Amazing Medical Stories (16 page)

Immigration authorities have not been willing to discuss what avenues
Dr. Jagnandan used to gain entrance to Canada, but the doctor who was the PMB's acting registrar at the time did say that it appeared the physician's documentation met Nova Scotia's licensing standards, and no further verification was undertaken. The PMB, which has since become the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Nova Scotia, now has procedures in place to detect fraudulent documentation. It also checks the Federation of State Medical Boards discipline data bank, which discloses suspensions, loss of medical licences, court martials and other misdemeanors.

When Dr. Jagnandan's past finally caught up to him, considerable attention was given to the question of how he had managed to obtain a medical licence in Nova Scotia. It was learned that the letter of good standing that an American doctor must provide to the provincial licensing authority from the last state in which he or she had practised was, in Jagnandan's case, a forgery. It also became clear that he lied in his original application for licensure in Nova Scotia when asked if his medical licence (registration or certification) had ever been revoked or suspended.

Dr. Jagnandan's wife also left behind an unpleasant reminder of the couple's brief stay in Canada: an outstanding warrant for her arrest on an impaired driving charge. She was charged on November 5, 1993, after the car she was driving was involved in an early-morning accident on the Bedford Highway.

So what happened to Dr. Jagnandan once he could no longer avoid the implications of his disgraceful past? Soon after he lost his licence to practice in Nova Scotia, he was arrested in a cheap hotel in Pori, Finland. His wife, Tuula, was not with him. After spending time in a prison there, an extradition petition by American authorities resulted in his being deported back to the United States.

On December 7, 1994, in the Superior Court of Troup County, Georgia, Dr. Jagnandan was found guilty of unlawfully distributing, dispensing, delivering and selling controlled substances without a written or oral prescription and otherwise violating the Georgia Controlled Substances Act. The court noted that he continued to deny any criminal conduct and expressed no sense of remorse. He was sentenced to five years: a two-year prison term and three years' probation. He was also prohibited from practising medicine during the term of his sentence and fined $25,000 and his home and boat were seized by the state.

Immediately after his court appearance, Dr. Jagnandan was sent first to a Troup County jail and then to a Georgia state prison. He remained an inmate at the prison until he was paroled on January 11, 1996. But true to form, Dr. Jagnandan violated the terms of his parole and fled the state. On February 15, 1996, the state of Mississippi, based on what had taken place in Nova Scotia and Georgia, revoked Dr. Jagnandan's licence. On November 4, 1996, after numerous attempts to reach him were unsuccessful, the Georgia State Board of Medical Examiners also revoked his medical licence.

Pete Skandalakis, Troup County's district attorney, made it clear that he will never forget the infamous Dr. Norris Jagnandan. In a telephone interview, he described him as being “one of the most cunning, devious and self-centred people I have ever met.” Skandalakis also disclosed that there is a violation of parole warrant pending for Dr. Jagnandan's arrest. “If we find him, he will be returned to prison immediately.”

In the end, Dr. Jagnandan has pulled off yet another remarkable vanishing act. To date, there have been no further reports of where this illusive and unscrupulous man may be hiding.

Dorothy Grant

During his more than thirty years as a pathologist, Dr. John Butt, who for several years was Nova Scotia's chief medical examiner, has had to deal with many tragedies, including a 1986 train crash in Alberta that killed twenty-three people. He says, however, that nothing ever came close to the heartbreaking tragedy of the crash of a Swissair flight that occurred on September 3, 1998, near Peggy's Cove in the Atlantic off Nova Scotia.

Butt still finds it difficult to describe his feelings the night Swissair Flight 111 went down close to his home in St. Margaret's Bay. “It seemed incredible to me because I've often watched international flights pass over my house.” He vividly recalls trying to come to terms with the magnitude of the disaster that he and countless others now had to confront. “For one thing, we didn't have any kind of disaster plan to guide us through the horrors we were facing. And, even if we had had some material like that, nothing can ever prepare you for such a horrible event.”

After throwing a few pieces of clothing into a suitcase, Dr. Butt went to Canadian Forces Base Shearwater, where a temporary morgue had been set up. A devastating scene awaited him. “Soldiers were taping the floor to receive bodies. There was yellow tape all over the place. Sadly, only a single body would ever come to rest on one of those taped areas.” At first, there were reports of survivors, but optimism quickly vanished. “We were told that thirty-six or thirty-seven bodies had been recovered, but there was absolutely no basis to this information. I think I first comprehended the magnitude of the disaster when I went on a naval helicopter to HMCS
Preserver
, the mother ship of the recovery fleet. What I saw was beyond belief — there were basically only fragmented remains. At that

Dr. John C. Butt.
COURTESY OF DR. JOHN C. BUTT

point I felt overwhelmed,” says Dr. Butt, shaking his head. “It crossed my mind that the sailors were in a very unenviable position. God knows what happened to them, but, hopefully, they're working through it.”

