From the Times Union newspapers
Albany NY
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1 year sought in VA scandal
Prosecutors urge that former Stratton oncologist serve the maximum sentence

By BRENDAN J. LYONS Senior writer


First published: Sunday, July 6, 2008

ALBANY -- Federal prosecutors want a former Stratton VA Medical Center oncologist to spend a year in prison for his role in a drug-research scandal that killed at least one veteran and victimized dozens more.

A year in jail is the maximum punishment that Dr. James A. Holland, 50, faces under his guilty plea last year to a misdemeanor charge in which he admitted failing to protect his patients from a rogue researcher who falsified medical records to enroll them in drug studies.

Holland's sentencing had been scheduled to take place in May, but was delayed as federal prosecutors and his attorney have made formal arguments about what punishment he should face. A new sentencing date has not been set.

"This crime was committed over a three-year period, with many obviously altered documents involving a large number of cancer patients needing careful attention because of the gravity of their conditions," assistant U.S. Attorney Grant C. Jaquith wrote in a memorandum to U.S. District Senior Judge Frederick J. Scullin, Jr.

Jaquith argues in court papers that the high number of victims and significant financial losses to the drug companies and Department of Veterans Affairs warrants a maximum prison term.

Holland has placed blame for the scandal on Paul H. Kornak, 56, a former research coordinator at Stratton who posed as a doctor while advising patients and their families on life-or-death medical decisions. Kornak had a felony criminal record for lying on a medical license application when he was hired at Stratton. He never finished medical school and falsified his college transcripts to get there, records show.

Kornak was sentenced in November 2005 to a six-year prison term for his guilty plea to felony counts of mail fraud and negligent homicide in connection with the death of James J. DiGeorgio, a 71-year-old Air Force veteran from Brunswick.

Another 64 veterans were harmed by the forgeries, which involved manipulating their medical backgrounds so they would qualify for drug studies that were lucrative for the hospital and had furthered the researchers' careers.

Federal authorities claim the research violations took place over about three years, beginning in May 1999. But VA workers have said the cancer program's problems, including the endangering of patients, stretched back years and involved other researchers.

Kornak blamed his actions on hospital officials, including Holland, claiming they urged him to enroll as many patients as possible in drug studies.

Gaspar M. Castillo, Holland's attorney, has cast Holland as a victim of Kornak and blames hospital administrators who allowed Kornak to masquerade as a physician.

"The defendant assumed, and it was reasonable for him to have assumed, that the VA had conducted appropriate background checks of Mr. Kornak," Castillo wrote last month in a letter to Scullin. Holland's guilty plea in April 2007 has not derailed his medical career. He works for a cancer program at Archbold Medical Center in Thomasville, Ga.

Holland and Kornak were fired by the hospital in 2002 after a private drug company investigator noticed problems with the medical records of patients. Authorities have never offered a clear motive for the forgeries.

A Times Union investigation found that Stratton's cancer research program was the target of internal complaints dating to the mid-1990s. Hospital staffers said they were harshly retaliated against for warning hospital administrators as early as 1994 that cancer patients were being placed at risk and being enrolled in drug studies without signing consent forms indicating they knew the risks.

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End of Times Union Release


The newspaper here has a conspiracy going
on to keep this news story out of the
Associated Press. They do this by treating
it as LOCAL news.