Eye on Life

DA's office coverup death in Cape Cod Hospital

2010-07-10T00:52:00.002-04:00

In searching for more information on the homicide of Daniel J. Ryan at Cape Cod Hospital, I found this very interesting piece. The comments by readers are most enlightening.

Cape Cod Hospital death ruled homicide

2010-07-10T00:36:00.002-04:00

Cape hospital death ruled homicide | CapeCodOnline.com

What is the status of this case? As a long time resident of Cape Cod, I want to know.

Choosing healthy foods now called a mental disorder

2010-06-30T12:50:00.002-04:00

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

In its never-ending attempt to fabricate "mental disorders" out of every human activity, the psychiatric industry is now pushing the most ridiculous disease they've invented yet: Healthy eating disorder.

This is no joke: If you focus on eating healthy foods, you're "mentally diseased" and probably need some sort of chemical treatment involving powerful psychotropic drugs. The Guardian newspaper reports, "Fixation with healthy eating can be sign of serious psychological disorder" and goes on to claim this "disease" is called orthorexia nervosa -- which is basically just Latin for "nervous about correct eating."

But they can't just called it "nervous healthy eating disorder" because that doesn't sound like they know what they're talking about. So they translate it into Latin where it sounds smart (even though it isn't). That's where most disease names come from: Doctors just describe the symptoms they see with a name like osteoporosis (which means "bones with holes in them").

Getting back to this fabricated "orthorexia" disease, the Guardian goes on to report, "Orthorexics commonly have rigid rules around eating. Refusing to touch sugar, salt, caffeine, alcohol, wheat, gluten, yeast, soya, corn and dairy foods is just the start of their diet restrictions. Any foods that have come into contact with pesticides, herbicides or contain artificial additives are also out."

Wait a second. So attempting to avoid chemicals, dairy, soy and sugar now makes you a mental health patient? Yep. According to these experts. If you actually take special care to avoid pesticides, herbicides and genetically modified ingredients like soy and sugar, there's something wrong with you.

But did you notice that eating junk food is assumed to be "normal?" If you eat processed junk foods laced with synthetic chemicals, that's okay with them. The mental patients are the ones who choose organic, natural foods, apparently.

What is "normal" when it comes to foods?
I told you this was coming. Years ago, I warned NaturalNews readers that an attempt might soon be under way to outlaw broccoli because of its anti-cancer phytonutrients. This mental health assault on health-conscious consumers is part of that agenda. It's an effort to marginalize healthy eaters by declaring them to be mentally unstable and therefore justify carting them off to mental institutions where they will be injected with psychiatric drugs and fed institutional food that's all processed, dead and full of toxic chemicals.

The Guardian even goes to the ridiculous extreme of saying, "The obsession about which foods are "good" and which are "bad" means orthorexics can end up malnourished."

Follow the non-logic on this, if you can: Eating "good" foods will cause malnutrition! Eating bad foods, I suppose, is assumed to provide all the nutrients you need. That's about as crazy a statement on nutrition as I've ever read. No wonder people are so diseased today: The mainstream media is telling them that eating health food is a mental disorder that will cause malnutrition!

Shut up and swallow your Soylent Green
It's just like I reported years ago: You're not supposed to question your food, folks. Sit down, shut up, dig in and chow down. Stop thinking about what you're eating and just do what you're told by the mainstream media and its processed food advertisers. Questioning the health properties of your junk food is a mental disorder, didn't you know? And if you "obsess" over foods (by doing such things as reading the ingredients labels, for example), then you're weird. Maybe even sick.

That's the message they're broadcasting now. Junk food eaters are "normal" and "sane" and "nourished." But health food eaters are diseased, abnormal and malnourished.

But why, you ask, would they attack healthy eaters? People like Dr. Gabriel Cousens can tell you why: Because increased mental and spiritual awareness is only possible while on a diet of living, natural foods.

Eating junk foods keeps you dumbed down and easy to control, you see. It literally messes with your mind, numbing your senses with MSG, aspartame and yeast extract. People who subsist on junk foods are docile and quickly lose the ability to think for themselves. They go along with whatever they're told by the TV or those in apparent positions of authority, never questioning their actions or what's really happening in the world around them.

In contrast to that, people who eat health-enhancing natural foods -- with all the medicinal nutrients still intact -- begin to awaken their minds and spirits. Over time, they begin to question the reality around them and they pursue more enlightened explorations of topics like community, nature, ethics, philosophy and the big picture of things that are happening in the world. They become "aware" and can start to see the very fabric of the Matrix, so to speak.

This, of course, is a huge danger to those who run our consumption-based society because consumption depends on ignorance combined with suggestibility. For people to keep blindly buying foods, medicines, health insurance and consumer goods, they need to have their higher brain functions switched off. Processed junk foods laced with toxic chemicals just happens to achieve that rather nicely. Why do you think dead, processed foods remain the default meals in public schools, hospitals and prisons? It's because dead foods turn off higher levels of awareness and keep people focused on whatever distractions you can feed their brains: Television, violence, fear, sports, sex and so on.

But living as a zombie is, in one way quite "normal" in society today because so many people are doing it. But that doesn't make it normal in my book: The real "normal" is an empowered, healthy, awakened person nourished with living foods and operating as a sovereign citizen in a free world. Eating living foods is like taking the red pill because over time it opens up a whole new perspective on the fabric of reality. It sets you free to think for yourself.

But eating processed junk foods is like taking the blue pill because it keeps you trapped in a fabricated reality where your life experiences are fabricated by consumer product companies who hijack your senses with designer chemicals (like MSG) that fool your brain into thinking you're eating real food.

If you want to be alive, aware and in control of your own life, eat more healthy living foods. But don't expect to be popular with mainstream mental health "experts" or dieticians -- they're all being programmed to consider you to be "crazy" because you don't follow their mainstream diets of dead foods laced with synthetic chemicals.

But you and I know the truth here: We are the normal ones. The junk food eaters are the real mental patients, and the only way to wake them up to the real world is to start feeding them living foods.

Some people are ready to take the red pill, and others aren't. All you can do is show them the door. They must open it themselves.

In the mean time, try to avoid the mental health agents who are trying to label you as having a mental disorder just because you pay attention to what you put in your body. There's nothing wrong with avoiding sugar, soy, MSG, aspartame, HFCS and other toxic chemicals in the food supply. In fact, your very life depends on it.

Death with dignity

2010-06-07T21:22:00.001-04:00

By Jerry Dincin

Baltimore physician Dr. Larry Egbert is currently awaiting trial in both Arizona and Georgia, accused of assisted suicide.

The charges are unfounded. Dr. Egbert, a former Johns Hopkins professor, simply counseled patients with incurable diseases about their options as the end of their lives drew near. By talking to these folks, Dr. Egbert was fulfilling his responsibility as a medical professional.

To understand why, consider the plight of those suffering from Alzheimer's. The afflicted ? including 86,000 people in Maryland ? can expect a slow, painful descent into advanced dementia.

The moderate memory loss that marks the onset in patients will, over the years, deteriorate into inability to recognize close family members, dress themselves or remember significant experiences. Friends and family who are forced to witness their fall into oblivion suffer indescribably.

Given this bleak outlook, it's easy to see why some Alzheimer's patients choose to hasten their own death. It's also easy to see why Dr. Egbert was determined to help patients suffering from conditions like Alzheimer's and Lou Gehrig's disease make this difficult decision.

It is time for the world to recognize the right and the rationality for mentally competent adults in such circumstances to take their own lives.

As a practicing psychologist for 30 years, I have frequently worked to prevent mentally ill patients from ending their lives. But such a decision by a capable person stricken with unrelenting and intractable illness is a logical means of sparing the victim and others extraordinary misery and suffering.

Many find allowing people to take their lives morally reprehensible. In the abstract, the issue makes for interesting ethical discussions. When we become specific, though, the need for action becomes more visible: That's your mother screaming in that bed, dealing every day with some terrible disease like Lou Gehrig's. She can look forward to a body that can't move, speak or swallow food, a life of total dependency on others for every act of maintenance.

We respect and support the choice of anyone with a disease such as Lou Gehrig's to continue enduring these conditions, as Stephen Hawking, the 68-year-old astrophysicist, does, continuing to enrich science from his wheelchair. But heroism has many forms, and those who know their limits, who can face death in the eye and who choose not to stay alive via respirator and 24/7 care, are no less heroic.

Their form of courage should be honored without judgment.

Consider the 42,000 Americans diagnosed in 2009 with pancreatic cancer, a disease that is usually inoperable and accompanied by crippling abdominal and back pain until the end. All those patients will know is a future of intense agony followed by death. Some "life."

An aging nation means that these terrible diseases will become more common, and protecting the right to die with dignity, more urgent. For example, 5.3 million Americans are living today with Alzheimer's. By 2050, that number will be 16 million.

In a country where there isn't enough good health care for those who want to live, doesn't it seem insane to take those who desperately want to die and force them to stay alive against their wishes?

Who are those who have the heart to consign these people to a living hell? If the patient were their mother, would they? Do we not have a moral obligation to spare these patients and their families unspeakable torment?

We as a society do indeed have that power, and it is time we gathered in numbers and exercised it. That's where my organization, Final Exit Network, comes in. We provide information and counsel to patients who approach us seeking to deliver themselves from torture and make informed choices. The impetus comes from within them; we do not "encourage" anyone. We go to great lengths to ensure that the person is capable of choosing rationally.

What we do is wholly different from physician-assisted suicide, since we never supply any equipment or administer any lethal chemicals. We are careful to keep our efforts within the law. That, however, has not prevented some local governments, notably Georgia and Arizona, from persecuting many of my colleagues ? including our former medical director, Dr. Egbert.

Ending a life of unbearable pain and indignity is a basic human right. We at Final Exit Network provide compassion in the form of information and empathy, and we are proud of our work.

