These men endured years of brutal chemotherapy for cancer they never had… due to the doctor’s fatal mistakes

Scot Warwick’s family said it was a miracle after he lived for more than a decade despite being diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer – a disease that kills up to 90 percent of patients within a few years.

But their feelings of hope turned to shock and anger when they discovered that his cancer had been misdiagnosed and that he had unnecessarily undergone years of brutal chemotherapy and multiple surgeries and experimental therapies.

Ultimately, Mr. Warwick, a father of two from Montana, died of lung failure in September 2020 at the age of 51.

An autopsy reportedly revealed that he had no cancer cells in his body at all and that it was in fact gemcitabine (a chemotherapy drug) that had caused irreversible damage to his lungs.

Mr Warwick was diagnosed and treated by a doctor accused of putting other patients through hellish treatments for conditions that never existed.

An in-depth investigation by ProPublica claims that Mr. Warwick was one of about a dozen known patients who suffered needlessly at the hands of Dr. Thomas Weiner, who was then stationed at St. Peter’s Health in Montana.

He was dismissed shortly after Mr Warwick’s death and hospital CEO Wade Johnson described the incident as the ‘tip of the iceberg’ as concerns had been raised for some time about Dr. Weiner was having drinks.

The Warwick The family sued St. Peter’s for the wrongful death of Mr. Warwick and the case was eventually settled for an undisclosed amount.

In her statement, Mr Warwick’s widow Lisa said: ‘My children have lost their father. I lost my husband. It wasn’t fast. It took a long time. And it was torturous. And it was terrible. And I would never wish that on anyone, ever.”

Like Mr. Warwick, Anthony Olson was heartbroken when Dr. Weiner was diagnosed in early 2011 at the age of 33 with a rare form of blood cancer called myelodysplastic syndrome.

Mr. Olson was told that without treatment he would be dead before the end of the year. “That diagnosis changed the direction of my life,” the now 47-year-old told ProPublica.

With Doctor Weiner acting as principal of St. Peter’s cancer center, Mr. Olson said he had no reason to doubt what he was told about his condition.

“I trusted him to do what was best for me,” the Montana native said of Dr. Weiner.

‘I never really questioned it until someone else told me there was a reason for it. I thought he was helping me.

“I actually felt quite fortunate that we had such a gifted physician in such a small community.”

After his diagnosis, Mr. Olson dropped out of college, moved back in with his parents and began intensive treatment prescribed by Dr. Weiner.

His regimen included four days of chemotherapy and four weeks off.

This treatment pattern lasted nine years.

While a second biopsy on Mr Olson came back negative 10 months after his diagnosis, Dr Weiner said he had to ignore it and that it was because the treatment was working.

As a result of his chemotherapy, Mr. Olson suffered a series of serious side effects, including the loss of his teeth and chronic exhaustion.

It also exacerbated an iron deficiency he had before his cancer diagnosis, and Dr. Weiner placed him on weekly iron-rich blood transfusions.

Mr. Olson and his family were financially crippled by the cost of his treatments.

The average monthly cost of chemotherapy drugs alone can range from $1,000 to $12,000.

Mr Olson said: ‘With the cost of treatments it was difficult to do anything. I was a bit stuck.”

It wasn’t until 2020, after Dr. Weiner was fired, that Mr. Olson had his case reviewed.

A biopsy ordered by the hospital came back negative, and when medics decided to retest his first biopsy, it also showed that he had never had blood cancer.

Following the revelation, Mr. Olson’s cancer treatments were stopped in early 2021.

Like the Warwicks, he sued St. Peter’s for malpractice, with the hospital paying an undisclosed amount.

Dr. Weiner, whose salary was more than $1 million while he worked at St Peter’s, is accused of profiteering from his patients.

At one point he was seeing as many as seventy patients a day, and ProPublica notes that “the more treatments and visits Weiner charged, the more money he made.”

However, the celebrated doctor has consistently denied any wrongdoing and he subsequently sued the hospital for wrongful termination and defamation.

In other cases, reporting alleges that Dr. Weiner “provided disturbingly high doses of barbiturates to facilitate the death of seriously ill patients when those patients may not have actually been on the brink of death.”

The ProPublica report alleges that he also “altered end-of-life plans without consulting patients, prescribed high doses of opioids to patients who did not need them, and often failed to document his work.”

A judge dismissed Dr. Weiner’s lawsuit and now his appeal is pending before the state Supreme Court.