A filing is not a verdict. Nothing on this site is a finding of liability.
The Record — theasbaghirecord.com. A filing is not a verdict. Nothing on this site is a finding of liability.
Section 05f
Published instrumented-implant work on the same campus. Colwell and D’Lima. The electronic knee. What Stryker’s public record prints. A paper is not his operative report.
5 · Published science
He asked. The chart did not close the question. Doctors wrote they had not seen him; later blood still prints their names. A person in that position would look at the public literature on instrumented implants. That is why this chapter is here. It is bibliography. It is not a finding that these two stems were instrumented, and it is not a montage implying “therefore his hips.”
After the meter faces printed High at the hips, he looked for papers on long-term EMF and the diagnoses on his list. That is a reasonable next step. It is not a finding that the stems were the source, and it is not a montage implying every paper proves the next. Quote what each face actually says — including the ones that cut against a simple match.
Instrumented joints with internal telemetry exist in papers. SCORE ran an electronic knee on this campus. Scripps’ own copy describes a remote monitor/transmit shoulder and says first-in-human work is still years away. A paper that a smart implant can exist is not a finding that his 2015 or 2017 hips were that device. Capability is not guilt.
Then the instrumented-THR reviews. Vickers 2021 is the paper that names RF through tissue, vibration analysis, and the PEEK-coil figure. Quote its own limits: a widely used smart THR had not been realised; Bluetooth had not been used in an instrumented hip. DOI 10.1088/2516-1091/ac1b7f. Silva 2013 is a published harvesting prototype that ran BLE for tens of seconds. That paper is bench hardware, not his 9 October 2015 implant. Sauer 2013 is 125 kHz inductive loosening detection. Geiger 2024 is a Sawbones Exeter. Healio / Orthopedics Today, 1 June 2008 — seven years before the first hip — quotes D’Lima and Colwell at Scripps on remote on/off and a hip-sensor vision, Parvizi on vibration around prostheses, and Bergmann on seven instrumented hip patients and OrthoLoad.com. The hosted article is a cover. The PDF is the full page. ScienceDaily, 18 March 2010 — five years before 2015 — describes a University of Porto “Smart Hip”: sensors and actuators on a hip implant, activated by a doctor through a computer connected to Bluetooth, tested in animals. That is Porto, not Scripps, and it is not his Trident. It is the technology class in print before 2015. D’Lima shelf. June 2012 JAAOS, three years before the 2015 right THA: Ledet, D’Lima, Bergmann. Orthopaedic smart implants used exclusively as research tools; size under 10 millimeters; electronics housed inside the implant. Figure 2 is a fingertip chip next to bulky battery telemetry. Figure 3 is a shoulder stem, not a hip. Figure 4 is a radiograph of an instrumented tibia with the coil labeled — that face cuts against undetectable-on-imaging as a finding from this paper. D’Lima’s disclosure names Stryker as unpaid consultant and research-support source. DOI 10.5435/JAAOS-20-06-383. The SMARTHIP™ nanoparticle / handheld-personalized-medicine sentence is now located: Webster’s concept figure in Mohapatra et al., Appl. Sci. 2020, 10(14), 4881 — RF to a computer/analyzer, five years after the 2015 right THA. Distinct from EU FP7 SMART-HIP 606335, a loosening oscillator. Keep every face that cuts against a simple match, including D’Lima’s 2008 limit: the e-Tibia still needed lab equipment and could not communicate with the patient. Hosted PDFs open in the side window; the publisher link sits next to the quote.
Public Scripps copy documents a consented, coil-activated research knee on that campus. Four named testers by 2011. Walker has co-authored orthopedic outcome papers with Colwell / D’Lima. That is a bibliography, not proof of unauthorized instrumentation of these two hips. The campus pages.
Scripps’ own public copy describes a remote monitor/transmit shoulder program and says first-in-human work is still years away. Cite that copy. Lab piezoelectric experiments on stems are not the same as a commercial Trident / Secur-Fit shipping with medical radio services.