We hope that those antagonists who insist on making people suffer a few more days, weeks, or even years, will never themselves need to endure the horrors that they now force others to experience.
~~~~~~~~~~

Jerry Dincin is president of Final Exit Network and a retired psychologist with more than 30 years of clinical experience. Mr. Dincin may be reached at info@finalexitnetwork.org.

Novartis Fined $250 Million in Sex Discrimination Suit

2010-05-20T10:07:00.003-04:00

By REUTERS
Published: May 19, 2010

The drug maker Novartis must pay $250 million in punitive damages for discriminating against thousands of female sales representatives over pay, promotion and pregnancy, a federal jury ruled on Wednesday.

The decision was announced federal court in Manhattan by a jury of five women and four men who ruled Monday that the company’s United States division, the Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation, engaged in a pattern of discrimination against women.

The $250 million in punitive damages is 2.6 percent of the company’s $9.5 billion 2009 revenue. The women had sought from $190 million to $285 million.

In the first part of its ruling, the jury awarded $3.3 million in compensatory damages to 12 of the women who testified.

Novartis, which for the last 10 years has been declared one of the 100 best companies by Working Mother magazine, showed a pattern of discrimination against women employees from 2002 through 2007, the jury found after a five-week trial and four days of deliberation.

The award to the 12 opens the door for 5,588 others who can also apply for compensatory damages. The damages will likely be determined on an individual basis by a court-appointed special master, said Katherine Kimpel, a lawyer for the plaintiffs.

Judge Colleen McMahon of United States District Court will determine a lump sum for back pay, lost benefits and adjusted wages that will be distributed to plaintiffs, lawyers said. They said they were seeking $37 million to cover back pay.

Novartis said after the verdict was returned on Monday that it would appeal.

Carol Evans, president of Working Mother Media, said in a statement Wednesday that the lawsuit had not barred Novartis from repeatedly winning its 100 best companies award because the magazine had a different role than the court system.

“We are disappointed that Novartis has engaged in discriminatory practices against women and mothers,” Ms. Evans added. “We applaud the court system for effectively finding redress for this discrimination.”

She said the magazine’s award was based on programs that Novartis had in place to support working mothers, like flextime, telecommuting and paid maternity leave.

“We hope that Novartis will not appeal the ruling against them and instead turn their efforts to making sure that the company has no further incidences of discrimination,” Ms. Evans said.

Thinking Outside the Pillbox? Scary implications.

2010-04-08T16:26:00.000-04:00

This New England Journal of Medicine article has scary implications limiting personal freedom for everyone. This plan would attempt to mandate drug compliance, extend availability of your electronic health records to related industries such as pharmacies, follow-up by nurses for adherence, and the use of Health Care Courts, denying your access to due process. Any HCP in the system can diagnose you. For example: "Finally, there needs to be greater use of proven screening andassessment tools to identify and target the patients who areat the greatest risk for nonadherence. Treatment guidelinesfor chronic conditions, for instance, should recommend screeningfor depression, which can be an indicator of poor adherence."

Thinking Outside the Pillbox — Medication Adherence as a Priority for Health Care Reform
As many as half of all patients do not adhere faithfully to their prescription-medication requirements, and the result is more than $100 billion spent each year on avoidable hospitalizations. David Cutler and Wendy Everett discuss how to improve medication adherence.

April 7, 2010 (DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp1002305)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thinking Outside the Pillbox —Medication Adherence as a Priority for Health Care Reform

Posted by NEJM • April 7th, 2010 • Printer-friendly

David M. Cutler, Ph.D., and Wendy Everett, Sc.D.

Poor adherence to treatment regimens has long been recognizedas a substantial roadblock to achieving better outcomes forpatients. Data show that as many as half of all patients donot adhere faithfully to their prescription-medication regimens— and the result is more than $100 billion spent eachyear on avoidable hospitalizations.¹ Nonadherence to medicationregimens also affects the quality and length of life; for example,it has been estimated that better adherence to antihypertensivetreatment alone could prevent 89,000 premature deaths in theUnited States annually.²

What is less clear is why adherence to the 3.8 billion prescriptionswritten every year is so poor. Out-of-pocket costs for medicationclearly affect adherence; people use more drugs when the pricesof the drugs are lower. But even if drugs were free, nonadherencewould persist: one recent study showed that even among patientswho have health plans with no cost sharing for medications,rates of nonadherence were nearly 40%.³

Lack of coordination of care is another major factor. Thereis much more that could be done at the time a physician prescribesa medication to optimize and tailor regimens for individualpatients. For patients with coexisting conditions who take multiplemedications prescribed by multiple physicians, there is a vitalneed to reconcile the prescribed regimen with what a patientis actually taking and to understand why there is a differencebetween the two. But optimizing and reconciling medicationsrequire substantial investments of time by a skilled healthcare practitioner, as well as electronic data sharing amongpractitioners — neither of which is widely available intoday’s model of health care delivery.

There are also numerous factors that affect adherence at theindividual level, including lifestyle, psychological issues,health literacy, support systems, and side effects of medications.Indeed, patients’ personal attributes probably have the strongestinfluence on adherence. Engaging and supporting patients inimproving their adherence are critical to improving health outcomes.In today’s system, however, there are neither the incentivesnor the support systems to do so.

Taken together, these findings suggest that improved adherencewill require changes in health care delivery, particularly inthe area of primary care, along with continued investment ininformation-technology systems and new health plan designs thatfocus on achieving improved health outcomes. Fortunately, thereare a number of real-world examples that teach important lessonsabout how to improve medication adherence. For instance, twowell-known integrated health care delivery systems, GeisingerHealth System and Group Health Cooperative, have made adherencea priority and have begun to tackle the problem through multidimensionalapproaches. The Community Care of North Carolina program hasa similar objective (see Current Integrated Approaches to PromotingAdherence and Their Effects). And studies point to improvedadherence and outcomes among patients with particular conditions,such as HIV infection, AIDS, and heart failure. The successstories are there, though they are still scattered.

All these programs leverage information technology and patient-leveldata. They focus on understanding the patients’ attributes andtailoring interventions to those attributes. In addition, theyoffer follow-up and patient support provided by health careprofessionals who are trained and empowered to work closelywith patients to improve adherence.

We believe that there are four lessons to be learned from thesuccesses in the field. First, measures for improving adherencemust address financial barriers, especially the copayments thatpatients must make for medications. Given the growing evidenceshowing a strong link between reducing copayments for medicationsfor chronic conditions and improving adherence, the movementby many large employers toward value-based insurance design(tailoring cost sharing to the value of the service provided)is an excellent first step. But more can be done. For example,patients could be given financial incentives or other rewardsfor appropriate adherence to medication regimens. Research showsthat the more frequent the reward, the better; thus, smalleramounts provided regularly are likely to be more effective thanbigger amounts provided sporadically.

Second, data and data infrastructure that support interventionsto boost adherence need to be a high priority in the country’snew investment in health information technology (HIT) and electronichealth records. The guidelines promulgated by the Obama administrationfor “meaningful use” of HIT are promising. But the country’sHIT strategy should not only recommend the incorporation ofaccurate medication data (e.g., medication histories and ratesof filling and refilling of prescriptions) into electronic medicalrecords but also encourage data sharing across care providersand care settings, including physicians’ offices, hospitals,pharmacies, home health care agencies, and others.

Third, payment reform will be essential. Shifting from a fee-for-servicemodel to payment systems that reward care providers for betterpatient outcomes and encourage coordination of care is criticalto providing the incentives and investments that are requiredfor improving adherence. Recent shifts to paying for medicalhomes and care transitions are trends that should support improvedadherence. But to ensure that adherence actually improves, goalsfor medication adherence should be explicitly written into theperformance measures for medical homes, accountable care organizations,and care transition teams. In the short run, efforts aimed atincreasing adherence to medication regimens will require fundsto be allocated up front. Over time, there should be savings.Thus, the structure of reimbursement must create an inducementfor investment (typically by providers) that is financed bythe groups that will save (usually insurers).

Finally, there needs to be greater use of proven screening andassessment tools to identify and target the patients who areat the greatest risk for nonadherence. Treatment guidelinesfor chronic conditions, for instance, should recommend screeningfor depression, which can be an indicator of poor adherence.In addition, assessment tools can broadly predict a patient’sproclivity to adhere to treatment,⁴ which is valuable informationfor providers to use in encouraging adherence both at the pointof prescribing and in follow-up contacts with patients.

Once the right patients are targeted, there is still a lot tolearn about tailoring adherence interventions to individualpatients. Although we know about many common features of adherenceprograms, it is more difficult to determine the best possiblecombination of such features for any given person. New investmentsin research, including efforts associated with the government’sexpanded program of comparative-effectiveness research, coulddramatically enhance the evidence base for effective adherenceinterventions.

The bottom line is this: We’ve known for some time that improvedadherence can lead to improvements in health outcomes and reductionsin health care spending. What we haven’t known is where to start.With the new federal health care reform law moving into implementation,the existing movements toward deployment of HIT, improved coordinationof care, and payment reform together create a desire and aninfrastructure for improving health outcomes through improvedadherence. Now we just need to get moving.

Current Integrated Approaches to Promoting Adherence and Their Effects.

Community Care of North Carolina (CCNC), a loose affiliationof 14 physician networks serving Medicaid and uninsured patients,has launched the Pharmacy Home Project, a plan that pays participatingphysicians a monthly fee for coordination of care. Adherenceis promoted through the use of case managers who are embeddedthroughout the networks and clinical pharmacists who serve multiplephysician practices on a rotating basis and through the collectionof data on patient medications from multiple sources includingmedical charts, claims records, and records of prescriptionsfilled to provide prescribers with complete and accurate datafor use in reviewing medications. Under this program, CCNC hasachieved a 5 to 7% increase in adherence rates.

