Books: Bad Medicine

The diagnosis is murder in a real-life doctor drama

James B. Stewart's Blind Eye: How the Medical Establishment Let a Doctor Get Away with Murder (Simon & Schuster; 334 pages; $25) is a persuasive case against Dr. Michael Swango, a handsome, over-confident physician suspected of poisoning between 35 and 60 patients and co-workers from Illinois to Zimbabwe.

Witnesses have put Swango at the bedside of some victims moments before they died. Colleagues report his fascination with violence and the serial killers Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy. Stocks of poisons and hypodermic needles were found in Swango's living quarters. Yet the best the law could do was convict him...

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