May 2000 (vol. 16, #4)
1601 N Tucson Blvd #9, Tucson AZ
85716
c 2000 Physicians for Civil Defense
There are many reasons for the political importance of the medical profession. One, of course, is that medical care is sometimes lifesaving (although medicine is actually of less importance for the overall survival of the species than agriculture, engineering, and a number of other less glamorous occupations). Dependency on government for lifesaving treatments or pain relief tends to discourage rebellion. Another is that medicine is a learned profession dedicated to the welfare of human beings; people believe their doctors are knowledgeable and trust in their integrity.
Physicians have not always merited the public trust. At times, they have been the willing collaborators of tyrants. In National Socialist Germany, they carried out the extermination of the unfit-those burdened with lebensunwertiges Leben (life unworthy to be lived)-and even helped determine who was capable of work, and who was sent to instant death on arrival at Au- schwitz. In the Soviet Union, psychiatrists labeled dissenters with a diagnosis of mental illness (such as ``sluggish schizophrenia''), then subjected them to torture and mind-destroying drugs in mental ``hospitals.''
American physicians also are coopted into serving political ends-always, of course, in the name of health. Now that the unilateral disarmament of the United States is proceeding smoothly and inexorably, the voices of Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) and International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) have fallen silent on the dangers of weapons of mass destruction. Instead, they are helping to achieve the ``consensus'' that Al Gore recognizes as critical to acceptance of a global environmental regime. The moral schizophrenia of the American medical profession has been brought into stark relief by the saga of Elián Gonzalez, seized at the confluence of Lenin's birthday, Earth Day, Passover, and Holy Saturday.
First, consider the guns. In addition to its sympathetic view of PSR and IPPNW, organized medicine characterizes guns in the hands of Americans as a public health menace. AMA official policy (H-145.990) encourages members to inquire about firearms as a part of childproofing the home, and to remind parents to store firearms in an unusable state-locked up, with ammunition stored separately . One patient reports being asked, in the course of a ``medical history,'' whether he had any guns; how many he had; where they were located; and how much ammunition he kept. As the government has extensive access to ``confidential'' medical records, they could be a rich source of information on firearms ownership.
As to the Associated Press photograph of an assault weapon being aimed by a U.S. government agent at a terrified six-year-old, from the AMA comes the sound of silence. Perhaps the AMA is convinced, like Attorney General Reno, that loaded weapons are safe (though only in the hands of federal agents) as long as the agent's finger is outside the trigger guard. Might the AMA be unfamiliar with other rules of gun safety (the gun is pointed in an unsafe direction and the agent can't know what's behind the target in a tiny bungalow with flimsy walls and more than 1,000 people nearby)?
While the AMA has press releases immediately ready to deploy concerning the safety of health care providers, in the event that a sniper takes aim at an abortionist, their publicist has nothing to say about Dr. Lydia Usategui, the Miami psychiatrist who was at the Gonzalez home to witness the removal of the child and its psychological effect. She was forced to the ground, threatened with a submachine gun, and then gassed with pepper spray, by one of the fearless 131 federal agents. (Either they don't believe in the rule of never pointing a gun at something one is not willing to destroy, or they were willing to kill her.)
Physicians such as Irwin Redlener, M.D., a former participant in the Clinton Task Force on Health Care Reform and advocate of increased government controls on medicine, helped to justify the armed assault by writing that little Elián was in ``imminent danger to his physical and emotional well-being'' at the hands of those who rescued him from the Atlantic-without even examining the child first-hand.
Ever vigilant about persons who might practice medicine without a license, the AMA seems unconcerned about Cuban practitioners admitted to this country (one in possession of mind-altering drugs, which were confiscated by Customs officials). The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) has asked the Board of Physician Quality Assurance of Maryland to investigate. Medical diagnosis or treatment by these foreigners would be unlawful, unless our federal government has officially employed them (see www.aapsonline.org).
Several civil liberties issues are involved. One is the right of a patient or his legal guardian to choose his own physicians. (At the time of the raid, Lazaro Gonzalez had temporary custody by court order.) Another is the right to refuse treatment except in the case of imminent danger to self or others.
Foundational principles of medical ethics are under siege: the moral duty of the physician to place the welfare of the patient first, ahead of political agendas, and to do no harm. A court may determine that Juan Miguel Gonzalez gets custody of his illegitimate offspring (he was divorced from Elián's mother in May, 1991, and Elián was born in December, 1993), or that immigration law requires Elián to be repatriated to Cuba. The duty of the physician is a separate question. A physician who believes that Cuba is a totalitarian state, which treats human beings like Castro's personal property, and that life as a slave is an affront to human nature and harmful to the human spirit, could not ethically cooperate in any government action to forcibly return a patient to that environment.