Geisinger Health System, in Pennsylvania, has begun implementingmultiple programs to address adherence. One approach is to collectpatients’ medication preferences through an electronic surveycompleted before a physician sees the patient. As part of Geisinger’smedical home model, nurses actively follow up with patientsto monitor medication use and address any questions or concernsthe patient might have. The health system has also made changesto its own employee health benefits by reducing copayments anddeductibles for medications for chronic conditions. Geisingerreports that it has achieved a 5 to 7% reduction in monthlycosts.

At Group Health Cooperative, in Washington State and northernIdaho, the approach to adherence relies on nurse case managerswho interview patients to assess whether they are managing theirmedical conditions and to increase patients’ adherence to theirmedication regimens. Case managers also educate patients abouttheir conditions, create action plans with patients, and referpatients to programs that help them find more affordable medications.The Group Health Cooperative reports that the results have includedannual savings — representing avoided health care costs— of more than $476 per participant.

Disclosure forms provided by the authors are available withthe full text of this article at NEJM.org.

Source Information

From Harvard University (D.M.C.) and the New England Healthcare Institute (W.E.) — both in Cambridge, MA.

This article (10.1056/NEJMp1002305) was published on April 7, 2010, at NEJM.org.

References

Osterberg L, Blaschke T. Adherence to medication. N Engl J Med 2005;353:487-497. [Free Full Text]
Cutler DM, Long G, Berndt ER, et al. The value of antihypertensive drugs: a perspective on medical innovation. Health Aff (Millwood) 2007;26:97-110. [Free Full Text]
Doshi JA, Zhu J, Lee BY, Kimmel S, Volpp KG. Impact of a prescription copayment increase on lipid-lowering medication adherence in veterans. Circulation 2009;119:390-397. [Free Full Text]
Mosen DM, Schmittdiel J, Hibbard J, Sobel D, Remmers C, Bellows J. Is patient activation associated eLIZABETH lA

"Good Life. Good Death. Your Choice."

2010-03-13T17:20:00.003-05:00

Assisted suicide group Final Exit Network plans billboards for N.J. and California

By The Associated Press

March 10, 2010, 1:47PM

Scott Strazzante/Chicago Tribune/MCTJerry Dincin is the new president of the Final Exit Network which offers counseling and assistance to people with medical conditions who want to end their life. He faces trial on a charge of helping a cancer patient kill himself.The leader of assisted suicide group Final Exit Network plans to put up billboards in New Jersey and California, as means of validating the group's work.

Jerry Dincin discussed the planned billboards as his group, Final Exit Network, prepares for a trial in Georgia after helping a 58-year-old man with cancer kill himself.

Dincin said Tuesday they have been preparing for the trial for more than a year, and is "glad it's moving along."

He became the group's leader after then-president Ted Goodwin and three other members were arrested in February 2009. The four members and the group itself were indicted Tuesday by a Forsyth County grand jury.

Dincin said the billboards planned for New Jersey and California will read:

"Good Life. Good Death. Your Choice."

Final Exit Network - Georgia Four will be indicted on April 1

2010-03-13T17:01:00.007-05:00

Friday March12, 2010

On Tuesday the Georgia prosecutor announced that the Georgia Four, arrested 14 months ago will be indicted on April 1. This is something we have been waiting for so that we can finally have our day in court.

To see the announcement which appears on CBS TV news click on:

Georgia Four Finally indicted

You will have to wait a moment for a TV ad but it will come on immediately.

Watch our web page for updates Final Exit Network

Regards

Jerry Dincin, President

"To establish that a mentally competent person, suffering from irreversible illness or intractable pain, has the right to end his or her life, and the right to choose the timing, method, help, and companion, free of any restrictions no matter how well intentioned"
The Ultimate Human Right of the 21st Century
Visit our new web site at Final Exit Network

Conspicuous And Invidious Consumption

2010-03-08T14:01:00.008-05:00

From The Motly Fool

The economist Thorstein Veblen is best known for the expression "conspicuous consumption" which describes the kind of lavish spending which is primarily performed for the purpose of displaying income and wealth. Veblen was arguably the first economist to look at luxury goods in any detail and he showed that a great deal of spending on luxury goods is for what he describes as "invidious consumption" where the purchaser intends to display the goods to create feelings of envy in those who see their purchases.

If you've sat through someone's wobbly videos and badly-shot photographs of their expensive holiday, it probably wasn't to give you any great insights into the local architecture and culture. Part of the reason for taking the holiday was for invidious consumption and the holidaymakers must tell others to make them envious! :-) Invidious consumption can be seen everywhere from people flashing their "bling" to telling your friends about your new pair of shoes ;-)

Someone who spends £500 on a bottle of wine does so, in part, to convince themselves that they are in an elite club. Just don't show them the research published in the April 2008 issue of the Journal of Wine Economics which showed that that the vast majority of wine consumers cannot tell the difference between cheap and expensive wines :-) Most people are better off with a £4.99 bottle from Tesco.

Conspicuous consumption and housing

In the U.S., a trend in 1950s towards large houses began, with the average size of a home about doubling over a period of 50 years. This trend has been compared to the rise of the SUV, also often a symbol of conspicuous consumption. **Such large homes can also facilitate other forms of consumption, in providing extra storage space for vehicles, clothes, and other objects. (!!)

** I find this both hilarious and sad at the same time. Just MHO.

Virtual Revolution: The Cost Of Free

2010-03-08T12:51:00.002-05:00

~Listen online to BBC documentaty ~
Virtual Revolution: The Cost Of Free
How commerce has been transformed by the online market.

The Virtual Revolution: The Great Levelling?

2010-02-23T10:50:00.002-05:00

From BBC Documentaries:

In the first in this four-part series, Dr Aleks Krotoski charts the extraordinary rise of blogs, Wikipedia and YouTube, and traces an ongoing clash between the freedom the technology offers us, and our innate human desire to control and profit.

Whistle-Blowing Nurse Is Acquitted in Texas

2010-02-11T23:12:00.002-05:00

By KEVIN SACK

A West Texas jury took but an hour Thursday to acquit a nurse who had been charged with a felony after alerting the state medical board that a doctor at her hospital was practicing unsafe medicine.

The uncommon prosecution had ignited deep concern among health care workers and advocates for whistle-blowers about a potential chilling effect on the reporting of malpractice.

But after a four-day trial in Andrews, Tex., a state court jury quickly found that the nurse, Anne Mitchell, was not guilty of the third-degree felony charge of “misuse of official information.” Conviction could have carried a prison sentence of up to 10 years and a fine of up to $10,000.

The prosecution said Mrs. Mitchell, 52, who had been a nurse at Winkler County Memorial Hospital for 25 years, had used her position to obtain and disseminate confidential information — patient file numbers — in her letter to the medical board with the intent of harming Dr. Rolando G. Arafiles Jr. The prosecutor argued that state law required that reports of misconduct be made in good faith, and that Mrs. Mitchell had been waging a vendetta against Dr. Arafiles since his arrival at the hospital in April 2008.

Witnesses testified that they had heard Mrs. Mitchell refer to Dr. Arafiles, a proponent of alternative medicine and herbal remedies, as a “witch doctor.”

But other nurses vouched that Mrs. Mitchell’s concerns were legitimate, and that internal complaints were not dealt with adequately by the hospital’s administration.

The jury foreman said the panel of six men and six women voted unanimously on the first ballot, and questioned why Mrs. Mitchell had ever been arrested.

“We just didn’t see the wrongdoing of sending the file numbers in, since she’s a nurse,” said the foreman, Harley D. Tyler, a high school custodian.

Mrs. Mitchell, who did not testify in her defense, said after the verdict that she had been trying only to protect her patients.

“It’s a duty to every nurse to take care of patients,” she said, after wiping away tears of relief.

The prosecution has so polarized the small town of Kermit, where the hospital is located, that the judge moved the trial to a neighboring county. The case was investigated by Sheriff Robert L. Roberts Jr., a friend and admiring patient of Dr. Arafiles, and tried by the county attorney, Scott M. Tidwell, a political ally of the sheriff and, according to testimony, Dr. Arafiles’s personal lawyer.

Sheriff Roberts said he was disappointed in the verdict but did not regret the prosecution.

“The defense had to spin this as a reporting issue, that nurses were not going to be able to report bad medical care, and it’s never been that,” he said. “We encourage people to report bad medical care. But I encourage public servants to report it properly.”

Mrs. Mitchell and Vickilyn Galle, a co-worker who helped her write the anonymous letter to the medical board, were fired by the hospital last June, shortly before being indicted. The charges against Mrs. Galle, 54, were dismissed late last month at the prosecutor’s discretion.

After the verdict, the nurses’ lawyers pivoted quickly to the lawsuit they have filed in federal court against the county, the hospital and various officials, charging that the firings and indictments amounted to a violation of due process and their First Amendment rights.

“We are glad that this phase of this ordeal has ended and that Anne has been restored to her liberty,” said Mrs. Mitchell’s lawyer, John H. Cook IV, “but there was great damage done in this case, and this does not make them whole.”

Mr. Cook presented broad evidence that the nurses’ concerns about Dr. Arafiles, 47, were well founded, and that Mrs. Mitchell had violated no laws or regulations in alerting the governmental body that licenses and regulates physicians. He walked the jury through a series of questionable cases involving Dr. Arafiles, including one in which the doctor performed a skin graft in the hospital’s emergency room, despite not having surgical privileges, and another where he sutured a rubber tip to a patient’s crushed finger for protection.

Some watchdog groups worried that the prosecution would stifle reporting of improper medical care, regardless of the outcome. But Rebecca M. Patton, president of the American Nurses Association, called the verdict “a resounding win on behalf of patient safety.”

Ms. Patton said, “The message the jury sent is clear: the freedom for nurses to report a physician’s unsafe medical practices is non-negotiable.”

Jim Mustian contributed reporting from Andrews, Tex.

Nurse to Stand Trial for Reporting Doctor

2010-02-08T10:40:00.002-05:00

By KEVIN SACK

KERMIT, Tex. — It occurred to Anne Mitchell as she was writing the letter that she might lose her job, which is why she chose not to sign it. But it was beyond her conception that she would be indicted and threatened with 10 years in prison for doing what she knew a nurse must: inform state regulators that a doctor at her rural hospital was practicing bad medicine.

When she was fingerprinted and photographed at the jail here last June, it felt as if she had entered a parallel universe, albeit one situated in this barren scrap of West Texas oil patch.

“It was surreal,” said Mrs. Mitchell, 52, the wife of an oil field mechanic and mother of a teenage son. “I said how can this be? You can’t go to prison for doing the right thing.”

But in what may be an unprecedented prosecution, Mrs. Mitchell is scheduled to stand trial in state court on Monday for “misuse of official information,” a third-degree felony in Texas.

The prosecutor said he would show that Mrs. Mitchell had a history of making “inflammatory” statements about Dr. Rolando G. Arafiles Jr. and intended to damage his reputation when she reported him last April to the Texas Medical Board, which licenses and disciplines doctors.

Mrs. Mitchell counters that as an administrative nurse, she had a professional obligation to protect patients from what she saw as a pattern of improper prescribing and surgical procedures — including a failed skin graft that Dr. Arafiles performed in the emergency room, without surgical privileges. He also sutured a rubber tip to a patient’s crushed finger for protection, an unconventional remedy that was later flagged as inappropriate by the Texas Department of State Health Services.

