Johns Hopkins medical unit rarely finds black lung, helping coal industry defeat miners' claims

Across Laurel Creek and down a dirt road in this sleepy valley town is the modest white house where Steve Day grew up. For more than 33 years, it was where he recuperated between shifts underground, mining the rich seams of the central Appalachian coalfields and doing his part to help make Peabody Energy Corp. the nation?s most productive coal company. Now, it?s where he spends most days and nights in a recliner, inhaling oxygen from a tank, slowly suffocating to death. More than a half-dozen doctors who have seen the X-ray and CT images of his chest agree he has the most severe form of black lung disease.