It is no crime to
protest against warmongers.
It is no crime to complain about
police
brutality.
It is no crime to complain about dangerous medical
malpractice.
Dr. Catherine Wilkerson will fight back. Will you stand
with her?
Ammonia Inhalants Kill
No doubt there are plenty of folks who would love to cover up what
actually happened at the University of Michigan last November. A person
could have died from abuse by police and a paramedic, but he didn’t,
and
it could be thanks to intervention by a physician on the scene. Martin
Lee Anderson wasn’t so fortunate. Neither was Clifton Lee Jr.
Martin Lee Anderson was a fourteen-year-old boy who died in January
2006 after being subjected repeatedly to forced inhalation of ammonia
by
guards at a boot camp in Florida. To quote the statement of Chief
Medical
Examiner, Vernard I. Adams, M.D.:
"Martin Anderson’s death was caused by suffocation due to actions of
the guards at the boot camp. The suffocation was caused by manual
occlusion
of the mouth, in concert with forced inhalation of ammonia fumes that
caused
spasm of the vocal cords resulting in internal blockage of the upper
airway."[1]
Nurse Kristin Schmidt stood by and watched. Any person who can stomach
it can watch the whole disgusting and horrifying incident on video[2].
On November 28, 2006, Schmidt was charged with manslaughter. Two days
later,
at the U of M, Dr. Catherine Wilkerson intervened to stop the same kind
of maltreatment that killed Anderson. Although she succeeded, she is
paying
a heavy price.
Not only has she still not recovered from the physical injury she
sustained
when assaulted by Ann Arbor Police Officer Warner in response to her
intervention
on victim Blaine Coleman’s behalf, but also she is fighting ongoing
criminal
charges for her actions. Yet, as is evident from the tragic case of
Martin
Lee Anderson, her intervention could well have saved a man’s life. And
to top it off, the reason for her intervention has been excluded from
coverage
published in the local press.[3] Could it be that the AA News Reporter
Tom Gantert considers the reasons for Dr. Wilkerson’s intervention
un-newsworthy?
Apparently it was only barely newsworthy that Coleman had already
suffered
from difficulty breathing while forced prone against the floor under
the
weight of University of Michigan Public Safety Officer Mark West. A
contributor
to the AANews piece about Dr. Wilkerson, reporter Amalie Nash,
must
have known, however, how significant that part of the story was. Only
five
days after the article about Wilkerson was published, Nash wrote about
the case of Clifton Lee Jr. [4]
Lee was a 45-year-old Ypsilanti Township man who "died of asphyxiaton
by respiratory restriction, possibly from the weight of officers on top
of him, the medical examiner said." Given that local and timely case,
as
well as the long list of deaths in custody from positional asphyxia,
[5],
it would seem that Dr. Wilkerson’s intervention to prevent such a
tragedy
would have been another central point of the article written about her
actions last November. It would seem that the danger of West’s weight,
close to twice that of Coleman, pressing Coleman’s chest against a hard
floor, would have struck a familiar note with Nash. It would seem that
Dr. Wilkerson’s having to tell West several times to turn Coleman over
after he’d called out that he couldn’t breathe would be important for
readers
to know.
More newsworthy, it would seem from Gantert’s article, than the fact
that a person’s life was at stake, was Wilkerson’s behavior. Taking
much
of his article directly from the report written by Warner, the officer
who assaulted Wilkerson and against whom she filed a complaint, Gantert
devoted a full four paragraphs to the paramount issue of her alleged
misbehavior.
Perhaps Wilkerson, in Gantert’s view, was just too unladylike that
night
to deserve to have the motives for her actions made public.
Of course, there is also the issue of the victim and what he did or
did not deserve that night. In many people’s eyes, the victim of police
and paramedic abuse that night is not very sympathetic. Although it is
indisputable that a patient’s politics or personality must be
irrelevant
to a physician, what about a journalist covering a story such as this?
Gantert did, after all, write in another AA News article, "The Blaine
Coleman
of today needs to be shut down."[4]
One can reasonably surmise that, had Gantert not excluded the most
important
piece of the story, readers would have learned something closer to the
truth about what happened last November at the University of Michigan.
Had he not left out the fact that a paramedic from Huron Valley
Ambulance
was doing something dangerous when Dr. Wilkerson intervened, readers
might
have come away with a different impression of events. Had Gantert done
his journalistic duty he would have educated himself at least minimally
about the dangers of ammonia inhalants.
And if Gantert had sought to educate himself about the dangers of
ammonia
inhalants he would have come across the tragic story of Martin Lee
Anderson.
He would have learned of the horrific way the teenager suffocated and
died
from ammonia being forced into his nostrils. He would have drawn the
connection
between what happened in Panama City, Florida, and what could have
happened
on his own beat. Gantert would have discovered how a different medical
professional, by failing to intervene in another case of maltreatment
with
ammonia, contributed to a person’s death. Surely, if Gantert had done
his
job properly, he would have found the reasons for Dr. Wilkerson’s
actions
integral to the story.
Despite the crucial omission of the ethical basis of Dr. Wilkerson’s
actions from the article about her in her local newspaper and despite
its
disparagement of her, she continues to receive messages of support on a
daily basis from her patients, coworkers, colleagues and friends, who
know
her to be a doctor with unimpeachable ethics. She continues to receive
messages of support from around the nation and around the globe from
people
who are outraged by the actions of the city and university police, of
the
local emergency medical service, and of the county prosecutor. These
expressions
of support are a testament to the power of solidarity in resistance to
injustice.
Perhaps cover-up is too strong a word for what the press, Huron Valley
Ambulance, the University of Michigan, the Washtenaw County Prosecutor,
and the Ann Arbor Police Department would like to do in this case. But
if it is, who, among the members of those institutions, will come
forward
to tell the truth? If cover-up is too strong a word, which of those
agencies
and institutions will call a halt to this malicious prosecution of Dr.
Wilkerson?
[5] O'Halloran RL, Lewman LV. Asphyxial death during prone restraint
revisited: A report of 21 cases. Am J Forensic Med Pathol
(March)
2000, 21(1);39-52.
[6] "Palestinian advocate’s behavior at meetings spinning out of
control,"
Ann
Arbor News, December 12, 2006.
For more information on how you can get
involved or make a contribution to Dr. Wilkerson's legal defense fund,
explore this website or contact Aimee Smith at (734) 761-9901. The
Committee's work is supported by the Nationals Lawyers Guild, Detroit
& Michigan Chapter; Council on American Islamic Relations, Michigan
Chapter; and, the Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality.
The
Committee to
Defend Catherine Wilkerson, P.O. Box 8041, Ann Arbor, MI 48107