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Saarbrücken Regional Court: “As a layman, this worries me a bit”
Photo: Oliver Dietze / picture alliance / dpa
A pathologist is said to have made several false cancer diagnoses - with fatal consequences for the patients.
Now the 63-year-old has to answer to the Saarbrücken district court.
The indictment accuses the man, among other things, of dangerous and serious bodily harm - in two cases attempted manslaughter and in one case bodily harm resulting in death.
The accused is said to have made false cancer diagnoses in his institute in St. Ingbert between February and November 2018.
As a result, unnecessary treatments and interventions such as chemotherapy, breast, intestinal and facial operations were carried out.
Among other things, a patient had the majority of her upper jaw removed, and in another case a 50-year-old man died of sepsis after an allegedly unnecessary intestinal operation.
Pathologist admits mistakes
"Medical action is usually designed to help patients - not to harm them," said Johannes Berg, the defendant's lawyer.
The focus of his defense will be the question of whether his client made the wrong findings intentionally or negligently.
According to the indictment, the pathologist is said to have been unable to comply with specialist medical standards and ensure an accurate diagnosis due to his state of health and the "far too high number of tissue examinations" he had to carry out.
"He was aware of this," it says.
In individual cases, the pathologist admitted that he had "mixed something up" during the evaluation.
It is possible that he was also "a bit misled" by the statistics.
In addition, he "rather made diagnoses than saying there was no usable material".
Judge Andreas Lauer said: "As a layman, that worries me a bit.
After all, it's about illnesses that could have led to fatal outcomes.« The representative of the co-plaintiff, Daniel Schmitz, described the defendant's statement as »very questionable«.
It remains to be seen how this is to be legally assessed in detail.
According to the court spokesman, further trial days are scheduled until the beginning of July.
The accused pathologist has been in prison for two years.
He was sentenced in June 2020 to two years and nine months in prison for 17 counts of fraud and 97 counts of bribery in healthcare.
He paid money to medical specialists to have tissue samples examined at his institute.
ptz/dpa