Physicians are backing a move by Newfoundland and Labrador's largest health authority to keep information about a controversial laboratory a secret.

Eastern Health applied to the Newfoundland Supreme Court in December to stop a judicial inquiry from making two reports on the lab public.

Robert Ritter said he can see how 'people might think that this is trying to cover things up.'
(CBC)

Now, the Newfoundland and Labrador Medical Association concurs, saying it is not necessary for all evidence presented at the inquiry to be released to the public.

"I can see where, on the surface, people might think that this is trying to cover things up," said Robert Ritter, the association's executive director.

The inquiry, headed by Justice Margaret Cameron, a member of the Newfoundland Supreme Court of Appeal, is scheduled to begin hearing evidence next month on what went wrong with hormone receptor tests over several years.

The tests are done to help determine which course of treatment is best for breast cancer patients. However, 317 patients received wrong results, with many of them steered away from hormone therapies like Tamoxifen, which has been clinically shown to improve a patient's odds of survival.

In 2005 and 2006, Eastern Health hired outside experts to do quality assurance reviews of its lab, amid growing concerns of flawed work there.

Eastern Health argues that the auditors' reports can be presented to Cameron directly, but that they should not be released during the public hearings or made available to the media.

As well, Eastern Health does not want the commission to issue subpoenas to the authors of the reports to compel them to testify.

The authority said it had promised the experts that their reports would remain confidential, allowing them to write candidly.

Ritter said it is more important to protect the experts than to disclose to the public everything that they said.

"One of the processes that you need to ensure to promote safety and to ensure that risk management is effective is to provide a kind of a sanctuary where physicians can openly criticize each other and look over each other's work," Ritter told CBC News.

The Newfoundland Supreme Court will hear Eastern Health's request to protect the reports later this month.