The next few days were numbing. “Conditions were terrible. I don't remember going to bed for many hours, as we were desperately working our way through the horrific process of identification. We did write some very tight guidelines for the use of DNA, but we had to modify them almost immediately, because we were overwhelmed with small material.”

It was on Friday, three days after the crash, that Dr. Butt faced what he has called “the eye of the storm.” With the president of Swissair and members of the RCMP, he sat on a platform in the ballroom of the Lord Nelson Hotel in Halifax and faced the hundreds of people who had lost someone on Flight 111. “While I was waiting to speak, I looked out into the audience and witnessed extraordinary pain. It was a huge experience. My throat was full of emotion, and I know my voice did quiver. I had to
tell the awful truth to those people and be honest with myself. I couldn't turn myself back into some sort of a scientific parrot. At that point, I felt tremendous anguish because of what I knew I had to say: ‘I regret that none of you will ever be able to see your family member again.' I remember one man in particular. I shall never forget the expression on his face. It was ghastly — dried out with grief.”

One couple in the front row of the auditorium listened intently to the terrible news and then wistfully asked Dr. Butt if he had any knowledge of a black woman, a relative who had died on the flight. “This was amazing to me,” the medical examiner says. “I asked them to come to see me after the meeting was over. A black woman's body had, in fact, been found, and her family was the only one able to make a visual identification.”

Dr. Butt's face perceptibly changes as he recalls the end of the meeting, when he found himself surrounded by the crash victims' families. They must have sensed his vulnerability and compassion. “Some of them wanted to touch, hold or hug me. People reached out to shake my hand. One young man, who had expressed a lot of anger earlier, came up to speak with me. He was gracious as he introduced his mother, who said, ‘I don't believe any of this, you know. None of this is true.' Our eyes met, and I held her hand.” He pauses, reliving the intensity of that moment, “It was emotional beyond words,” he says, his eyes tearful. “There was a transfer of energy. I truly believe at that moment she began to accept that something unspeakable had happened.”

Like most pathologists, and indeed many physicians, Dr. Butt says that, in the past, it has often been possible for him to avoid dealing with the emotional trauma that is associated with the death of a loved one. He knows he has sometimes limited his exposure to the families who have lost someone under tragic circumstances. “I set up a barrier of sorts by either having a nurse act as an intermediary, or often by discussing such situations over the phone.” His tone is suddenly emphatic. “I can't do that any more because it's selfish. I feel strongly that there is a great need to relate to families.”

Dr. Butt speaks highly of the hundreds of dedicated people, many of them doctors, nurses and technicians, who faced the grisly task of helping to identify the shattered human remains that were retrieved from the depths of the Atlantic Ocean. He also admires the individuals who provided
one-on-one support for grief-stricken men, women and children. But it is the families of the victims of Flight 111 who have earned his greatest respect.

“It was tough and a humbling experience. I have no strong connections with anyone other than the relatives. The nature of the human remains didn't permit that; there was nothing about them that was memorable in terms of catching a glimpse of the two hundred and twenty-nine individuals who died. I think it is only important to see things through the families' eyes. What I want to see happen is for the brutality and terror to fade, and there will be more memories of individuals. After all, isn't that what life is really all about?”

After being interviewed by dozens of media outlets during the months that followed the air disaster, Dr. Butt is clearly tired and emotionally drained. But he does not hesitate, when asked, to articulate the impact the plane crash had on him. “I don't consider myself to be a religious man, but the tragedy has opened a spiritual window for me.” Asked about seeking closure, he responds with annoyance. “I don't want closure. In fact, I consider that word trite. What I want is a time to be alone, to reflect and occasionally to weep, to heal, and to come out of this great tragedy with the right kind of memories. For me, it was an amazing paradox that you can be working on something so awful and something good is going on at the same time.”

He stops and appears to reflect on those harrowing yet rewarding days. “When we were working in that hangar, there was an enormous sense of direction — a sense of purpose. I never want to forget parts of that time in my life. What I do want most is more space, because I don't want to feel crowded by people talking about the disaster all the time. I want to talk about it, in my own time, to people I value and who will understand.”

Dr. John Butt received the Order of Canada in the year 2000.

Dorothy Grant

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