Charges against a second nurse, Vickilyn Galle, who helped Mrs. Mitchell write the letter, were dismissed at the prosecutor’s discretion last week.

The case has been infused with the small-town politics of this wind-whipped city of 5,200 in the heart of the Permian Basin, 10 miles from the New Mexico border. The seeming conflicts of interest are as abundant as the cattle grazing among the pump jacks and mesquite.

When the medical board notified Dr. Arafiles of the anonymous complaint, he protested to his friend, the Winkler County sheriff, that he was being harassed. The sheriff, an admiring patient who credits the doctor with saving him after a heart attack, obtained a search warrant to seize the two nurses’ work computers and found the letter.

Both sides acknowledge that the case has polarized the community, and the judge has moved the trial to a neighboring county.

The state and national nurses associations have called the prosecution an outrage and raised $40,000 for the defense. Legal experts argue that in a civil context, Mrs. Mitchell would seem to be protected by Texas whistle-blower laws.

“To me, this is completely over the top,” said Louis A. Clark, president of the Government Accountability Project, a group that promotes the defense of whistle-blowers. “It seems really, really unique.”

Until they were fired without explanation on June 1, Mrs. Mitchell and Mrs. Galle had worked a combined 47 years at Winkler County Memorial Hospital here, most recently as its compliance and quality improvement officers.

The nurses, who are highly regarded even by the administrator who dismissed them, said the case had stained their reputations and drained their savings. With felony charges pending, neither has been able to find work. They said they could feel heads turn when they walked into local lunch spots like El Joey’s Mexican restaurant.

“It has derailed our careers, and we’re probably not going to be able to get them back on track again,” said Mrs. Galle, 54, a grandmother who is depicted around town as the soft-spoken Thelma to Mrs. Mitchell’s straight-shooting Louise. “We’re just in disbelief that you could be arrested for doing something you had been told your whole career was an obligation.”

It was not long after the public hospital hired Dr. Arafiles in 2008 that the nurses said they began to worry. They sounded internal alarms but felt they were not being heeded by administrators.

Frustrated and fearing for patients, they directed the medical board to six cases “of concern” that were identified by file numbers but not by patient names. The letter also mentioned that Dr. Arafiles was sending e-mail messages to patients about an herbal supplement he sold on the side.

Mrs. Mitchell typed the letter and mailed it with a separate complaint signed by a third nurse, who wrote that she had resigned because of similar concerns about Dr. Arafiles. That nurse was not charged.

To convict Mrs. Mitchell, the prosecution must prove that she used her position to disseminate confidential information for a “nongovernmental purpose” with intent to harm Dr. Arafiles.

Mari E. Robinson, executive director of the Texas Medical Board, has warned in a blistering letter to prosecutors that the case will have “a significant chilling effect” on the reporting of malpractice.

The nurses’ lawyers, John H. Cook IV and Brian Carney, have filed a civil lawsuit in federal court charging the county, hospital, sheriff, doctor and prosecutor with vindictive prosecution and denial of the nurses’ First Amendment rights.

Nonetheless, the sheriff, Robert L. Roberts Jr., and the prosecutor, Scott M. Tidwell, express confidence in their case.

“The only side of the story that the town has heard is that these are sisters of mercy, missionaries of peace,” said Mr. Tidwell, who is trying the case because the district attorney is in poor health. “The town has not heard the whole story.”

Dr. Arafiles, 47, who attended medical school in his native Philippines and trained in Baltimore and Buffalo, said his lawyer had advised him not to talk. “I’ve been brutalized and abused,” he said. “I’m the victim in this case, and that is all I can say.”

Several Texas laws would seem to enshrine a nurse’s right, and perhaps duty, to report a physician when he or she believes that patients are at risk. Lawyers on both sides agree that the case will hinge on whether a jury believes that Mrs. Mitchell reported in good faith. In civil whistle-blower cases, the Supreme Court of Texas has held that good faith requires only a reasonable belief that the conduct being reported is illegal.

The hospital administrator, Stan Wiley, said in an interview that Dr. Arafiles had been reprimanded on several occasions for improprieties in writing prescriptions and performing surgery and had agreed to make changes. Mr. Wiley, who said it was difficult to recruit physicians to remote West Texas, said he knew when he hired Dr. Arafiles that he had a restriction on his license stemming from his supervision of a weight-loss clinic.

In a surprise inspection last September, state investigators found several violations by Dr. Arafiles and concluded that the hospital had discriminated against the nurses by firing them for “reporting in good faith.”

But Sheriff Roberts, who has held the post for 18 years, said the state would show that the complaint had been filed in vengeance. “If it’s made to destroy somebody’s reputation or forcing them to leave town,” he said, “then I don’t believe it is good faith.”

Sheriff Roberts called Dr. Arafiles “the most sincerely caring person I have ever met.”

Mr. Wiley said he believed that the nurses had acted in bad faith because they went to the state despite his internal efforts to discipline Dr. Arafiles. But, he said, “I don’t believe they did it on a personal vendetta.”

Mrs. Mitchell said all she saw at the hospital was delay.

“The medical staff needed to make a decision on him,” she said. “You don’t get a second chance to save somebody’s life.”

The Lethal White Wall of Silence

2010-01-24T11:42:00.003-05:00

Radiation accidents like those that injured Scott Jerome-Parks and Alexandra Jn-Charles don't have to be made public under New York state law, leaving many unaware of treatment risks.

Watch this video to the end. Then think about how many people have been and will continue to be injured and killed by medical cover-ups and hush money.

Animal Expolitation & Experimentation - Part II of Animals & Us

2010-01-17T17:03:00.013-05:00

In Part II of Animals & Us focuses on the scientific establishment's attachment to using animals, and considers the future. Might social justice for other species actually benefit humans?

This is a must hear program from the BBC.
Click here to listen to Part II

Please visit KINSHIP CIRCLE to read about why animal testing causes more harm than good to HUMANS.

Animals & Us - A must listen

2010-01-03T23:35:00.026-05:00

Click here to Listen to "Animals & Us"
A documentary from the BBC

I encourage everyone to listen hard to this special documentary from the BBC. Pay attention, folks. I usually refrain from preaching vegetarianism to people who eat animals, but it's time for the real cruelty involved in eating the flesh of slaughtered animals is put square in the faces of those who continue what amounts to cannibalism.

I'm tired of tempering my feelings on this issue. I stopped eating meat 25 years ago when I began seeing beyond the disguised pieces of carcase on my plate to the living animal who suffered a horrible life and death to end up there. Since then, I can honestly say I would starve before eating an animal again. But I don't have to starve, and anyone who stops eating animals won't either. In fact, I have never eaten as well since eliminating meat from my diet.

The sight of a meat counter in a grocery store turns my stomach, and I am grateful for that. It reminds me that I am still human enough to appreciate the suffering of all living creatures and haven't conveniently distanced myself from this fact. There is simply no excuse to continue eating animals.. not the way our society raises them. It is a disgusting, selfish, inhumane habit. I am also sick and tired of people saying they can feed a family for less by stuffing their faces with burgers at fast food joints. You can feed a family on a sack of rice and beans for an entire week for a few bucks. You don't need a certificate from Le Cordon Bleu to learn to cook rice and dal..

The only thing I would add to this piece is to recommend that people place a colored picture of animals in a factory farm, slaughter house, etc. next to your plate every time you chose to eat a murdered animal. Be aware of what you are putting into your mouth to sustain your body- the muscle tissue of an animal raised in filthy, horrific conditions, and killed the same way. Keep this in mind while you chew its cooked flesh. Would you eat your pet dog or cat?

There's plenty to eat without choosing meat.

Watch the trailer of HBO's "Death on A Factory Farm"

How Much Is Your Dead Body Worth?

2009-12-17T23:48:00.002-05:00

Horizon: How Much Is Your Dead Body Worth? (BBC 2008)

Do you know where your remains will end up?

Sage, the miracle dog.

2009-12-17T23:24:00.003-05:00

DARTMOUTH — Dave Lechan had given up. Sage, his beloved, 5-year-old German shepherd, had been missing for a week and he was convinced she was dead.

He was almost right.

Badly wounded by a gunshot that Lechan believes was intentional, the dog lay in the woods for seven days before somehow mustering the strength to stagger home to her master.

Read more...

Coroner: Doctors Had to Let Woman Die

2009-10-02T14:18:00.003-04:00

(Oct. 1) -- Doctors who let a 26-year-old woman die after she swallowed antifreeze acted within the law, a coroner has ruled.

Kerrie Wooltorton, of Norwich in eastern England, is believed to be the first person to use a living will to commit suicide, The Guardian newspaper reported Thursday.

She wrote the document on Sept. 15, 2007, three days before she poisoned herself. She called an ambulance, which took her to Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital. There, she gave doctors a letter addressed to "To whom this may concern."

"If I come into hospital regarding an overdose or any attempt of my life, I would like for NO life saving treatment to be given," she wrote in the letter, which Sky News printed on its Web site.

"I am aware that you may think that because I called the ambulance I therefore want treatment, THIS IS NOT THE CASE! I do however want to be comfortable as nobody wants to die alone and scared and without going into details there are loads of reasons I do not want to die at home which I realize you will not understand and I apologise for this," she wrote. Wooltorton had been depressed over her inability to have a child, an inquest into her death heard. Doctors said they feared they would be charged with assault if they treated her because she had made her wishes clear, The Telegraph reported.

"It is a double-bind for doctors. She was very clear in her wishes. To have forced treatment on her would have been unlawful," hospital spokesman Andrew Stronach said, according to the Norwich Evening News.

Her family has said doctors should have tried to save her, despite her written instructions. But the doctors said Wooltorton was considered mentally competent to decide on treatment -- or refuse it.

"Please be assured that I am 100% aware of the consequences of this and the probable outcome of drinking antifreeze, eg death in 95-99% of cases and if I survive then kidney failure, I understand and accept them and will take 100% responsibility for this," she wrote.

Greater Norfolk Coroner William Armstrong said Monday that the hospital could not be blamed for Wooltorton's death. "She had capacity to consent to treatment which, it is more likely than not, would have prevented her death," he said. "She refused such treatment in full knowledge of the consequences and died as a result."

Living wills are commonly associated with people who are terminally ill and wish to refuse treatment, or people who would not want to be kept alive if they were mentally incapacitated in some sort of accident. In England, living wills were introduced under the 2005 Mental Capacity Act.

The ProLife Alliance called for a change in the law.

"A lot of people who attempt to commit suicide are thankful they have been revived the next day," said the group's chairwoman, Dominica Roberts.

"Mercy Killing": When Love & Law Conflict

2009-09-29T23:52:00.002-04:00

by Jacob M. Appel
Bioethicist and medical historian
Posted: September 25, 2009 09:58 AM
~~~~~~~

