Debi Lane's nightmare began last November with a routine thyroid test. When she returned for the results the next day, doctors at the Desert Samaritan Hospital in Mesa, Ariz., had chilling news. "There's been a terrible mistake," they told the 41-year-old mother of four. "Basically, we've killed your thyroid."
Instead of a small dose of mildly radioactive iodine, Lane had been treated with a megadose of radiation normally given to patients with thyroid cancer. She spent four days in a hospital isolation ward while her home was scrubbed down. Doctors say she has already contaminated her children.
Hospital officials insist that...