ted cruz claimed to have the backs of first responders in his closing statement last night...but opposed and voted against the zadroga act.
The mis-information many of you operate under is staggering...
The causes of Zadroga's death are under dispute. Gerard Breton, a pathologist of the Ocean County, New Jersey medical examiner's office, conducted an autopsy in April 2006, and he reported, "It is felt with a reasonable degree of medical certainty that the cause of death in this case was directly related to the 9/11 incident." This attribution made Zadroga, 34 years old at the time of his death, the first 9/11 responder whose death was directly linked with toxic Ground Zero substances. Breton's autopsy found what he described as "unidentified foreign materials" in Zadroga's lungs, which were identified by the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington, D.C. as talc, cellulose, calcium phosphate, and methacrylate plastic; However, the examination did not compare the particles found in his lungs with actual dust from the World Trade Center site.
The New York City Medical Examiners Office asserted in October 2007 that Zadroga's death was not related to his time at Ground Zero, with Chief Medical Examiner Charles Hirsch and another medical examiner signing a statement that
"It is our unequivocal opinion, with certainty beyond doubt, that the foreign material in your son’s lungs did not get there as the result of inhaling dust at the World Trade Center or elsewhere". Hirsch concluded that Zadroga died from self-injection of ground drugs, with Hirsch finding severe scarring in his lungs that he determined was caused by cellulose and talc granulomas and stating (through a spokesperson) that
"The lung disease he had was a consequence of injecting prescription drugs". In response to the City Medical Examiner's autopsy results, Mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg stated "We wanted to have a hero, and there are plenty of heroes, it’s just in this case, science says this was not a hero" at remarks made after receiving an award from the Harvard School of Public Health, but backed away from his earlier characterization at a news conferences stating that "This was a great N.Y.P.D. officer who dedicated himself — put his life in harm’s way hundreds of times during his career — and you can use your own definition."