I'd sooner be dead than live in a nursing home.

I've chosen to emphasize that point now, when I am relatively young and in good health, to show solidarity with two brave men who have recently found themselves at the center of the public debate over assisted suicide. One is Paul Weinstein, a 78-year-old retired pharmacist from New Rochelle, New York, who killed his dementia-afflicted wife of fifty years to fulfill a pledge not to institutionalize her. The other is James Fish, a 90-year-old California physician who shot to death his 88-year-old wife, Phyllis, to end her ongoing suffering from dementia and terminal pancreatic cancer. Mr. Weinstein now faces murder charges, while Dr. Fish -- who is recovering from a self-inflicted gunshot wound -- will apparently be tried for manslaughter. Such prosecutions may vindicate the rule of law, but they do so by compounding human suffering. The real tragedy in both of these cases, beyond the obvious misfortune of human illness, is that both Mr. Weinstein and Dr. Fish felt compelled to act illegally. But the fault is not theirs. The blame rests squarely with a society that forces devoted husbands and wives to choose between the welfare of their spouses and the letter of the law.

Which returns us to nursing homes. I respect the fact that some older Americans find rich and meaningful lives within such institutions, and that many of the caregivers at these facilities are deeply devoted to their work. I would certainly never deny anybody the right to live out his final days in such a place, if he affirmatively so chooses. At the same time, such facilities impose grave limits on human autonomy. These restrictions often encroach upon the residents insidiously, as their conditions decline. One may enter a nursing home with mild cognitive impairment, but soon enough one needs permission to leave one's room unsupervised or is being forcibly medicated to reduce unwanted behaviors. That is a risk I am entirely unwilling to take. As a personal matter, I find the prospect of relying on another human being to change my clothing or to empty my bedpan incompatible with the minimum level of human dignity that I ever wish to endure. When I can no longer manage my activities of daily living at home, I am prepared to conclude my life with the same dignity that I hope I have displayed during my life. I prefer a timely death to a lengthy sojourn in a human warehouse. Moreover, when I do pass on, I want my money to go to the causes that I believe in and to the people that I care about -- not into the coffers of health care conglomerates. Needless to say, the nursing home industry views matters differently.

Some opponents of legalized aid-in-dying are genuinely motivated by a concern that the process will be abused -- and these concerns ought to be taken seriously. Any legislation on the subject should certainly include safeguards to ensure that participants are willing, or if incapacitated, have spelled out their wishes clearly in advance. Other opponents of legalized aid-in-dying appear to believe that human suffering is somehow ennobling and that God's mission is for each of us to die a "natural" death. These zealots are often far harder to engage in any meaningful dialogue, as there is little purpose in discourse with individuals who believes they are acting in accordance with divine will. What should not be overlooked is that there are also organizations, such as "True Compassion Advocates" of Washington, which oppose legalized aid-in-dying in the name of better end-of-life care. These groups would have us believe that well-funded palliative therapies and hospice programs cannot exist simultaneously with legalized aid-in-dying. The experience of the Netherlands, which has both a well-developed aid-in-dying system and some of the best palliative care in the world, belies this claim. However, as people choose to control their own deaths and the legal system increasingly accepts these choices, as is already the case in Oregon, Washington and Montana, one can expect these palliation-only organizations to align themselves ever more closely with a "nursing home-industrial complex" that stands to lose billions of dollars if people choose to die on their own terms.

Each year, millions of Americans enter into conversations similar to the discussion that Paul Weinstein allegedly had with his wife, Helena. Mothers and fathers tell their children that they would rather die peacefully at home than in hospitals or nursing facilities. Husbands and wives pledge to each other than they will never end up in institutions. I have witnessed these conversations in my own family and, during my work as a clinical ethicist, I have heard them recounted at patients' bedsides. Unfortunately, the vast majority of these individuals do end up in nursing care, often against their own strongly-stated wishes. Most families are not equipped to care for their loved ones at home. Some such patients lack any social support at all. So their choice is either the "slow glue factory" -- as my grandmother used to call nursing homes -- or to convince someone to help them die. In an ideal world, that would be a clinic where trained professionals could ease the suffering out of earthly existence. Or they might summon their own family physicians, who would provide lethal cocktails to be consumed in a home setting, as is done in Holland. The cruel reality, in forty-seven states, is that the suffering must hope they have relatives or friends who love them enough to sacrifice their companionship, and to risk prison time, in order to effectuate their wishes.

Mercy killing is not a problem. It is a symptom. While I certainly do not encourage the spouses of terminally ill or chronically suffering patients to take the law into their own hands when asked, I cannot fault those who do so. It may be that the tide is finally turning on aid-in-dying, as the cause has gone from a television spectacle associated with Jack Kevorkian to a matter of personal dignity embraced by large numbers of ordinary citizens. Great Britain is poised to establish guidelines for when not to charge those who aid in dying. California and New Hampshire appear ready to follow in the path of Oregon and Washington. After centuries of suffering, jointly-fostered by a partnership of church and state, a moment of moral enlightenment appears at hand. Alas, that does little good for men like Mr. Weinstein and Dr. Fish. Or for their wives. They do not have time to wait for the dithering of legislators to overcome political inertia or for meddlesome bishops to adopt a different cause célèbre. So while legalized aid in dying may be a few years off for many, we desperately need a moratorium on prosecutions in cases where such action is both altruistic and desired.

Men like Paul Weinstein and Jim Fish are neither heroes nor villains. They are ordinary men who have been forced to make decisions that no reasonable human being ought ever have to confront. We should honor their fortitude, but temper any admiration with a healthy concern for the value of the rule of law. And, most importantly, we should change that law. As much as I wish that, when I'm no longer independent, I have someone who cares about me enough to help me die, even if doing so is still illegal, I can only hope that nobody ever has to choose between love and the law on my behalf.

We're # 37

2009-09-25T13:15:00.001-04:00

Here is a song celebrating our proud ranking in the World Health Organization's list of world health systems for all the obstructionist hecklers to sing as they continue down the road to total irrelevance.

In Lies We Trust

2009-09-21T09:21:00.001-04:00

This feature length documentary about medical madness, cloaked in bioterrorism preparedness, will awaken the brain dead. It exposes health officials, directed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), for conducting a “War of Terror” that is killing millions of unwitting Americans.

Enormous waste, unconscionable greed in health care

2009-09-12T09:01:00.003-04:00

A human profile and an important perspective on the ongoing debate over health care reform. Dr. Steffi Woolhandler and Dr. David Himmelstein lead a campaign by doctors to reform health care which they see as needlessly expensive and corrupt. Together they founded Physicians for a National Health Program in 1987 which aims for a system where everyone is covered. They decry the soaring costs of health care – and how that hurts poor people who are uninsured -- and many in the middle class who are under-insured. The doctors pull no punches in describing what they see as enormous waste and unconscionable greed in health care expenditures. The second segment features American doctors who have visited other nations to learn of workable alternative systems.

Listen to the program online: HUMANKIND: Universal Health Care

Shared via AddThis

Help dogs get their day in court

2009-07-06T13:38:00.005-04:00

When you see footage of a puppy mill bust and watch as dogs who have never had a toy, warm bed, or affection find hope for the first time, what you don’t see is the legal work behind the scenes that makes it all possible.

The Humane Society of the United States has the largest and most effective legal team ever assembled on behalf of animals -- with 15 in-house lawyers, a network of more than 1,000 pro bono attorneys, and a docket of more than 40 active cases in state and federal courts around the country.

Will you help keep this legal team in court fighting for animals?

Last month, a class action lawsuit filed by our legal team bankrupted and shuttered the notorious Florida-based puppy retailer Wizard of Claws. The case not only put an end to this cruel and abusive operation, but also resulted in the rescue of all 32 of the store’s remaining puppy mill puppies.

Please make a special gift today to help us win this critical case for animals -- and other important cases, too.

In the last two years, our legal team has filed dozens of new cases, and won more than 30 courtroom victories to protect animals from cruelty and abuse. This year we have already won court orders halting canned hunting of endangered species, ending the sale of cruel raccoon dog fur by a major fashion designer, overturning the Postal Service’s policy of mailing illegal animal fighting paraphernalia, and blocking the sport hunting and trapping of wolves in the Great Lakes.

Our legal team is working hard every day to ensure that all animals get the legal protection they deserve, but our opponents are strong and we cannot win this fight alone. Please make a contribution today to help puppy mill dogs and other animals get their day in court.

Thank you for all you do for animals.

Sincerely,

Wayne Pacelle
President & CEO
The Humane Society of the United States

Stop Mass General from needless killing of animals!

2009-05-17T13:51:00.005-04:00

From Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine

On Monday and Tuesday, live sheep are scheduled to be used and then killed in a trauma training course at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. We need your help to end this unnecessary and cruel practice.

Mass General may be one of the nation’s best hospitals, but it is woefully behind the times when it comes to teaching Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS). Across the nation, more than 90 percent of ATLS courses are taught using only human-based simulators, which Mass General currently owns.

