Last Updated

26 Dec 2002

Source: Washington Post, November 14, 2001.

Postal Worker's Family Suing Over Death

Man's Anthrax Symptoms Misdiagnosed as a Cold

By Avram Goldstein, Washington Post Staff Writer

The family of a Suitland postal worker who died of inhalational anthrax sued the man's health maintenance organization yesterday for misdiagnosing his symptoms as a cold and recommending Tylenol instead of prescribing antibiotics. Three days later, he was dead.

Medical experts had been warning for weeks that the early symptoms of anthrax -- aches and pains, breathing difficulty, fatigue -- might initially be indistinguishable from the flu. According to the suit, the doctors treating Thomas L. Morris Jr., 55, failed to heed those warnings.

His son, Thomas III, said in the suit that his father visited an unnamed primary care doctor at the Marlow Heights center of Kaiser Permanente on Oct. 18. Morris, the suit said, told the doctor that he thought he had inhaled anthrax spores at the District's Brentwood Road mail processing facility.

Postal officials say a letter containing anthrax spores passed through the facility on Oct. 11 en route to the offices of Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) in the Senate Hart Office Building. A Daschle intern opened the letter Oct. 15, releasing anthrax spores.

Postal officials did not pursue the possibility that Brentwood workers were at risk until Oct. 18; health officials had told them an envelope would not leak spores when it passed through automated sorters.

On Oct. 18, the day the suit said Morris visited his doctor, the Postal Service hired a company to collect environmental samples to assess whether the Daschle letter had left spores behind in Brentwood.

The lawsuit, filed in Prince George's County Circuit Court, said Kaiser was negligent in failing to prescribe the antibiotic Cipro even though Morris was in a known risk group.

Thousands of Capitol Hill workers and visitors had already begun taking Cipro as a precaution while federal officials sorted out who might have been at risk. Short-term antibiotic supplies were distributed to 6,100 people on Capitol Hill, and about 950 remain on the full 60-day treatment, Senate officials say.

Kaiser officials said they are deeply disappointed by the suit. "We will defend their allegations quite vigorously and with great passion," said Kaiser spokeswoman Susan Whyte Simon. "We are proud of the care delivered by Kaiser Permanente physicians and the information that our medical staff has provided to advance medical knowledge in treating anthrax. Our physicians were in the vanguard of diagnosing and treating anthrax."

Kaiser also was in charge of treating two other Brentwood workers diagnosed with pulmonary anthrax at Inova Fairfax Hospital. Both have been released -- Leroy Richmond, the last man still hospitalized, was discharged yesterday -- after being treated for three weeks with an antibiotic regimen of intravenous Cipro, rifampin and clendamycin. A third mail handler, who contracted the disease at a State Department mail facility in Sterling, was discharged last week.

Jimmy A. Bell, the Upper Marlboro lawyer representing the plaintiff, said Morris complained in the office visit about trouble breathing, muscle pain, headaches and tightness in the chest.

"He informed his physician right up front that he was exposed to anthrax," Bell said. "He believed his doctor. You're not going to question your physician. When he tells you what it is, that's what it is."

Simon said that the lawsuit is riddled with errors and that the HMO's staff meticulously followed the guidance they had at the time from health officials. Those guidelines and recommendations have shifted continually since then.

"What we did was proportionate to his symptoms and what we knew about anthrax and who was at risk at the time," Simon said. "We think we did the right things."

Intense interest in anthrax cases prompted the Journal of the American Medical Association to expedite a report on Morris, another worker who died and the two Brentwood facility workers who survived. The article appeared yesterday on the JAMA Web site, and Bell quoted from it in his lawsuit.

Staff writer Leef Smith contributed to this report.