
(New York: Ballantine, 1994), 135.

000
more than 7,000 separate degenerative
: Interview with Steven Austad, September 21, 2011.

000
What we call aging is the cumulative effect
: Austad,
Why We Age,
8, 52–69, 123–145.

000
Many doctors continued to use the cheaper Avastin
: Andrew Pollack,

“Cheaper Drug to Treat Eye Disease Is Effective,”
New York Times,
April 28, 2011.

000
Given how much is unknown
: “Risk Factors for Dementia and Cognitive Decline,” Source Document, National Health Service of Scotland,

October 2003, accessed September 29, 2011, http://www.healthscot-

land.com/uploads/documents/dementia_LR.pdf.

000
A half a billion federal dollars
: “Alzheimer’s Association—Boomer’s Report,” Alzheimer’s Association, accessed September 29, 2011, http://

www.alz.org/boomers.

000
longevity is the biggest risk factor
:
“Alzheimer’s Association—Boomer’s Report.”

000
only 9 percent
:
“
Health and Retirement Study,” University of Michigan Institute for Social Research and U.S. National Institute on Aging, published in
Alzheimer’s & Dementia,
http://www.alzheimersanddementia.

org/; cited in Marsha King, “U.S. Dementia Rates Are on the Decline—

Memory Loss Isn’t Inevitable,”
Seattle Times,
Feb. 21, 2008, accessed KnockingHeaven_ARC.indd 301

1/31/13 12:27 PM

302 Notes

September 26, 2011, http://seattletimes.com/html/health/2004193111_

dementia21m.html.

000
more than 41 percent
: Maria M. Corrada, et al., “Dementia Incidence Continues to Increase with Age in the Oldest Old: The 90+ Study,”

Annals of Neurology
67 (2010): 114–121.

000
only one in two hundred
: Benedict Carey, “At the Bridge Table, Clues to a Lucid Old Age,”
New York Times,
May 21, 2009, accessed September 30, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/22/health/research/22brain.

html?pagewanted=all.

000
Except their homes
:
Judith Graham, “It Comes as a Shock”
New York
Times,
Science Times section,
September 25, 2012. D7.

000
“When a fine old carpet is eaten by mice”
: Jane Hirshfield,
Come Thief
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 19.

000
like Tintern Abbey
: “Enchanting Ruin: Tintern Abbey and Romantic Tourism in Wales—Romanticism and Ruins,” University of Michigan,

accessed August 30, 2011, http://www.lib.umich.edu/enchanting-ruin-

tintern-abbey-romantic-tourism-wales/ruins.html.

10: WHite WAteR

000
“We lost the mother that we once knew”
: Pauline Boss,
Ambiguous Loss:
Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 17.

000
Yale–New Haven was ranked among the top three percent
: “Yale-New Haven Hospital Profile,”
U.S. News & World Report,
accessed September 14, 2012, http://health.usnews.com/best-hospitals/yale-new-haven-

hospital-6160400.

000
Middlesex Memorial hospital was rated the safest
: “How Safe Is Your Hospital?”
Consumer Reports,
August 2012, accessed September 25, 2012, http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2012/08/how-safe-is-your-hospital/index.htm.

000
bodily repair services
: Bart Windrum,
Notes from the Waiting Room: Managing a Loved One’s End-of-Life Hospitalization
(Boulder, CO: Axiom Action, 2008), 20.

000
Of those who suffer hospital delirium
: Statistics from the American Geriatrics Society and Sharon Inouye, MD, of Harvard Medical School,

cited in Pam Belluck, “Hallucinations in Hospital Pose Risk to Elderly,”

New York Times,
June 20, 2010, accessed September 25, 2012, http://

www.nytimes.com/2010/06/21/science/21delirium.html.

000
A Korean folk saying holds
: Pam Belluck, “The Vanishing Mind: Children Ease Alzheimer’s in Land of Aging,”
New York Times,
November 25, 2010, accessed September 25, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/26/

health/26alzheimers.html?pagewanted=all.

KnockingHeaven_ARC.indd 302

1/31/13 12:27 PM

Notes 303

11: tHe SORceReR’S APPRentice

000
especially African-American families
:
Melvin Echols Peterson, et al.,

“Differences in Level of Care at the End of Life According to Race,”

American Journal of Critical Care
19 (2010): 335–343.