Please call, e-mail, or write a letter to Massachusetts General Hospital president Peter L. Slavin, M.D., and politely ask him to end animal use in the institution’s ATLS program. Then forward this message to your friends who care about animals and effective medical education. Being polite is the most effective way to help these animals. Send an automatic e-mail.

Peter L. Slavin, M.D.
President
Massachusetts General Hospital
55 Fruit St.
Boston, MA 02114
Tel: 617-724-9300
E-mail: pslavin@partners.org

Mass General owns the American College of Surgeons-approved simulator known as the TraumaMan System. The hospital uses the simulator to teach ATLS surgical skills to medical students while using live sheep to teach the very same procedures to practicing physicians.

On May 14, PCRM filed a formal request with Mass General’s Subcommittee on Research Animal Care asking that it deny the use of animals in the hospital’s ATLS program.

The letter cites an ongoing survey by PCRM, which has so far received responses from 201 ATLS programs in the United States and Canada. The survey has found that 187 of those programs (more than 90 percent) exclusively use nonanimal models for instruction. The vast majority of those 187 programs exclusively use the TraumaMan System.

Learn more about the TraumaMan System. If you have any questions, please contact me at rmerkley@pcrm.org. Thanks so much for your help!

Insurance coverage for "mental health" disorders influenced by psych drug industry

2009-02-15T11:53:00.002-05:00

Through a back door darkly: new mental health insurance requirements: costly and mandatory mental health coverage sneaks through in the Federal bailout bill.(Psychology)

Publication: USA Today (Magazine)

Publication Date: 01-JAN-09
Author: Vatz, Richard E. ; Schaler, Jeffrey A

IT HAS THE KIND of intuitive appeal that should make thoughtful people skeptical-mandatory insurance coverage for all mental illnesses by all companies that cover mental illness at all. What images come to mind? Many, perhaps most, conjure up pictures of cognitively damaged people who are at the mercy of something called "mental illness." In this fantasy, mental illness can strike without warning and leave individuals involuntarily debilitated, walking around aimlessly, spouting incomprehensible "word salad."

With its major audience a government with increasing control over its citizens' daily fives and a credulous general public mystified by the allegedly medical components of the edifice of mental health care, psychiatric self-interest groups have tried for years to force insurance companies to cover the treatment of mental illness and addiction. Treating depression as well as disturbing and sometimes simple problems in riving on the same level as cancer, heart disease, and diabetes is the essence of what has come to be known as "parity."

Now, through political legerdemain, this government-mandated coverage has become law as an undebated amendment attached to the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. Thus, a proposal which had failed in a variety of forms for over a decade to enforce mental health parity has become law. The parity amendment requires that mental health and substance use disorder benefits be "no more restrictive than the predominant financial requirements applied to substantially all medical and surgical benefits covered" by an insurance group health plan or coverage (only if said plan covers mental illness). Again, to the untutored ear, this has a reasonable sound to it. Logicians would say its supporting arguments sport a sort of "face validity." Yet, this legislation, unless reversed--or at least modified to apply only to organic-based mental disorders-is likely to open up a Pandora's box for the U.S. health care system.

Organic-based mental disorders are those with known physiological bases. Regardless of what many "experts" and laypersons say, there are no known brain lesions or organic causes responsible for "mental illness." If there were, these would be brain or neurological diseases, not mental diseases. These would be identified by their physical origins. Another way to understand the difference here between brain disease, for example, and mental illness is this: brain disease usually is characterized by cognitive deficit, e.g., short-term memory loss; mental illness, by false claims--self-reported imaginings, also known as hallucinations.

Addiction often is treated with religion. Alcoholics Anonymous is the best example. Courts in the U.S. increasingly are viewing AA as a religious activity. When courts order people into AA, or when states give money to addiction treatment providers utilizing AA's "12 Steps," the free exercise and establishment clauses of the First Amendment are violated. The $35,000,000 Federal project MATCH of a few years ago showed that AA is as effective as the best contemporary psychology has to offer when it comes to treatment of alcoholism. We know from past studies that AA is as effective as leaving people to their own devices. It is important to remember, particularly in light of the parity bill, that AA and other self-help groups are free. No money needs to be appropriated to them at all. In fact, they do better without Federal or state subsidy. Quietly slipping the parity requirement into the financial bailout bill surreptitiously adjudicates by legislative flat a halt-century of contentious debate over the definition of "mental illness," whether "psychiatric disorders" are medical disorders, and the nature of addiction. What it does not address are the many valid objections to the entire concept of mental health parity-objections that barely have been allowed to see the light of day and indisputably never have been resolved satisfactorily.

This analogy--that mental illness is like physical illness--is not reciprocal. People with cancer hardly are like John Hinckley, Theodore "Unabomber" Kaczynski, or Jeffrey Dahmer. Those struggling with the devastation of diabetes hardly are like those who choose to destroy themselves by shooting heroin or smoking crack. When a person with diabetes is deprived of his insulin, that individual gets sick and dies. When a crack user is deprived of cocaine, he or she gets better and lives. There are far more differences between mental and physical disease than there are similarities, but medical science increasingly is becoming political science, especially when government gets involved in mandating and defining illness, treatment, and medicine--and individuals with real diseases always will lose relatively when mental health professionals stand to gain by hiding behind their "patients."

The issue of coverage for mental illness, made increasingly salient since the 1970s, became a prominent national concern largely through the lobbying efforts of Tipper Gore, wife of former Vice Pres. Al Gore. Her political activism, revealingly, first was motivated by her situational depression following her young son's serious injury in a car accident after he darted into a street. Does anyone really believe such upset is an indication of "illness?" Does anyone believe that such a reaction is revelatory of what psychiatry's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders calls a "depressive disorder."

Psychiatrist Thomas Szasz accurately predicted close to 50 years ago what we are experiencing today when he warned against the "therapeutic state"--a term he created--as the greatest threat to liberty and justice in a free society.

Through Mrs. Gore's encouragement, Pres. Bill Clinton ordered Federal parity coverage for psychiatric "illness," though mental illness and addiction never were defined adequately. In Gore's 2000 presidential campaign, he stated his policy as follows: "I want to make sure that a patient with depression is given access to care on terms no different from a patient who has diabetes." If depression is like diabetes, is diabetes like depression? The analogy, again, is not reciprocal.

Verifying mental illness

The lack of pathological verification necessary to label someone as "mentally ill" has led to some truly anomalous phenomena. According to The New York Times, Olympic swimming superstar Michael Phelps was diagnosed in early childhood as having the mental disorder Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). He no longer takes drugs for the diagnosis, and famed ADHD psychiatrist Edward M. Hallowell says of the disorder, "I have been treating this condition for 25 years and I know that, if you manage it right, this apparent deficit can become an asset. I think of it as a trait and not a disability." So, should such a claim mandatorily be covered by insurance? Now, according to Hallowell, this "disorder" not only is a "trail" and not a "disability," it is an "asset" as well.

Other generally ignored objections to the parity argument include those disputing the American Psychiatric Association's claims that over 50% of Americans are--or will be at some point--mentally ill. In the December 2008 Archives of General Psychiatry, there is a report that "almost half of college-aged individuals had a psychiatric disorder in the past year," and this includes heavy drinking, categorized under "alcohol use disorders." These findings were not based on any type of medical examination, but on "face-to-face interviews" conducted by nonphysicians. Moreover, these estimates, more than doubling the APA's and National Institute of Mental Health's assessment from years ago, virtually are unlimited since there is no way to confirm accurately the existence of "mental illness" or "psychiatric disorders." Mental illness and psychiatric disorders always are diagnosed on the basis of symptoms or complaints. There are no signs. Most physical illness is diagnosed on the basis of signs, discovered through objective tests.

Parity amendment supporters celebrate the new law as signaling the end of "stigma," but they fail to consider that stigmatization is a marvelous punishment reinforcer for undesirable behavior, some of which is called "mental illness." If there is no "stigma" to having mental illness, there is no disincentive for those who--consciously or unconsciously, innocently or strategically--want the label to justify their unnecessary medicating or seeking of privileges, special rights, and competitive advantages in a variety of situations ranging from jobs to education.

Substance disorders arguably are a function of behavioral choices and in no way constitute diseases to which insurance should apply. Such self-destructive behavior is best explained by mindset, personal values, and how a person copes with his or her environment. Incidence varies by cultural context, and people clearly can stop or control their addictions through an exercise of free will. Not so when it comes to bodily illness; one no more can will away cancer, heart disease, or diabetes than he or she can will their onset independently of smoking or eating badly.

Schizophrenia is used to typify "mental illness" when it, in fact, constitutes no more than 1.5% of those labeled "mentally ill." Such citing of unrepresentative problems as the prototype of mental illness--including some examples of schizophrenics who have authentic brain disease--is used to make people falsely envision enfeebled, helpless, sympathy-inducing sick people as poster children for mental illness. A more prototypical mental illness, "adjustment disorder," is a name given by psychiatrists to people who have problems in living--hardly worthy of health insurance and an inducement against confronting one's problems and choices. The same could be said for "impulse-control disorders" such as gambling too much (called "pathological gambling"), Body Dysmorphic Disorder, Multiple Personality Disorder, and other supposed mental disorders whose incidence rises and falls with their marketability at any given time.

Most major media outlets generally ignore the foregoing arguments in coverage of the passage of parity for mental disorders. Major articles in The Washington Post and The New York Times covering the passage of parity in 2008, for instance, often include testimony only from supporters of the amendment. Recall that it took but a single boy to expose the Emperor's "new clothes."

Passing a measure that is objectionable in so many ways is bad enough. Even worse is the tact that such a contentious, scientifically questionable, and potentially expensive piece of legislation--especially for purchasers of health insurance--was passed through the back door.
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The dangers of parity - insurance coverage for so-called "mental health" disorders, are being disguised through the back door under the influence of the psych drug industry, in particular. The result of such coverage creates a mandate for drugging anyone under a diagnosis of depression, post dramatic stress disorder, bigomania, or a multitude of other stigmatizing labels - a disguise for control. Too often, the result is used to control/manipulate nursing home patients.

Please tell your legislator not to pass this option, allowing mandatory (forced) treatment.

