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Lions and Tigers and Lawyers, Oh My!

BALTIMORE -- The surprising results of a new medical study has the legal community up in arms by finding that long-term exposure to lawyers presents a significant environmental health hazard, putting them in league with tobacco, radon, mold, lead-based paints, trans-fatty acids, caffeine, sodium, cell phones, Big Macs, genetically engineered foods, hexavalent chromium, repetitive motions, asbestos and exploding Ford Pintos as a leading cause of medical problems and death in the United States.

"This is simply outrageous. This is the American Medical Association out for vengeance against our tireless efforts to get justice for the victims of medical malpractice. Who else is there to look out for the little guy in our society?" declared local attorney Clinton Svinktaogle, through the iron gate on his twenty-six acre estate in southern Calabash County. "We will bitch slap these Gassers and Slashers silly with motions and restraining orders and . . . and . . . and other legal stuff."

Funded by the Robert Wood Johnson foundation, the study included investigators at Johns Hopkins, the Mayo Clinic, UCLA, and Mudcat Falls Community College, among others. The results were published in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

From 1997 to 2003, researchers studied 5,462 patients across the country, 3,221 with legal representation and a control group of 2,241. The study found nearly a 60% excess risk of cancer, stroke, heart disease, paralysis, whiplash, mental disease, depression, aggravated medical symptoms and death in the study group.

"The causal linkage is stunning and incontrovertible," said Professor Gunther Uberflassen, Acting Head of the Mudcat Falls Community College Ad Hoc Department of Pre-Med and local member of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. "I think the health care crisis in America could be brought under control if we could only find a cure for litigation and get these grim reapers out of our hospitals."

Although Svintkaogle scoffed that no lawyer worth his salt in all of Christendom would dare challenge the ACLU, the American Bar Association or the Trial Lawyers for Justice, the Calabash County AMA has retained local attorney Steve Dallas to represent them.

"In medical terms, that Svinktaogle is what you call Pumpkin Positive," said Dallas, "when a doctor checks his tonsils with a penlight, his eyes light up."

Dallas refused to comment on the over 1,300 medical malpractice suits he has litigated to date.



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