A friend passes along this link, along with the following comment: “Finally, someone has written an article about how John Edwards made his millions by suing obstetricians for cerebral palsy in newborns – a disease that is almost always genetic and has nothing to do with the obstetrician. Edwards punished these doctors with millions in damages for the crime of delivering babies. And as the article details, they and other doctors have learned their lesson: they stopped practicing in North Carolina, creating a crisis in access to healthcare for several specialties in that state.

“Amazing. Everyone has heard about Haliburton and been told that there is something sleazy about it, even though the company won its first defense-supply contract under Clinton, and as V.P. Cheney divested himself of all stock in the company and has no financial interest in it. And at the same time, this golden-haired fraud has been shaking down baby doctors across North Carolina, creating a lack of access to specialty care and driving up North Carolinians’ premiums by at least $50 million. Now that we know as a fact that Edwards’s emotional jury arguments were based on bogus science, do you think that there’s any chance that he’ll give back his tens of millions in lawyers’ fees to the people of that state? Do you think that anyone will ever call him on it? Do you think that most people in this country will ever hear about how this con artist made his fortune?

“Edwards is easily the most disturbing vice presidential candidate since Henry Wallace. Can you imagine what kinds of people he would be influencing Kerry to put on the federal bench? Forget about even the modest limits on damage awards and junk science imposed by the Supreme Court in recent years – they won’t survive the judges picked by the Baron & Budd ‘04 Fundraising/ Judicial Selection committee….”

For those who didn’t catch the Baron & Budd reference, here’s something I wrote about the firm.