Vickers et al., 16 September 2021, open access: an instrumented implant would be attractive; smart devices already exist as pacemakers and cochlear implants; a widely used smart THR has not yet been realised. Fewer than 100 patients had received an instrumented implant, mostly for discrete biomechanics, not everyday condition monitoring. The same review: 30–400 MHz is the body-resonance band for a deep IMD; Bluetooth at 2.45 GHz had not been used in an instrumented hip implant, and low penetration would make BLE unfeasible inside the hip in that telling. Quote both halves. DOI 10.1088/2516-1091/ac1b7f. Capability is not his operative report.
Silva et al., Power management architecture for smart hip prostheses comprising multiple energy harvesting systems, Sensors and Actuators A 202 (2013) 183–192, published 1 November 2013 — two years before the 9 October 2015 right THA. Abstract as printed: three micro-power generators as part of a smart hip prosthesis structure; the architecture enables operation of a Bluetooth low energy (V4.0) embedded device (BLE112 from Bluegiga) up to 50 s, and a MSP430/eZ430-RF2500 (Texas Instruments) using SimpliciTI up to 110 s, solely using energy from one generator. DOI 10.1016/j.sna.2013.01.049. That is the Bluetooth/RF sentence in the literature. The introduction, as printed: WBANs include classic Bluetooth and IEEE 802.15.4; BLE v.4 protocols “are also available in common mobile devices” and “allow medical staff to use mobile devices either locally or remotely to access sensor data.” Later: the telemetry system in that study was built around a BLE112 and an MSP430/CC2500 running SimpliciTI; an activation circuit “remotely activates and deactivates system operation”; a bone stimulation actuator is named. A 50-second lab radio is not hours of vibration. Chip names that also appear in consumer BLE tools are not a finding those chips sit in his bone. A remote- activation sentence in a prototype is not a finding his hips were switched. Sauer et al., January 2013 — the titanium-sleeve / PEEK coil figure — uses 125 kHz inductive coupling (ISO 18000-2) and a nearby reader. Vibration analysis there is a loosening test, not a symptom paper. IFSA original. Sit those two 2013 papers next to the meter High faces and the 24-to-60-hour vibration messages. Capability is not guilt.
Geiger et al., 9 April 2024, CC-BY: an Exeter V40 (Stryker, Howmedica Osteonics, Mahwah) with a PI Ceramic piezo, cemented into a Sawbones femur. Published years after 2015. Staff lists on his file name conventional Trident / Secur-Fit / Biolox. Iyengar et al. 2022 describe SMART implants sending strain or biochemistry by Bluetooth or RF as a class. The SMARTHIP™ nanoparticle / handheld sentence is now located as Figure 1 in Mohapatra et al., Appl. Sci. 2020, 10(14), 4881 — Webster’s concept, RF to a computer/analyzer, on-demand nanoparticle release. It is a 2020 figure, five years after the first THA. The named EU FP7 project SMART-HIP (606335, 2014–2016) is an oscillator inside the prosthesis plus an external diagnostic coil for loosening — not cell sensing. Two different published names. Neither is his implant card.
SCORE’s electronic knee remains campus context. Capability is not guilt. None of the instrumented-THR reviews mounted here list Richard Walker or Scripps Clinic as authors of those studies. That is why he then asked for the 2015 operative report itself. It arrived in April, bannered as a converted historical result. The packet. When he asked for the 2015 report and the parts, Scripps first answered inside MyScripps. Staff typed the left-hip list, then after he asked why there was no reference to October 2015, Megan M. Kuettel, RN, Office of Dr. Kace Ezzet, typed the right-hip Stryker list for a posterior total hip arthroplasty by Dr. Walker on 9 October 2015. A covering doctor wrote that the August 2015 radiologist report was not in the Scripps clinic system. Tanya Greene later attached a file titled 2015 Op Note and Xray note. The twelve-page packet generated 23 April 2025 at 8:28 AM is a later records-department face. It labels those visits Conversion Encounter and prints: “ATTENTION: This is a converted historical result. Dates and procedure details should be carefully reviewed.” The surgeon named on both operations is Richard Walker.