000
a local DA might even consider charges
: Lewis M. Cohen,
No Good Deed:
A Story of Medicine, Murder Accusations, and the Debate over How We

Die
(New York: HarperCollins, 2010).

000
“These devices are seen as simple and low-tech”
: Interview with Katrina Bramstedt, January 2007.

000
They were often deactivated
: Paul S. Mueller, et al., “Deactivating Implanted Cardiac Devices in Terminally Ill Patients: Practices and Attitudes.”
Pacing and Clinical Electrophysiology
31, no. 5 (2008): 560–568.

12: tHe buSineSS OF liFeSAvinG

My primary source for the explosion of “Medical Alley” and its subsequent scandals was Kirk Jeffrey,
Machines in Our Hearts: The Cardiac Pacemaker, the
Implantable Defibrillator, and American Health Care
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001); supplemented by oral interviews with the early mov-ers and shakers (many conducted by Jeffrey) for the Minnesota Oral History Project.

000
The atmosphere in what would later be nicknamed “Medical Alley”
: Kirk Jeffrey, Interview with Anthony J. Adducci, “Pioneers of the Medical

Device Industry in Minnesota Oral History Project,” Minnesota Histori-

cal Society, Roseville, Minnesota, August 9, 2000, 15–28.

000
Its pacemaker was barely more than a prototype
: David Rhees, interview with Manuel Villafaña, “Pioneers of the Medical Device Industry in

Minnesota Oral History Project,” Minnesota Historical Society, Plym-

outh, Minnesota, January and May, 1998, 35.

000
Spin-offs begat spin-offs
: Kirk Jeffrey, interview with Anthony J. Adducci, 20.

000
a major advance
: Stephen Westaby with Cecil Bosher,
Landmarks in Cardiac Surgery
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 155.

000
The St. Jude valve became the most commonly used
: James Fogerty,
Converzatione
with Manuel Villafaña, “Pioneers of the Medical Device Industry in Minnesota Oral History Project,” Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, Minnesota, November 20, 1997, 70.

000
a handful of pacemaker companies
: David Rhees, interview with Ronald A. Matricaria, “Pioneers of the Medical Device Industry in Minnesota

Oral History Project,” Minnesota Historical Society, Little Canada, Min-

nesota, April 21, 2000.

KnockingHeaven_ARC.indd 303

1/31/13 12:27 PM

304 Notes

000
doctors’ average incomes quintupled
: Sandeep Jauhar, “Out of Camelot, Knights in White Coats Lose Way,”
New York Times,
January 31, 2011, accessed September 17, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/

health/01essay.html.

000
Doctors flocked to where the money was
: Paul Starr,
The Social Transformation of American Medicine
(New York: Basic Books, 1982), 359–360.

000
“In all my twenty years experience”
: Testimony of Howard F. Hefferman at hearing before the Senate Special Committee on Aging, Sept. 10,

1982.
Fraud, Waste and Abuse in the Medicare Pacemaker Industry,
31.

Transcript reprinted from the collection of the University of Michigan

Library. HP. Lexington, Ky. 2012

000
several executives of Siemens-Pacesetter
: Jeffrey,
Machines in Our Hearts,
200–201.

000
At a cardiology conference in Manhattan
: Henry Greenberg, “In Praise of Sudden Death,”
Annals of the New York Academy of Science
382 (1982): 181–182.

000
Over the next five years
: James S. Todd, Letter to Editor, “Do Practice Guidelines Guide Practice?”
New England Journal of Medicine
322

(1990): 1822–1823.

000
By 1987, the median income
: Arthur Owens, “How Much Did Your Earnings Grow Last Year?”
Medical Economics,
September 5, 1988, 161.

000
One of pacemaking’s respected pioneers
: Interview with cardiac surgeon who spoke on condition of anonymity. June 2011.

000
medical device companies were enjoying
: Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service, “Health Care Industry Market Update,” December 5, 2003; cited in Reed Abelson, “Possible Conflicts for Doctors

Are Seen on Medical Devices,”
New York Times,
September 22, 2005, accessed September 25, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/22/

business/22devices.html?fta=y.

