MIRAMICHI, New Brunswick, Feb. 12 (UPI) -- A criminal investigation is looking into past findings of a suspended pathologist in New Brunswick, Canada, suspected of criminal negligence, police said.
The unidentified doctor was suspended a year ago in the small city of Miramichi after the Miramichi Regional Health Authority found 18 percent of prostate and breast cancer biopsies from 2004-05 had incomplete results and 3 percent were misdiagnosed, the authority said in a news release.
At a news conference Monday in Fredericton, provincial Health Minister Mike Murphy said the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had been asked to join the hospital's investigation, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., reported.
"It will be up to the RCMP to determine, after a review of this matter … whether charges of criminal negligence should be laid against the former pathologist," Murphy said. "It's very difficult to speculate about whether anybody has lost their life but it would not be unlikely.
"We do know a number of cases where he completely missed the diagnosis and said it was benign when it was in fact malignant," he said.