Danho, Escobar Huertas, Schoellhorn. Open access, CC-BY. Documented impacts as listed: blood, thyroid, heart rate, fertility, neuronal activity, inflammatory responses. Then their own limit: most included studies, moderate to high risk of bias; long-term human effects poorly understood. Five of 24 were human non-randomized. Quote both halves.
The “muscle twitch” paper is EMF stimulation in spinal-cord-injured rats reporting improvement, not environmental harm in a person. The eye page is high-power 28 GHz cornea thresholds; ARPANSA prints public limits far below that study. The sleep results page reports a non-significant effect, confidence intervals crossing zero. The bone-and-thyroid paper is electrical workers near high-voltage lines. Hashimoto’s on his list is dated 2014, before either hip. Print the model. It is not a match to these two stems.
What the research hardware actually looks like. The matchstick still is scale: boards small enough to sit inside a stem cavity. That is housing, not a finding the class is invisible on imaging — the 2012 JAAOS radiograph on the D’Lima shelf labels coil and antenna on an instrumented tibia. Bergmann’s coil sits in the neck — inductive, a nearby reader, the same class SCORE printed for the 2004 e-knee. Silva’s 2013 generators are windings in the stem and head. The SMARTHIP™ figure is a 2020 nanotech concept that talks to a handheld; it is not CORDIS 606335 and it is not his 2015 card. Vickers’ vibration figures are a shaker test and an acoustic crack in cement — diagnostic methods, not a finding that 24-to-60-hour vibration sensation is that output. The timeline’s last panel is Wijayaratna 2021, after both operations, and it is read by X-ray. The 2012 JAAOS figures — fingertip chip, shoulder cavity, labeled tibial radiograph — sit on that D’Lima shelf, with the hosted article. His 2024 Irvine films versus the two Scripps stills sit on the films chapter.
The Field collects the public research pages · The 2015 / 2017 imaging · The converted 2015 operative packet · The foot stills
5 · Same campus
Clifford W. Colwell Jr. started the Division of Orthopaedic Surgery in 1977 as Head of the Division. Walker joined Scripps Clinic in 1983. They published hip-arthroplasty papers together from the 1990s into 2014 — those co-author lines are the stills above. SCORE sits on Colwell’s watch. D’Lima holds the Clifford W. Colwell Jr. chair there and is named SCORE laboratory director on STSI paper. The 2014 ceramic-liner paper sits on the Walker-papers shelf: same Stryker product family as the staff lists; Colwell discloses Stryker research support outside the work; Walker declared none. A disclosed research relationship on a ceramic-fracture series is not a finding those two stems were a study device, and it is not a finding Colwell operated.
Walker is named president of Scripps Clinic Medical Group on 25 January 2017 Scripps news — before the 23 October 2017 left THA, not locked for the 2015 right THA. D’Lima is still on SCORE copy after that date, including the 5 December 2024 NIH smart-shoulder grant. Colwell’s name stays on SCORE history and on a Stryker Trident investigator list. Same campus during that medical-group presidency is documented overlap. A medical-group presidency is not a finding that Colwell or D’Lima reported to him as employees, and it is not a finding they operated on this patient. Padres years: Walker’s bio prints over 15, including 1984 and 1998 pennants; Colwell’s letterhead bio prints the past 15 years; San Diego Foundation copy later prints about 25. Two team-physician tenures overlap. A later family-fundraising overlap is not this still.
These stills are the Healio 2008 article (headline cover; click for the hosted PDF — not a screenshot of the whole piece), the June 2012 JAAOS review (cover; click for the hosted PDF) with its size, housing, radiograph, CardioMEMS, and Stryker-disclosure faces, the 2024 NIH smart-shoulder grant, D’Lima’s STSI faculty page, and STSI’s own wireless-monitoring sentence. They sit here because they are the campus copy that names smart orthopedic implants next to hip prostheses. Exclusive research tools is a limit. A fingertip chip is scale, not his card. Figure 3 is a shoulder. Figure 4 is a knee radiograph with the coil labeled. A 2024 shoulder prototype is not a 2015 Trident.