000
device-related heart surgeries alone
: “CABG DRG Counts, 2003 CY

100% MEDPAR Short-Stay Files,” Centers for Medicare and Medicaid

Services. The total represents my computation; it is for cardiac surgeries involving devices only.

000
$170 billion global industry
: “The North America Medical Instruments

& Equipment Sectors: A Company and Industry Analysis,” (2004), Mer-

gent, 8–14, accessed July 15, 2011, http://webreports.mergent.com.

000
Weinstein’s “top pick”
: Kenneth N. Gilpin, “MARKET INSIGHT; Is It a Drug Or a Device? Nowadays, Maybe Both,”
New York Times,

May 25, 2003, accessed December 12, 2012, http://www.nytimes.

com/2003/05/25/business/market-insight-is-it-a-drug-or-a-device-nowa-

days-maybe-both.html.

000
yet another change in the formulas
: Robert Pear, “White House Alters Plan to Make Large Cuts in Hospitals’ Medicare Payments,”
New York

Times,
August 3, 2006, accessed September 25, 2012, http://www.

nytimes.com/2006/08/03/washington/03medicare.html.

KnockingHeaven_ARC.indd 304

1/31/13 12:27 PM

Notes 305

000
AdvaMed hired two former health care staffers
: P. B., “Lobby Shops,”

National Journal,
22 April 2006, accessed via LexisNexis.

000
inside the Beltway advertising
: Stephen J. Ubi, “AdvaMed: Ensuring Medical Innovation for All,” Medmarc, accessed June 20, 2011, http://

www.medmarc.com/Life-Sciences-News-and-Resources/Articles/Pages/

Ensuring-Medical-Innovation-for-All.aspx#.

000
spent at least twenty-seven million dollars on lobbying
: “OpenSecrets Lobbying Database,” Center for Responsive Politics, accessed June 24,

2012, http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/index.php.

000
They contributed another one and one-half million dollars
: Medical supplies manufacturing and sales 2006 campaign contributions, MapLight,

accessed June 22, 2012, http://maplight.org/us-congress/contributions

?s=1&start=01%2F01%2F2006&end=12%2F31%2F2006&office_par

ty=Senate%2CHouse%2CDemocrat%2CRepublican%2CIndependen

t&election=2004%2C2006%2C2008%2C2010%2C2012&business_

sector=Health&business_industry=Pharmaceuticals%2FHealth%20

Products&business_id=H4100&source=All.

000
After two hundred members of the House and Senate
: Pear, “White House Alters Plan.”

000
in the estimation of AdvaMed
: Ubi, “AdvaMed.”

000
sham fees
: All of Donigian’s charges can be found in United States
ex rel.

Charles Donigian v. St. Jude Medical, Inc. (D. Mass. January 19, 2010),

Third Amended False Claims Act Complaint, 17, 18, 28, 32–33.

000
Donigian received $2.6 million
: “Minnesota-Based St. Jude Medical Pays U.S. $16 Million to Settle Claims that Company Paid Kickbacks to Physicians,” U.S. Department of Justice News Release, January 20, 2011.

000
The Code of Business Conduct on the St. Jude web site
: “Code of Business Conduct,” St. Jude Medical, accessed December 12, 2012, available at

Code of Business Conduct page at http://www.sjm.com/.

000
recused from voting
: Pierluigi Tricoci, et al., “Scientific Evidence Underlying the ACC/AHA Clinical Practice Guidelines,”
Journal of the American Medical Association
301, no. 8 (2009): 831–841.

000
nearly a third of its $16.8 million
:
“Heart Rhythm Society & Foundation FY11 Revenues from External Sources,” Heart Rhythm Society,

accessed April 19, 2012, available at http://www.hrsonline.org/. This

follows groundbreaking investigative reporting by ProPublica: Charles

Orenstein and Tracy Weber, “Financial Ties Bind Medical Societies to

Drug and Device Makers,”
USA Today,
May 5, 2011
.

000
It employed about 1300 sales representatives
: United States
rel
. Charles Donigian v. St. Jude Medical Inc.