Many do not realize the extent to which medical ethics is being turned upside down in academe, government programs, and the citadel of organized medicine. The New Ethics is ``population-based.'' The New Physician's primary loyalty under the new oaths is to ``humanity,'' ``society,'' ``the cause of promoting a better world through a preventive approach to the problems of mankind,'' ``the health [in a broad sense] of mankind.'' The individual human being, such as Elián, is weighed in the balance against the greater good of society, as determined by the state, the master of all.
``I suppose they'll be trying Forgeries this morning?''
``Treason!''
``That's quartering,'' said Jerry. ``Barbarous!''
``It is the law,'' remarked the ancient clerk, turning his surprised spectacles upon him. ``It is the law.''
``It's hard in the law to spile a man, I think. It's hard enough to kill him, but it's wery hard to spile him, sir.''
``Not at all,'' returned the ancient clerk. ``Speak well of the law. Take care of your chest and voice, my good friend, and leave the law to take care of itself.''
. . . Altogether, the Old Bailey, at that date, was a choice illustration of the precept that ``Whatever is, is right''; an aphorism that would be as final as it is lazy, did it not include the troublesome consequence, that nothing that ever was, was wrong.
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
...After all this long journey and all we done for them scoundrels, here it was all come to nothing... because they could have the heart to serve Jim such a trick as that, and make him a slave again all his life, and amongst strangers, too, for forty dirty dollars.
Once I said to myself it would be a thousand times better for Jim to be a slave at home where his family was, as long as he'd got to be a slave, and so I'd better write a letter to Tom Sawyer and tell him to tell Miss Watson where he was. But I soon give up that notion...: she'd be ... disgusted at his rascality and ungratefulness for leaving her, and so she'd sell him straight down the river again; and if she didn't, everybody naturally despises an ungrateful nigger, and they'd make Jim feel it all the time, and so he'd feel ornery and disgraced....
...I got a piece of paper and set down and wrote: Miss Watson your runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile below Pikesville.... Huck Finn.
I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life.... But I ... laid the paper down and set there thinking.... And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me.... [S]omehow I couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind.... and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world.... and then I happened to look around and I saw that paper.
It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:
``All right, then, I'll go to hell''-and tore it up.
It was awful thoughts, and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming. I shoved the whole thing out of my head; and said I would take up wickedness again, which was in my line, being brung up to it, and the other warn't. And for a starter, I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again; and if I could think up anything worse, I would do that, too; because as long as I was in, and in for good, I might as well go the whole hog.
Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Already, the federal government is raising the cost of construction, transportation, and energy in many ways. Half the gasoline price at the pump is taxes. U.S. oil production is down 17%, the lowest since before World War II. Clinton refuses to open oil reserves in Rocky Mountain States or Alaska. Gore promises, if elected President, to ban any new offshore along California and Florida coasts. Clinton has locked up the cleanest coal by designating a huge park in Utah. The EPA is threatening to close eight coal-fired plants. Environmental regulations and park designations make 60% of federal lands with high potential for natural gas off limits. Gas pipelines are now almost impossible to build. Perhaps coincidentally, Al Gore owns about $500,000 worth of stock in Occidental Petroleum, which intends to drill for oil in Colombia. The value of its holdings will surely increase if offshore drilling is banned (Insider's Report 4/00).
Since 1993, the DOD has had an Office of Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Environmental Security. Like AIDS, environmental issues are being made into national security issues, so that the Clinton-Gore Administration can use the military to advance the Gore Green agenda.
The Army now plans to use lead-free bullets, replacing the lead with tungsten. The latter is much more expensive, less effective in disabling an enemy, and highly destructive of gun barrels. Moreover, the U.S. has no tungsten reserves; its sources include Brazil, Indonesia, and China (Insight 5/22/00).
A strong positive correlation between health and wealth has long been recognized. It is generally thought that wealth allows the purchase of goods and services that promote health, such as safe water, better nutrition, and more medical care. However, better health can also promote higher income in several ways, including higher productivity and a ``demographic dividend.'' In East Asia, working-age population grew several times faster than the dependent population between 1965 and 1990. Among the factors that decreased child and infant mortality was the use of DDT. Patterns of energy use are also important; the poor rely heavily on biomass (such as wood and dung) and need lots of children to gather it (Science 2000;287:1207-8).
Poor health is one reason for the poverty of Sub-Saharan Africa. AIDS is getting most of the blame. However, a World Health Organization report states that the yearly costs of malaria exceed all foreign aid combined, and that Africa's GNP would be $100 billion (30%) greater had malaria been eliminated years ago. Anti-malarial efforts are still crippled by the EPA's genocidal decision to ban DDT, against scientific advice (The Week That Was, 5/6/00, www.sepp.org). The Gore Green agenda spells more death and poverty for Africa.