Personal Physician

There is a doctor out there by the name of Marc Siegel. This notable, an associate Prof. at NYU is apparently offended. Why? Because it has been pointed out that there are some patently mercenary buggers in his profession, more interested in making money than in attending to the health and well-being of patients. Furthermore this person, seemingly specially vulnerable to offence, takes exception, seemingly, at the idea that he may be called upon to discuss the end of life with a patient.

Let me cut to the chase. This particular demagogue is determined to combine his professional credentials with a patently nonsense emotive plea in order to sway persons susceptible to such rubbish. He even makes a plea to the theologian Maimonides, bolstering his scarcely concealed superstition and obviously partisan politics with the assumed authority of religion. He cites anecdotes regarding humane treatment of poor and destitute patients in a purely charitable fashion by someone else as if this somehow repudiates the call for efforts to fix what is broken; "Look at this example of something laudable happening! Why do we need to do anything about anything else, which I am not willing to here discuss, when this particular instance runs totally counter to the thousands of demonstrated examples you're citing?"

However, allow me to demonstrate the integrity of proper medical science: here we have a patient, presenting an assortment of septic, oozing sores from which they bleed without clotting, delirious from septicemia and infested with a multitude of parasites but they are able to walk, and talk and just about two thirds of their tissue is still quite healthy. Shall we attempt to make them well, Doctor, or shall we not because, after all, they are still in the majority sound? Or shall we observe the patient as a whole? That is the core of the question; do we settle for letting the mostly functional system go on as it is or do we try to cure what ails it?

The good Doctor specifically refrains from discussing, "what form any reform should take" and here I cannot help but remind the gentleman of the adage about treating the symptom, since he seems more interested in defending his personal ethics, which nobody is attacking; only a genuine idiot would assume that mercenary or litigious behavior by the extreme minority is held to apply generally. Although one my wonder about guilty consciences. Additionally he seems greatly disturbed by the idea that he may have to face the reality of patients dying.

"My principles run contrary to the idea of meeting with a 65-year-old to discuss specific ways I may withdraw care," sounds noble, but the point it references is far more so; human beings grow old and eventually our bodies and thus our lives fail. Would the good Doctor deny useful information to his patients simply because it makes him uncomfortable? Given his invocation of the "death panel" tripe, even to use it as a negative argument, seems to indicate that very thing. How any physician could make it through med school without grasping this fact of life should consider a refresher course. Life ends sirrah, and you can't treat death; it has been suggested (though I forget the source) that we look to the late Senator Kennedy for inspiration. Death is a part of life; we'd be better served if we focused on living through it instead of trying to escape it. Those who've tried escaping life have generally not been either successful or happy.

In any case, I've already wasted too much time on this. The gist is that this Marc Siegel is taking personally something that is not aimed at his person. Bypassing further digression, I'll make the most important and revealing point: Change is hard and in the process something that has been ceases to be, in other words it dies. I suspect the Doctor should re-familiarize himself with the five stages and recall the old adage, "Physician, heal thyself."

Neville Chamberlain is Alive and Well

Spare me a moment to indulge in a bit of growling in the general direction of one Oliver Thomas for his recent contribution to the The Forum page of USA Today, "Is Secularism Saving Marriage?" (Monday, September 14, 2009)

My views and opinions on ecclesiastics should, by this point, be well known to any person who has taken the time to familiarize themselves with my writing. Furthermore, I dislike finding myself in the position of sending negativity in the direction of person who might otherwise consider themselves to be allies...or at least sympathetic to certain of my opinions. However, I can't allow myself to agree that non-antagonistic faith-heads are not also part of our collective social malfunction right alongside their more vehement and violent Brethren.

O. Thomas's pondering about marriage and his conclusions (such as they are) while not immediately offensive still carry the distinct tenor and odor of condescension that generally raises my hackles. I am prepared to let pass unchallenged his general mystification that secularism does not lead to the "other half" of society getting divorced; I can easily grasp that recognizing that false conclusions follow logically from false premises isn't easy for someone who assumes their premises are inerrant to begin with. What irks me is firstly his assertion that religious institutions should be heeded because they "have constructive things to teach us" about marriage. The breezy citing of the X-ian admonishment against adultery grates however; can he honestly expect any intelligent person to think that a prohibition against pursuing another person's mate is somehow unique to religion? Or is it simply that he supposes the rest of us are too stupid to understand, instinctively, that such behavior would be disruptive, to say the least?

Less definite but more important is the generally magnanimous tone of the article; how generous and conciliatory of him, to acknowledge that it could be possible that good and socially proper behavior might follow from so wayward a source as human behavior which is, in his own confessed opinion, inherently sinful. No doubt he feels both quite clever for seeing such connection and inclusive for expressing it, openly, and even endorsing the way this contributes to the religious argument.

I admit freely that Mr. Thomas most probably means well. It does not escape me that I may very probably be allowing my own bias to color my perception. I have history on my side however and I defy anyone to demonstrate that my growling and pacing is unjustified.