MEDICAL EXAMINER'S DISTINCTION BAFFLING

Medical Examiner's Distinction Baffling

Dr. Charles S. Hirsch, the city's Chief Medical Examiner, has stirred another Ground Zero-related controversy by concluding that former Police Officer James Godbee, who was exposed to toxic dust during hundreds of hours at the World Trade Center site, was a victim of natural causes rather than of homicide because he did not come there until Sept. 13, 2001.

Unlike his hotly disputed ruling in the case of Det. James Zadroga, Dr. Hirsch is not taking issue with the medical cause of Officer Godbee's death. His office found that Mr. Godbee's fatal heart attack in December 2004 was the result of sarcoidosis, which scars the lungs and other organs. The disease has afflicted numerous other workers who toiled at Ground Zero in the months following the destruction of the Trade Center.

But in a letter to the cop's widow, Michelle Haskett-Godbee, Dr. Hirsch said his office would "decline to express an opinion about the cause and effect relationship" between his time there and his developing sarcoidosis.

What really stirred a furor was Dr. Hirsch's contention that the homicide classification should be reserved for those who either died during the Sept. 11 rescue efforts or took part in them and later succumbed to illnesses that could be attributed to the time they spent at the scene on that day and subsequently.

As we have noted before, Dr. Hirsch is a highly respected practitioner who has served the city well for nearly two decades. But his letter to Mr. Godbee's widow leaves lay people with no knowledge of his methodology wondering whether there is any reason to draw a line separating those who died of diseases they most likely contracted at the Trade Center beginning Sept. 11 from someone who arrived there two days later.

To our admittedly unscientific ears, that sounds like a distinction that is rooted in legal issues rather than medical ones. And because that perception is likely to be shared by many others, there is the risk that it will come to be viewed as one spurred by political considerations from an office that is supposed to be above politics.

For some families, the distinction is disturbing because it means their lost loved ones won't be officially classified as 9/11 victims. But clearly another issue is the potential liability of the city in wrongful-death lawsuits for not taking adequate precautions in the days after 9/11 in equipping rescue and recovery workers with protective respirators and ensuring that they wore them at all times.

Dr. Hirsch has said very little publicly about the 9/11 cases in which he's made rulings that have been fiercely challenged. In a brief interview with the New York Times for an article that appeared Nov. 25, he said of his conclusion that Detective Zadroga died not from Ground Zero exposure but from injecting prescription drugs into his veins, "I have absolute confidence in our opinion."

Unless he begins to elaborate further about matters such as why someone who was exposed on Sept. 11 but did not die until years later should be classified differently from someone who was first exposed two days later and suffered the same fate, that confidence in his stewardship is not going to be shared by much of the public.