The dark history of modern medicine

2008-12-04T21:48:00.004-05:00

The dark history of modern medicine: U.S. surgeons routinely operated on babies without anesthesia

A warning to readers: this is a gruesome story. Do not read this if you are squeamish. It's a hard-to-believe (but true) account of the horrors of conventional medicine and its barbaric surgical procedures, many of which are still practiced today.

We begin by examining the astonishing practice of prestigious U.S. surgeons operating on babies with no anesthesia, subjecting them to the intense pain and trauma of having their skin sliced open with scalpels, their internal organs poked and prodded, and their surgical wounds closed up with staples and stitches... all with full awareness of each terrifying moment of excruciating pain.

To stop the babies from screaming in terror, surgeons gave them heavy doses of muscle relaxants, paralyzing them for the duration of the procedure. And so these babies could only watch in terrified amazement, prisoners in their own tiny bodies, unable to move a muscle or make a sound, as strange men wearing masks and wielding sharp instruments went to work on their flesh.

If it sounds like a "mad doctor" horror film, think again: This was a common practice by U.S. surgeons right up to the 1980's. Many adults living today were once subjected to the terror of full-consciousness surgical procedures as babies or infants, performed by the brightest and most authoritative surgeons of the day -- the same kind of arrogant surgeons who now tell us that bariatric surgery is a treatment for obesity, or that surgically removing muscles of the skull is a cure for migraines.

Surgery has a dark and dreadful history in the Western world, and the practice of operating on babies without anesthesia is just one footnote in a saga too terrifying to accurately describe. Its real history is hardly ever talked about today, just as doctors don't readily admit their profession once hawked cigarettes on television, proudly proclaiming Camels were, "Recommended by more doctors than any other cigarette!"

But the practice was real, and it was "standard operating procedure" at places like Oxford University and Boston Children's Hospital. It makes us all wonder, though... How could surgeons be so cruel as to operate on babies without anesthesia?

The bizarre beliefs of surgeons
The answer, as strange as it now seems, is that they actually believed babies couldn't feel pain. It's absurd, yes, but the mindset continues today with medical experiments on animals, where researchers tell themselves these animals don't feel pain either.

Much of conventional medicine has always been based on a lie, or a series of lies. Babies feel no pain. Lab rats feel no pain. Monkeys are not conscious beings. Health knowledge is gained by dissecting living beings and identifying their parts. Take your pick.

It was once common knowledge in the field of medicine that female reproductive organs made women crazy. Hysterectomies, which are still routinely performed today for no medically justifiable reason, derive their very name from the intention of the surgery: Hyster = hysteria, ectomy = to remove. Thus, hysterectomies were ordered and performed on the simple basis of removing hysterical behavior in women.

The procedure, of course, was almost always performed by men. It was the women, you see, who were all insane, they claimed. The men were merely scientists practicing what they called, "evidence-based medicine" -- a term you still hear thrown around today by doctors and surgeons defending modern medical scams.

The madness of surgery continues into modern times
The madness of conventional medicine and its surgical procedures, sadly, is not yet a closed chapter in the history books. We're still living it, and millions of Americans each year are being subjected to surgical procedures that can only be described as utterly mad, if not downright profitable for the masked men performing them: Hysterectomies, gastric bypass surgery, heart bypass surgery, carpal tunnel surgery, the surgical removal of wisdom teeth and many more.

None of these have any medical justification except in a few extreme cases. Nearly all are conducted for the sole purpose of generating business for surgeons who suffer serious delusions about the efficacy of these procedures, just as the surgeons of three decades ago once believed babies could feel no pain.

There's not a conventional dentist who has looked in my mouth, for example, who didn't immediately urge me to undergo oral surgery to remove my wisdom teeth. I'm 36 years old. My teeth are fine. My jaw is fine. But my dentists are mad. Most patients would automatically say yes to such an authoritative suggestion, though. They'd agree on the spot: "Yes, I'll let you cut open my jaw and remove my teeth just because you say so!"

Two decades ago it was tonsils. Half the children I grew up with, it seemed, had their tonsils surgically removed. That particular procedure was a popular medical fad. Countless parents were hoodwinked into letting little Johnny go under the knife. But after hundreds of thousands of such procedures were performed, it eventually became obvious that removing the tonsils did nothing beneficial other than pad the pockets and egos of doctors. Today, it is rarely done at all. Tonsils get infected. It doesn't mean you should slice them out.

Besides, we have new surgical fads now like bariatric surgery -- a lobotomy of the stomach -- where surgeons maim patients for life and then send a bill to the ones who don't die on the operating table. Actually, they get billed, too. Surgery ain't free, you know, even if you're dead.

Nearly five percent of such patients are, in fact, dead in the first year following the bariatric surgery, studies now show. And many more who survive the ordeal find that they overproduce insulin after ingesting food -- a condition known as hyperinsulinemia. It's sometimes also called "islet cell hyperfunction," and it means the pancreas is producing too much insulin in response to food intake. You know what the surgeon's modern solution to this problem is?

They open up the patient and slice off part of the pancreas! Amazing, huh? That way, it won't produce so much insulin. It makes you wonder what the surgical cure for headaches might be.

With similar insanity, the modern treatment for an overactive thyroid is to fry it with radiation so powerful that people who undergo the procedure are now setting off nuclear materials detection scans at airports. Patients who receive the radioactive iodine injections used in the procedure are advised -- get this -- to avoid hanging around their pets because they're so radioactive, they might give the family dog cancer!

I swear, I'm not making this up.

Surgical treatments for mental health
If you think it's all a bit mad, you're right. But you don't know the half of it. Mental health, you see, has also been treated by barbaric surgical procedures. Turn the clock back on conventional medicine to the early 1900's when a psychiatrist named Henry Cotton was the medical director at the New Jersey State Hospital at Trenton.

Dr. Cotton cooked up the theory that mental illness was the result of bacterial infections and pus found throughout the body. With the full support of the medical authorities of the day, he and his staff proceeded to surgically remove practically every organ and structure in the patient's body in an effort to cure them of their "illness."

He would often start with the teeth, pulling them out one by one. If that didn't "cure" the patient, he would cut out their tonsils and sinuses. When that didn't cure them either, he'd move on to other organs: gall bladders, stomachs, spleens, ovaries, testicles and even their colons. Patients who weren't healed by this "treatment" were subjected to even more organ removals, to the point where some patients were maimed beyond recognition and were barely alive at all.

It wasn't all voluntary, either. Some patients were literally dragged kicking and screaming into the procedures, then violently strapped onto surgical tables so that the "treatment" could begin. Others actually paid big bucks for the treatment, as you'll see below.

Dr. Cotton publicly announced a cure rate of 85 percent. That number, he later admitted, included those who died from the treatment, because they were "no longer suffering" from the illness. (Sounds a lot like today's chemotherapy treatments for cancer, doesn't it?) Conventional medicine has a long history of fudging the numbers, it seems. You can announce whatever success rate you want if you redefine success. (Modern medicine has done that quite effectively with drug trials.) The actual death rate from Dr. Cotton's treatments, by the way, was 30 percent of all patients.

A pioneer of conventional medicine
Not surprisingly, conventional medicine gleefully embraced Cotton's work, heaping unprecedented praise upon his "genius" discoveries about the true cause of mental illness. He was honored at medical institutions across the U.S. and Europe, and invited to speak to elite groups of leading doctors and surgeons. He was widely considered one of the pioneers in the diagnosis and treatment of mental health disorders. (Today, by the way, the theory of mental disorders has shifted from "pus in the organs" to "chemical imbalances in the brain" which are treated by toxic synthetic chemicals known as prescription drugs. Different era, different terminology. Same con.)

As demand for his treatments skyrocketed, in part due to a series of glowing news reports published in the New York Times, Cotton saw visions of dollar signs like any good psychiatrist. He opened a private clinic for treating mental illness, where he raked in enormous sums for removing the teeth and organs of the super rich. Rich people, even in 1922, were just as gullible as rich people today when it comes to trading their wealth for medical procedures based on junk science.

Despite the astonishing death rate, patients couldn't get enough of Cotton's cutting-edge treatments, and they were willing to fork over top dollar to subject themselves to various organ lobotomies in the hopes of curing mental illness that was most likely caused by simple nutritional deficiencies. (It's much like today, where cancer patients are tripping over each other to sign up for the latest, greatest, over-hyped anti-cancer drug, no matter what the cost, when most cancers are easily treated with low-cost herbs and nutritional therapies.)

When Dr. Cotton fell ill himself, he had his own teeth surgically removed and promptly returned to work, performing the same procedure on others. He did not, however, remove his own testicles. (Apparently, he didn't have the balls.)

A champion of conventional medicine
But this is no laughing matter. What's important to note about Dr. Henry Cotton was not the barbaric nature of his surgical treatments, nor the madness of his ideas, but rather the stunning fact that he was widely considered a pioneer by the medical authorities of his time. Cotton, for example, was considered a top student at the John Hopkins School of Medicine, and the psychiatric industry openly accepted Dr. Cotton's insane methods. Even to this day, the American Journal of Psychiatry offers this glowing whitewash of Dr. Cotton on its web page about the history of the Trenton Psychiatric Hospital: "In 1907 Dr. Henry A. Cotton became the medical director, and a new era in the treatment of mental diseases began. Among other improvements, Dr. Cotton is credited with abolishing all forms of mechanical restraints and implementing daily staff meetings to discuss patient care."

Mysteriously, there is no mention in the journal of Dr. Cotton's barbaric methods of treatment other than calling them, "...a new era in the treatment of mental diseases." The American Journal of Psychiatry focuses instead on Dr. Cotton's exciting invention of "daily staff meetings." Wow. That's amazing stuff. Meetings? Really?

Prestigious medical institutions around the world were suckered in, too. They lined up to invite Dr. Cotton to speak at their schools. Even the New York Times wrote glowing accounts of Dr. Cotton's "scientific discoveries."

All the brightest doctors in the world, it seems, couldn't tell the difference between treatment and torture.

