Medical Madness Christmas 2003
01 Dec 2003
It’s often said that ‘Lunatics are in charge of the asylum". Now I’m convinced they’re also in charge of medical care. This holiday season I wish I had a good medical news for readers. But there are times when I wonder how politicians, lawyers and medical ethicists can be so void of common sense.
Case # 1 Horacio Alberto Reyes-Camarena, a convicted murderer, is currently on Oregon’s death row. His crime? He’s convicted of stabbing an 18 year old girl to death and leaving her older sister scarred for life. So when will he go to the great beyond?
Not soon. Appeals by lawyers against the death penalty can take up to 10 years in Oregon. In the meantime Reyes-Camarena has developed kidney failure and is receiving renal dialysis, costing taxpayers $120,000 a year.
Now, a doctor has ruled that he deserves a renal transplant which will cost $100,000 to keep him alive until his execution! And Reyes-Camarean will agree to the surgery if a kidney is found. Even though there’s a waiting list for kidney transplants.
Such decisions come at a time when budget cuts in Oregon have made it impossible to provide health and education for all. No surprise that the scenario has triggered public outrage.
I’ve also noticed on occasion that taxicab drivers and others in contact with the public have more common sense than many so-called intellectuals. For instance, a professor of health, law and policy at the University of Toronto says that prisoners are human beings with full entitlement to health care. Sorry, but I beg to disagree that killing an 18 year old entitles one to "full entitlement". A entitlement suggests a benefit that has been earned. Murder, doesn’t rate.
Consider the irony and injustice. This murderer will live while 17 people die every day in the U.S. waiting for a kidney transplant. Something is wrong with ivory-tower thinking when murderers in prison receive preferred care.
Patricia Backlar who served on the National Bioethics Advisory Board in the Clinton administration agrees that criminals should not receive better care than others. But she believes the state is on a "slippery slope" if it decides who should or should not receive a kidney based on such things as criminal history.
But why shouldn’t criminal history be a factor when there are insufficient kidneys for all who need one. Surely, if we have just one kidney and one patient is a law-abiding citizen , the other a murderer, doesn’t good sense dictate who gets it? But it appears that ivory-towered Ethics 101 thinks differently.
Case # 2 The lunatics are not all in North America. In the past, Australian doctors who were suspicious that patients, were going from one physician to another for narcotics, could make a quick call to the Health Insurance Commission to see if they were shopping illegally for drugs. Recent legislation eliminated this service all in the name of privacy.
Why in the name of heaven do legislators continue to pass legislation that protects wrong-doers in the name of Freedom and Privacy? Taxicab drivers know better.
Case # 3 It’s common knowledge that drug use is rampant in our prisons and those of other countries. A report on drug abuse in the European Union claims that over 50 per cent of those entering the jail system are drug users and many continue to acquire drugs in prison.
According to this study, injecting rates in jail vary between 6 to 69 per cent and that 80 per cent of those who inject drugs in Irish jails have hepatitis C. In addition, many drug users have tuberculosis and/or are infected with HIV.
This poses a future health problem of immense proportions. Inmates eventually return to society to further spread disease. Surely there must be ways to stop drug use in prison. If not there, then where?
My apologies to end this year on such a dismal note. But old-fashioned common sense seems to be on a downhill course and these decisions appear to me to be ethically and medically wrong.
Nevertheless, may I wish readers a happy holiday season and a healthy 2004.
