MEDICAL MADNESS APPARENT IN THREE CASE STUDIES

It's often said "Lunatics are in charge of the asylum."

I'm convinced they're also in charge of medical care. This holiday
season I wish I had good medical news for readers. But there are times
when I wonder how politicians, lawyers and medical ethicists can be so
void of common sense.

Case No. 1: Horacio Alberto Reyes-Camarena, a convicted murderer, is
currently on Oregon's death row. His crime? He's convicted of stabbing
an 18-year-old girl to death and leaving her older sister scarred for
life. So when will he go to The Great Beyond?

Not soon. Appeals by lawyers against the death penalty can take up to
10 years in Oregon. In the meantime Reyes-Camarena has developed
kidney failure and is receiving renal dialysis, costing taxpayers
$120,000 a year.

A doctor has stated Reyes-Camarena deserves a renal transplant which
will cost $100,000 to keep him alive until his execution! And
Reyes-Camarena has agreed to the surgery if a kidney is found, even
though there's a waiting list for kidney transplants.

Such decisions come at a time when budget cuts in Oregon have made it
impossible to provide health and education for all. No surprise the
scenario has triggered public outrage.

I've also noticed on occasion that taxicab drivers and others in
contact with the public have more common sense than many so-called
intellectuals. For instance, a professor of health, law and policy at
the University of Toronto says prisoners are human beings with full
entitlement to health care. Sorry, but I beg to disagree that killing
an 18-year-old entitles one to full entitlement. Entitlement suggests
a benefit that has been earned. Murder, doesn't rate.

Consider the irony and injustice. This murderer will live while 17
people die every day in the U.S. waiting for a kidney transplant.
Something is wrong with ivory-tower thinking when murderers in prison
receive preferred care.

Patricia Backlar, who served on the National Bioethics Advisory Board
in the Clinton administration, agrees criminals should not receive
better care than others. But she believes the state is on a slippery
slope if it decides who should or should not receive a kidney based on
such things as criminal history.

But why shouldn't criminal history be a factor when there are
insufficient kidneys for all who need one. Surely, if we have just one
kidney and one patient is a law-abiding citizen and the other a
murderer, doesn't good sense dictate who gets it? But it appears
ivory-towered

Ethics 101 thinks differently.

Case No. 2: The lunatics are not all in

North America. In the past, Australian doctors who were suspicious
patients were going from one physician to another for narcotics
prescriptions could make a quick call to the Health Insurance
Commission to see if they were shopping illegally for drugs. Recent
legislation eliminated this telephone service all in the name of privacy.

Why, in the name of heaven, do legislators continue to pass
legislation that protects wrong-doers in the name of freedom and privacy?

Case No. 3: It's common knowledge that drug use is rampant in our
prisons and those of other countries. A report on drug abuse in the
European Union claims over 50 per cent of those entering the jail
system are drug users and many continue to acquire drugs in prison.

According to this study, injecting rates in jail vary between six per
cent and 69 per cent and that 80 per cent of those who inject drugs in
Irish jails have hepatitis C. In addition, many drug users have
tuberculosis and/or are infected with HIV.

This poses a future health problem of immense proportions. Inmates
eventually return to society to further spread disease. Surely there
must be ways to stop drug use in prison. If not there, then where?