Cover is the headline and dek of the 1 June 2008 Orthopedics Today survey — not a screenshot of the whole article. Click opens the hosted PDF. Seven years before the 9 October 2015 right THA. D’Lima, as printed: to be a truly smart implant it has to remotely turn on and off, collect data, and be reprogrammed. He envisions sensors in a hip prosthesis that would indicate it is close to dislocating. Then the limit in the same article: “it is not at the point where it can communicate with the patient. We need lab equipment.” Parvizi (Rothman, not Scripps): vibration around prostheses could signal loosening; a microchip could alert patient or surgeon. Bergmann: seven instrumented hip patients, 32 smart implants, OrthoLoad.com — doubtful commercial products soon. Colwell presented four-patient knee-force data. Photo is a Theken eDisc, not a hip. Walker is not named. Healio.
Five years before the 9 October 2015 right THA. University of Porto, Clara Frias, INEGI. A network of capsules, sensors and actuators on a hip implant. The doctor activates it through a computer connected to a Bluetooth device. Actuators to stimulate bone growth, wirelessly controlled. Cell studies, then animals, “very encouraging results.” Sit it next to Healio 2008. The technology class is in print before 2015. This is not a Scripps paper, and it is not his Trident. ScienceDaily.
Cover is journal page 383. The hosted PDF is the article. June 2012, three years before the 9 October 2015 right THA. Ledet, D’Lima, Westerhoff, Szivek, Wachs, Bergmann. D’Lima’s line: Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla. As printed: wireless passive sensors can be incorporated with minimal or no modification to the host implant; orthopaedic smart implants have been used exclusively as research tools; IRB required before implantation; size reduced to under 10 millimeters; electronics housed in the implant. Figure 2: bulky battery-powered telemetry, then a passively powered chip on a fingertip. Figure 3: an instrumented total shoulder, electronics in the internal cavity — a shoulder, not a hip. Figure 4: a postoperative AP radiograph of SCORE’s instrumented tibia; strain gauge, microprocessor, coil, and antenna labeled on the film. Figure 4 is why the published class is not treated here as invisible on CT or x-ray. Figure 6 is CardioMEMS, cardiac. Disclosures: D’Lima unpaid consultant to Stryker, Zimmer, and Orthocyte; research support from Stryker. Paid consultant to MAKO Surgical; Stryker announced the MAKO acquisition in 2013, after this paper. Walker is not named. DOI 10.5435/JAAOS-20-06-383.
Scripps’ own copy, 5 December 2024: a rechargeable Wi-Fi- and sensor-equipped shoulder at SCORE; D’Lima co-lead; $317,000 NIH grant; related copy recites Colwell’s 2004 electronic knee. First-in-human work on that program is still described as years away. A 2024–25 shoulder prototype is not a 2015 Trident. Scripps — NIH smart shoulder.
A remote-instrumentation claim is easy to dismiss unless the surgeon, the campus lab, and the device neighborhood can even be named. They can. Walker operated. By 25 January 2017 he is named president of the physician group. Colwell and D’Lima published with him on hips and remained on SCORE copy during that presidency. SCORE ran an electronic knee. D’Lima described a hip-sensor vision in 2008 and, in 2012, co-authored a JAAOS review that still called orthopaedic smart implants exclusive research tools. Staff lists still name conventional Stryker Trident / Secur-Fit / Biolox. Colwell’s name on a Trident investigator list, and his 2014 Stryker research-support disclosure on a ceramic-liner paper that used that same product family, are manufacturer and author-line facts, not electronics in the shell. The 2015 packet is still a converted historical result generated 23 April 2025. Capability on campus is not a finding these two stems collected data. Walker’s 2025 sentences still say standard Stryker, no chips. Both stay on the table.
