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Alberta Health Board Fires Doctor Who Raised Cancer Alarms

May 12, 2015

Alberta Health Board Fires Doctor Who Raised Cancer Alarms

‘I am stunned,’ says Dr. John O’Connor, a veteran presence in First Nations community

An Alberta health board has fired Dr. John O’Connor, the physician who came to national prominence after raising questions about rare cancers in the tarsands region.

The Nunee Health Board Society send O’Connor a letter last Friday saying it no longer required his professional services.

The letter gives no reason why. “I am stunned. It is indescribable. This severing of links, with no reason,” O’Connor told the Tyee.

Since 2000, O’Connor has served as the on-call physician for the remote community of Fort Chipewyan, as well as physician back-up for the community’s nursing station.

Between 2000 and 2007, O’Connor also flew into the community two days a week for in-person consultations.

The Nunee Health Board Society represents the health interests of the small aboriginal community to all levels of government. The board did not respond to a request for comment sent this morning.

 

O’Connor, an Irish-born physician, came to prominence in 2006 when he raised concerns about a string of rare bile duct cancers and other unusual disorders such as lupus and renal failure that appeared in patients from Fort Chipewyan, which is located 300 kilometres downstream from the tarsands.

Pressed for long-term studies

The bile duct cancer cholangiocarcimona normally appears in one in 200,000 people. In the space of nine years, O’Connor recorded approximately four cases in the region, which has a population of around 1,500.

Scientists don’t know much about the cancer, but suspect it is related to exposure to industrial toxins in water such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, a common bitumen pollutant.

 

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