“Kathie’s Story” re-released as free eBook on lung cancer diagnosis

ATLANTA. Ga. – In 2002, Kathleen Griese of Tucker, Ga., was misdiagnosed with lung cancer in an Atlanta clinical trial. She subsequently underwent unnecessary pulmonary surgery from which she has not yet fully recovered.
The clinical trial in which she was misdiagnosed was based on research conducted and promoted by Dr. Claudia Henschke of Cornell University’s Weill Medical Center in New York.
Her husband, who is a past state director of the American Cancer Society and American Lung Association, and a past state Great American Smokeout chairman, wrote, and Anvil Publishers

Inc. of Atlanta then published in 2002, her story as an eBook. The online and eBook versions of Kathie’s Story were made available free to anyone who wished to read the work. Between the book’s publication in 2002 and its removal from the Anvil Publishers Web site in late 2007, nearly 30,000 readers visited the Web site version or requested a free eBook download.
On March 26, The New York Times in a copyrighted story disclosed that Dr. Henschke’s research was funded by the tobacco industry through a ploy designed to hide the nature of a part of Dr. Henschke’s funding, the Foundation for Lung Cancer: Early Detection, Prevention & Treatment. The entity was created by Dr. Henschke and her collaborators, and supported in part by the cigarette maker Liggett Group.
The New York Times story also disclosed that Dr. Henschke personally profited from the CRT technology used in the clinical trial, which was conducted not only in New York but at a number of satellite locations, including Atlanta.
According to Dr. Antonio Gotto, dean of Weill Cornell, the idea for the Foundation originated at a meeting in the late 1990s in which Henschke, representatives from the American Cancer Society, the National Cancer Institute, as well as anti-smoking activists were present. "We made a public announcement along with Liggett that they were making a gift to Weill Cornell to support this activity," says Gotto, who was not involved in the study. "We made no effort to cover up the fact that the money was coming from Liggett. It is patently false that we set up the Foundation to cover up the fact that we were getting tobacco money."
As a public service, the Southern Review of Books, an Anvil Publishers newsletter, has reposted Kathie’s Story in the hope that readers past, present and future may benefit from its availability. Kathie’s Story is available free at anvilpub.com, anvilpub.net and anvilpublishers.com Web sites.