Doctor tried to ignite patients

The chief of medical staff for Prince George’s Hospital Center has said under sworn testimony that he has tried to ignite a surgical preparation solution on unwitting patients, court records show.

Testifying as an expert witness in a lawsuit in April, Dr. Willie C. Blair said he had tried to “set people on fire” in a deposition for a lawsuit stemming from an accident in which a female patient was burned in an operating room at the Washington Hospital Center in 2002, according to court records and transcripts of his deposition.

“I’ve been trying to set people on fire for the last three months and can’t do it,” Dr. Blair said in his April 30 deposition.

“How did you go about trying to set people on fire?” said plaintiff’s attorney Robert R. Michael.

“I mean, I put the prep on and wait, and put the prep on and go early; do a lot of using the Bovie [an electric surgical device], but I haven’t been able to ignite anybody,” Dr. Blair said.

The Washington Times has obtained a copy of his deposition.

In an interview earlier this week, Dr. Blair denied making the statements and said he never got a chance to make changes to his sworn deposition.

“It’s all hooey. If I had been given an opportunity to change this, it would have been corrected and changed,” he told The Times. “I would never try to set people on fire; it’s simply not true. It’s irresponsible. If I did and somebody burned, that would be the end of me.”

Yesterday, Dr. Blair said he made the statements but described them as “tongue-in-cheek.”

“I didn’t do it, and it didn’t happen,” he said yesterday. “What I was saying was for the lawyers’ consumption.”

“I said it, but it didn’t happen,” he said of his testimony about trying to set patients on fire.

Dr. Blair said he did experiment with trying to ignite a preparation solution, but said no patients were involved. He said he tried to ignite an applicator for the prep solution in a corner of an operating room after surgical procedures had been completed.

A spokesman for Prince George’s Hospital Center yesterday said hospital officials are reviewing the deposition in response to questions from The Times and have spoken with Dr. Blair about his testimony.

Hospital spokesman Bob Howell said officials’ initial reaction, based on that conversation and a perusal of the document, was that Dr. Blair did not conduct the experiments on patients.

“There hasn’t been any sanctioned experiments involving patients,” Mr. Howell said. “Knowing Dr. Blair and seeing how he works and operates, and based on his history at Prince George’s Hospital Center, for him to be doing what he said here would be so out of character.”

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