From 1984 to '97, Dr. Michael Swango was responsible for the fatal poisoning of roughly 60 patients, placing him among the most prolific serial killers in American history, but his crimes are not the most unsettling aspect of James B. Stewart's riveting Blind Eye. Using Swango as a grisly case study for a larger and more common problem, Stewart reveals just how easily dangerous or grossly incompetent physicians can slip through the system and continue to practice medicine. Only part of the Quincy, Illinois, native's elusiveness can be attributed to his brilliance in covering up past transgressions —including a felony conviction for lacing his colleagues' food and drink with arsenic—or the simple fact that death, no matter how sudden and inexplicable, is a regular occurrence at hospitals. With resounding clarity and force, Stewart levels equal blame on a medical establishment that cares more about financial liability than patient welfare, lacks an effective national system for red-flagging poor physicians, and supports the arrogant fraternity of hospital doctors and administrators. There's no more potent example of this than an incident at Ohio State in which three people—elderly patients Rena Cooper and Iwonia Utz and student nurse Karolyn Beery—witnessed Swango injecting a foreign substance into Cooper's IV line, causing a near-instant seizure and resulting in paralysis. A half-hearted internal investigation followed, but as more reports of suspicious deaths surfaced, administrators, fearing liability, chose to disbelieve the witnesses, shut out campus-police inquiries, and quietly relieve the doctor of his duties. As he follows Swango's zigzagging path through various hospitals in America, ending in a remote community facility in Zimbabwe, Stewart observes with astonishment and indignation as the cover-up at Ohio State repeats itself again and again. At their worst, true-crime books revel in grotesque pathology. But while Swango has plenty to offer in that regard—the perverse enjoyment he got from informing family members of the newly deceased, his obsessive clippings of articles on violent deaths—Stewart understands that he's an anomaly and insists on putting his horrible actions in context. An urgent, scrupulously researched piece of reportage, Blind Eye is a wake-up call to both the medical community and the vulnerable public-at-large.
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