John James

I'm retired from NASA where I served for 25 years as the agency's chief toxicologist. Since 2002 I have been a patient safety activist as the result of the death of my son from medical errors. I wrote a book in 2007 called "A Sea of Broken Hearts - Patient Rights in a Dangerous, Profit-driven Healthcare System." I founded Patient Safety America in 2008 (PatientSafetyAmerica.com), an organization dedicated to using the latest medical findings to educate the public on ways to get better health care. In 2014 I published a seminal paper in the Journal of Patient Safety in which I made a new estimate of the harms from preventable adverse events originating during hospital care. In 2014 I testified to a Senate Subcommittee at the invitation of Senator Bernie Sanders. In 2015 I co-edited a book called "The Truth about Big Medicine." My goal is to precipitate fundamental changes in health care delivery that favor safer care for patients. I'm currently targeting improvements in informed consent and patient rights at the federal level.