Modern surgery is still half mad
And many still can't today. Because the history of surgery in conventional medicine continues right up to this day, where countless barbaric procedures are still being formed, all in the name of "treating" patients. Babies are now receiving anesthesia when operated on, thankfully, but 50,000 Americans this year will have their digestive tracts partially ripped out in a procedure marketed to them by surgeons hawking the latest weight loss "cure" who just happen to avoid mentioning all the sexy side effects of the procedure (like having to drink all your food through a straw for the rest of your life, or puking every time you swallow any chunk of food larger than a tater tot).

The fad procedures always change, you see, but the cons don't. Today, just as a hundred years ago, the public and the press remain hoodwinked by the false authority and high-IQ language of surgeons pushing the latest surgical fads... all based on the latest and greatest "scientific knowledge" of the day (which will be considered nonsense in about twenty years).

But it doesn't matter how much technical knowledge they learn, nor the sophistication of their high-tech instruments, nor whether they can perform remote surgery over the internet with a robot-controlled arm. It sounds cool, but it's really just stupid. Cutting into the human body is plainly traumatic and harmful by its very nature, and it should only be used as a last resort when other treatments are not available.

Just to clarify, we do need great surgeons to save the lives of those suffering from trauma, accidents or physical birth defects. Some people genuinely benefit from cosmetic surgery, and I'm not just talking about silicone implants. Some dental patients really do benefit from oral surgery when things have deteriorated too far. There are many other examples where surgery has a legitimate purpose.

We need these technicians in society for many things, but not for half the things they impose upon us. Much of the surgery being done today is a sham, and not coincidentally, it just happens to be a sham that keeps surgeons well paid, just like it has for over a hundred years.

Dr. Cotton would have been proud to see modern medicine carrying on his trademark insanity today. I can see him smiling right now, with no teeth.

Tonight on Channel 5 - Report on injustice of 209a

2008-11-23T12:02:00.001-05:00

Don't miss this special report tonight at 11 PM on Boston's Channel 5 WCVB-TV Boston

Butterfly Migration

2008-11-21T21:11:00.006-05:00

Monarch Butterfly with splints on wings.

Associated Press November 21, 2008 at 4:23 AM EST

LAKE LUZERNE, N.Y. — A southern Adirondack couple used their skill at handicrafts, their homemade honey and their gumption to mend a monarch butterfly's wing, nurse it back to health and find it a ride to a warmer climate.

Jeannette Brandt spied the butterfly about three weeks ago when, out for a bike ride in rural Hadley, N.Y., about 70 kilometres north of Albany, she pulled over on the shoulder to take off her coat. Noticing the butterfly's broken wing, she poured out her water bottle and placed the butterfly inside it.

At home, she and her long-time partner, Mike Parwana, began nursing the butterfly, feeding it rotting pears and honey mixed with water. The pears came from a tree on their property. The honey came from the bees they keep.As the butterfly strengthened, they wondered whether they could fix its wing. They turned to the Internet, searching under "fixing a broken butterfly wing," and found a video posted by the Live Monarch Foundation, a non-profit group from Boca Raton, Fla.

"It was still weak. It was another week or so before it would fly," Mr. Parwana said.

They worried that the patch was too heavy, but as the butterfly fattened up on pear and honey, it started flapping around their house. Then, they worried the cat would get it. And they wondered what to do with their healthy monarch, since it was, by then, too cold to put it outside.

They called Elizabeth Morgan, better known as Bunny, the local butterfly lady, who suggested they find someone to carry it south. And that is how Ms. Brandt and Mr. Parwana came to be standing together on Sunday in Scotty's truck-stop restaurant in nearby Wilton, holding a shoebox, and calling out to ask whether anyone was heading south.

Mr. Parwana laughed. "And all these truckers looked down at their shoes," he said. "If you ever want to feel strange, walk into Scotty's and just put it out there that you want them to take a box south." The atmosphere lightened when they explained the cargo was a butterfly. A trucker from Alabama, on his way to Florida, raised his hand.

"He was very nice about it," Mr. Parwana said. "We sat down to have breakfast after we gave him the box. He came back 15 minutes later. He said, 'You want me to call you up after I let it out?' " "On Tuesday, they got the call. The butterfly was loose in Florida with its mended wing, free to join the tens of millions of other monarchs making their winter migration to the mountains of central Mexico.

State reopens review in toddler's death

2008-11-15T21:42:00.007-05:00

Children's Hospital accused of holding records

By Liz Kowalczyk Globe Staff / November 14, 2008
The state has reopened an investigation of two prominent doctors at Children's Hospital Boston after learning the hospital may not have provided complete information about the care they gave a toddler who apparently suffered brain damage during his hospital stay.. .more>

(Don't miss readers' comments )

Americans Elect First African-American President

2008-11-05T01:03:00.003-05:00

For the first time in many, many years, I am proud of my country.

Hubbard Hospital TCU Quality Measures Do Not Meet Standards

2008-08-08T17:50:00.001-04:00

Based on the annual and complaint survey data reported by CMS as of 06/25/08 , this home is listed because in at least one area they caused actual harm to a patient and/or subjected the patients to immediate jeopardy.According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the Quality Indicators, developed by the University of Wisconsin, represent common conditions and important aspects of care. These Quality Indicators reflect a measure of the prevalence or incidence of certain conditions based on a core set of screening, clinical and functional status elements determined by CMS.

NATIONAL NURSING HOME WATCH LIST
TCU-HUBBARD HOSPITAL: Actual Harm and/or Immediate Jeopardy
340 THOMPSON ROAD - 1ST FLOOR WEBSTER MA
TELEPHONE: 5089498420
TYPE OF OWNERSHIP: For profit - Corporation
NUMBER OF BEDS / PERCENT OCCUPIED: 21 / 76

Ratings of Hubbard Hospital TCU areAll results based on raw annual and complaint survey data obtained from CMS (HCFA) as of 06/25/08

NOTE: Federal Regulations do not require State inspectors or the nursing home to notify patients and their families that a particular patient's care has been the subject of a survey violation. Even a finding of substandard care or actual harm does not require notification. Ask the nursing home administrator and your attending physician as to their policy regarding notification. In some cases you may need the assistance of your family attorney. Informed consent regarding continued care at a given facility is not possible without knowing the truth. More recent reports/corrections/complaint surveys may be available. Ask the nursing home administrator.

Patient sues plastic surgeon and Massachusetts hospital

2008-07-27T14:56:00.000-04:00

Patient sues plastic surgeon and Mass. hospital

By Liz Kowalczyk
July 26, 2008

A Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center patient yesterday sued Dr. Loren J. Borud, a plastic surgeon with a history of alcohol and drug abuse, for allegedly performing his operation while impaired.

The patient, Michael K. Hicks of Quincy, said he suffered complications after liposuction surgery and repair of a scar on his chest. Hicks also named five other doctors, two nurses, and the hospital in the lawsuit, saying they realized that Borud was impaired during an earlier surgery that day and should have stopped him from operating again.

The state temporarily suspended Borud's medical license Wednesday for allegedly performing two operations at Beth Israel Deaconess June 27 while impaired, including Hicks's surgery, and appearing to fall asleep during the liposuction. During his first surgery that day, Borud accidentally cut a stitch while closing the patient's incision, and made no attempt to repair the mistake, the board alleged.

The hospital fired Borud earlier this month; he had been practicing for at least six years while struggling with substance abuse problems, the hospital's board said.
In his lawsuit, Hicks said that he agreed to pay $2,570 for the elective surgery. According to the complaint filed in Suffolk Superior Court, Borud told Hicks his surgery would last 60 to 90 minutes, but in the end it turned into an "6 hour and 44 minute odyssey," completed by medical personnel who were not adequately trained, skilled, or experienced.

Borud left the operating room in the middle of the surgery, after closing his eyes twice; a surgical fellow completed the operation, according to the board.
Hicks said he suffered substantial pain as a result of the surgery, and had internal bleeding.
Hospital spokeswoman Judy Glasser said she could not comment on pending litigation.

LIZ KOWALCZYK

Watch Great Documentary Films Online

2008-07-24T19:18:00.000-04:00

I want to share one of the best website I have discovered in a very long time. http://www.freedocumentaries.org/ has a long list of the most thought provoking, insightful documentary films available.. free to watch at your convenience. The list is too long for me to include here, but you will be astonished at what you will find...some of the most important documentaries anywhere..

I happened upon FreeDocumentaries.org while searching for documentary films about India, and found "The Slow Poisoning of India". Half way into this disturbing film I noticed a very tiny message at the top of the screen which read: "If you like this film please donate". I live on a poverty level income and $10. goes a long way with me, but I didn't hesitate for a moment in making a donation. The folks who make these life-altering films available to the public are providing a public service that is priceless.

Here are some I have watched and recommend... and this is only taste of what you will find:

"Born Into Brothels"

SLAVERY: A GLOBAL INVESTIGATION

DISPATCHES: MARK THOMAS ON COCA-COLA

DISPATCHES: SUPERMARKET SECRETS PART 1

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The Future of Food

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BBC News: Child Slavery with Rageh Omaar

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AFGHAN MASSACRE: CONVOY OF DEATH

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Big Bucks, Big Pharma: Marketing Disease and Pushing Drugs

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PRESCRIPTION FOR DISASTER

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Super Size Me

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The Origins of AIDS

Medical Treatment in India

2008-07-24T19:09:00.001-04:00

I love listening to radio documentaries while at the computer and often search for stories about India.� Recently I happened upon this very interesting program about people traveling to India for medical treatment.

Live at the Apollo

from SoundPrint.com

The treatment I have received for several years in the USA has been a travesty, at least in relation to the injury caused by my cosmetic surgery, which encompass all of my medical conditions. I have been meet with denial and deceit at every turn by some of the "best surgeons" in this country.

The more I searched the Internet for information about patients having surgery in India, the more my hope is rekindled in thinking that this may be the only way my case will be reviewed in an unbiased manner.

�

I did not realize until hearing this radio documentary and following this Internet path that people from all over the world travel to India for medical treatment and all the information I found to date is overwhelmingly positive. Every patient testimony I read expresses a tremendous difference in the way they were treated by medical professionals in India compared to the US. They all said Indian doctors and nurses were far more dedicated and truly interested in the well being of the patient. I my Internet research, I have not found a single patient reporting a negative experience.

This makes me feel hopeful regarding a possibility that my own health might be restored to some degree in seeking treatment in India.