The 2015 converted packet · What published science says · The electronic knee on this campus · The Field · People
5 · Campus device
After the surgeon’s public bio, the next check is what this campus actually printed about instrumented joints. SCORE’s device is a knee. The first patient is named. By 2011 Scripps had printed four testers. A removable coil around the knee turns the 2004 implant on. A 2022 television segment about a knee that talks to a phone is a different product, a different manufacturer, a different decade.
Scripps news: Clifford W. Colwell Jr., director of SCORE, implanted the first electronic knee at Scripps Green. Jerry Ward, a retired aerospace engineer, was selected. He had already received a total hip replacement and a total knee on the other side. The page describes him as eager to contribute. DePuy Orthopaedics manufactured it after more than thirteen years; MicroStrain supplied wireless microsensors. scripps.org/2781. The Fall 2004 Foundation magazine on this shelf prints the implant date as 27 February and quotes Ward: “I guess I’m kind of like a lab rat.” That sentence is his, about a named, consented research knee. It is not a sentence about this patient.
Same 2004 page, as printed: a removable coil fits around the knee and externally activates the system, then transmits data into a computer. Four transducer posts. Loads in pounds. Nearby reader. Wired, 19 March 2004, separately: power is also external; an ethics committee found potential to medical knowledge while not putting Ward at extra risk; because it was a research device, no FDA review was required. Sit that architecture next to Vickers 2021 — Bluetooth had not been used in an instrumented hip — and next to the 2022 commercial knee that uses a nightstand hub. Three different devices.
D’Lima selected for the Nicolas Andry Award. As printed: at the forefront of e-knee research for more than 15 years; Colwell implanted the first at Scripps Green in 2004; since 2004, three additional patients have received e-knees. Next-generation goal: a “smart knee” that can monitor wear, detect infection, and sound an alarm. Quote the goal as a goal. scripps.org/3933. A 22 September 2010 NIH grant of $660,000 is a modeling collaboration dated a year earlier — not the 2011 patient teaser.
Live page subtitle: Scripps is Transforming Orthopedic Medicine. As printed: Donald McDonald is one of only four people in the world to test the electronic knee. Photo: Colwell and D’Lima. The article body is a short teaser. Longer lines about remotely powering a chip, collecting activity data, and customizing implants to age and lifestyle are not on this URL. Those wait for a longer 2011 video or magazine still. scripps.org/4074. Four named knee-research patients are not a finding these two hips were a fifth.
Colwell’s letterhead bio, already on this door: Director of the Lower Extremity Reconstruction Fellowship Program initiated in 1984. Walker’s Scripps bio: for over 30 years a faculty member guiding young orthopedists through post-residency fellowships focused on joint replacement. Current SCMG leadership lists William Bugbee, MD, as Program Director, Lower Extremity Reconstruction Fellowship. Fall 2004, Scripps Health Foundation update, as printed: “The fellowship, under the joint direction of Richard Walker, M.D., and Clifford W. Colwell, Jr., M.D., is an intensive, year-long training program designed to maximize surgical expertise in total joint replacement.” They ran a program together. The magazine does not print Walker as Colwell’s supervisor.
The Fall 2004 magazine already on this shelf treats the Padres as Sports Medicine patients. Page 2 names Jan Fronek, Steve Copp, and Heinz Heinecke on Phil Nevin’s July 2004 cartilage surgery. Walker and Colwell are on that issue’s fellowship paragraph, not as the named Padres surgeons. 14 February 2007: Scripps Clinic extends its agreement as the Padres’ official health-care provider through 2009. The relationship began in 1981. Head team physician on that page: Jan Fronek, 15 years, supported by Hoenecke, Keefe, and Copp. Speaker: Larry Harrison, CEO of Scripps Clinic. Walker and Colwell are not on that staff list. Their Padres years stay on their bios — Walker over 15 years including 1984 and 1998; Colwell 15 on one face and about 25 on a later foundation page. Those pages do not make Walker president or CEO of Scripps in 2004, 2007, or 2011. SCMG presidency is dated from 25 January 2017. A later family-fundraising overlap is not this still.
