Famed astronaut Neil Armstrong died in August 2012, supposedly due to complications from his coronary bypass surgery.
None of this was doubted at the time. as Armstrong was 82 and legitimately did have heart problems.
However, according to an expert who was later hired by Armstron's two sons to analyze the medical records,
the surgery was unnecessary in the first place, and then subsequent major errors occurred after the surgery, which ended up killing him.
Mercy Health-Fairfield Hospital erroneously told him that the surgery was urgent, which it wasn't. He did have heart disease, but bypass surgery was not necessary at that time.
That was mistake #1. After the successful surgery, a nurse removed wires to his temporary pacemaker, then causing internal bleeding. That was mistake #2.
Instead of fixing this through surgery, they took him to a "catheterization lab" for a week, where his condition deteriorated, and he ended up dying. That was mistake #3.
His two sons then filed a lawsuit against the hospital. However, in 2014, as it got close to the 45th anniversary of Armstron's 1969 moon walk, the sons threatened to mention the lawsuit and the malpractice at a ceremony honoring him, thus creating horrible publicity for the hospital. Hospital administrators panicked, and agreed to pay $6 million -- $3 million to each son -- with the agreement that the sons would never discuss the matter publicly or report it to the media.
With the bigger 50th anniversary of the moonwalk just having passed, someone anonymously sent the NY Times a 93-page document outlining the entire situation, including the analysis of the hospital's various screw ups.
So looks like the $6 million they paid to silence the sons was for naught. LOL
This once again highlights the need to always get second and third opinions before undergoing any significant surgical procedure.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/23/u...ettlement.html