Trials of an Expert Witness: Tales of Clinical Neurology and the Law

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This collection of 19 provocatively titled stories presents dramatic encounters in what Klawans calls 'the arena of adversarial law, the battlefield of winning and losing. Each depicts a patient as a victim of an improper diagnosis or treatment: a pregnant woman's dehydration is mistreated with excessive glucose, which locks her into a permanent coma; a 62-year-old woman is convinced by a neurosurgeon that immediate surgery is the only means of avoiding a stroke, then suffers one as the result of the surgery; a meek, family-oriented, overworked attorney is charged with killing a young girl, apparently in his sleep.