CBS Philadelphia, 2 December 2022, Stephanie Stahl. Donna Cordero has a sensor-equipped knee. Movement data goes to a personal base station, then to the phone and the doctor’s office. As printed: it does not have a GPS; it only measures knee movements; a battery lasts 10 years, then transmission stops. That is the commercial class Zimmer Biomet and Canary Medical announced on 30 August 2021 as Persona IQ — FDA De Novo for a smart tibial extension in total knee replacement. Not SCORE. Not Scripps Green. Not a hip. Not 2015. Not a finding that 2023 laboratory blood was implant telemetry. A nightstand hub is why someone already looking at radios would stop. It is not his implant card.
Instrumented knees on this campus are real, named, and consented on public paper. A commercial phone-linked knee exists from 2021 with a hub on the nightstand. Neither sentence is a finding that a 2015 or 2017 Stryker hip collected data without consent. Staff lists still name conventional Trident / Secur-Fit / Biolox. Walker’s 2025 sentences still say standard Stryker, no chips. Vickers 2021 still prints that Bluetooth had not been used in an instrumented hip. Capability on campus is why the question stays open. It is not the hardware verdict.
Who is Richard Walker · What published science says · The Field
Same manufacturer · different devices
Staff lists on this door name conventional Trident PSL HA / Secur-Fit / Biolox. That is not the product family in the manufacturer’s largest hip settlements. On 22 May 2017 DrugWatch printed a second Rejuvenate Modular-Neck and ABG II Modular-Neck program, revision before 19 December 2016, estimated $2.0 to $2.2 billion globally after insurance. The first program, announced around 3 November 2014, was the low end of a probable loss of about $1.43 billion for those same modular-neck stems, recalled in 2012 for corrosion and metallosis. Keep the names. A settlement about Rejuvenate and ABG II is not a finding about these two cups.
Other Stryker paper is still other paper. On 8 December 2014 OtisMed and CEO Charlie Chi pleaded guilty over FDA-rejected knee cutting guides and more than $80 million in criminal and civil liability — a knee guide, acquired in 2009, not a hip stem. A 28 October 2009 indictment charged Stryker Biotech and named executives over OP-1 Implant / OP-1 Putty. The outcome that has to sit next to that headline: on 18 January 2012 Stryker Biotech pleaded to one misdemeanor misbranding, paid a $15 million fine, and thirteen felonies were dismissed; charges against former president Mark Philip were dismissed days later. An indictment is not a standing conviction.
Books and records, twice. On 24 October 2013 the SEC charged Stryker with FCPA books-and-records failures covering subsidiaries in Argentina, Greece, Mexico, Poland, and Romania — about $2.2 million in illicit payments, more than $13.2 million to settle. On 28 September 2018 the SEC charged the company a second time, a $7.8 million penalty, India, China, and Kuwait. Marc P. Berger’s sentence is on the still. In 2007 Stryker Orthopedics took a Non-Prosecution Agreement in the industry consulting-payment investigation and paid no fine on that NPA. A 26 March 2008 class-action complaint alleged phony consulting agreements — a complaint, not a verdict. On 4 May 2023 the company disclosed an investigation into potential FCPA issues in an unnamed foreign country. An investigation is not a finding. None of this is a finding that Walker took a kickback, and none of it is a finding that off-label electronics sat in these two stems. It is why a manufacturer-oversight question is not a joke.
5 · Public policy · nine months before the right THA
On 30 January 2015 the White House issued a fact sheet for President Obama’s Precision Medicine Initiative, launched with a $215 million investment in the 2016 Budget. The remarks that morning, in the East Room, include the transfusion comparison: you can match a blood transfusion to a blood type; what if matching a cancer cure to our genetic code was just as easy, just as standard — delivering the right treatments, at the right time, every time to the right person. The same remarks describe working with NIH to create a research group of one million volunteers. The video of those remarks sits on the Obama White House YouTube channel. That is public policy about the value of genetic and clinical data. It is not a finding that these two operations collected it, and it is not a price on anyone’s file.