Lessons From The Medical Error That Orphaned A Cabinet Secretary

By MICHAEL MILLENSON It was a small anecdote, buried in a lengthy profile in The New Yorker of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, “Donald Trump’s Tariff Dealmaker-in-Chief.” But as a patient safety activist, the stark depiction of the effect of medical error felt like a sudden shock. Lutnick, the article related, knew tragedy early in life: “his mother died of lymphoma while he was in high school; in his first week of [Haverford] college, his father was accidentally administered a fatal dose of chemotherapy. Other relatives receded into the background, leaving Lutnick and his two