Woman Who Was Set Ablaze During Her C-Section Fails to Win a Lawsuit Against her Obstetrician

A woman named Kira Reed whose abdomen fucking caught fire during a c-section two years ago failed to win a negligence suit against her obstetrician after a jury in Onodaga County (that would be in New York) state Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Dr. Stephen Brown was not actually responsible for prepping the surgery.

Setting aside, for a brief moment, the very cool fact that Reed’s (healthy) daughter can now boast a superhero’s origin story — “I was born in a ball of flame” — Reed, a business professor at Syracuse University, suffered a painful third-degree burn on her abdomen that a plastic surgeon later described as being similar to burns he’d seen on napalm victims. An antiseptic skin preparation called DuraPrep (which now comes with an immolation warning because hospitals aren’t quite scary enough) sparked the fire on Reed’s stomach, and she subsequently filed a medical malpractice suit against both Brown and Crouse Hospital (Reed did not, however, sue DuraPrep’s maker, 3M Company, because it had issued the fire warning about a month before her surgery).