Wednesday, March 29, 2006

 

Philo Dough

I occasionally get zits in weird places. Back, inner thigh, scrotum, etc... But I got one on my knee last week. It was weird but nothing super out of the ordinary. Except for the fact that I had just read an article about some sort of disease that starts out with zit like things that turn into boils. So I was about 60% freaked that I had this horrid disease. So I started watching for any extra zits that started popping up and thankfully it was just a rogue zit. Disaster averted.

I was reading someone's blog who is currently hiding and she had an incident where she needed the Morning After pill, or Plan B, or emergency contraceptive, and she needed it ASAP. There is a very small window of how long this medicine works, and even then it's only 80% effective. So she called up her normal doctor and got the run around. No understanding, no acknowledgement of her concern, she just got a lecture about using condoms and she should come in for a check-up. If it weren't for some unseen force controlling the FDA, this important medicine would be available as over the counter medicine. So this stuff is in the same category as Sudafed and Depends, available pretty much everywhere, and just as safe if you READ THE DIRECTIONS.

But luckily the internet came to the rescue and had several places that prescribed Plan B without a prescription, so she got it and was able to use it properly and use it how the drug was designed to be used: to decrease unwanted pregnancy.

And she is now going to a different doctor who hopefully will listen to their patients and actually care about their lives instead of giving them useless speeches.

But instances like this happen everyday. And not just from doctors. Pharmacists are also able to deny medicine based on "moral ground". Doctors do take the Hippocratic Oath to help and cure everyone, except for this lady. Pharmacists have no such creed. Hopefully they do care about their patients. But if these people wanted to force their morals on others, then they should have picked a job where people expect that. Politician, clergy, news anchor, disc jockey, etc... These people regularly wax poetic about their morals and beliefs and people are okay with that because if you don't like it, you can change the channel or vote for someone else. But doctors are supposed to treat everyone equally and to the best of their ability.

So let's take this discussion into the future a tad. We have now perfected cloning and growing human tissue. But Dr. Jones (Sorry Indiana) doesn't agree with cloning or growing new organs for transplant. So he doesn't help me out when my arm is torn off in a freak putt-putt accident. All he would have to do is order the nano-bots to whip me up an identical arm and then pop it into place, but he doesn't believe in it. So instead I either take my business and my stump elsewhere, or learn to live with a prosthetic arm or no arm at all. Why Dr. Jones? Why did you deny my treatment and a normal life?

I really don't understand how this is okay. I thought that's why we do medical research and pharmaceutical research, to make our lives better. It is not the job of the doctors to decide what research is "good" and what research is "bad". That's the job of philosophers and ethicists.

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