Life as an Extreme Sport

Author: Kelly

“you will not be allowed to die”

Bioethics

The latest issue of the American Journal of Bioethics has a story that, ideally, everyone should read. That won’t happen, but hey, I’ll do my part – here’s the abstract and a link to the whole thing:

The controversy over abusive interrogations of prisoners during the war against terrorism spotlights the need for clear ethics norms requiring physicians and other clinicians to prevent the mistreatment of prisoners. Although policies and general descriptions pertaining to clinical oversight of interrogations in United States’ war on terror prisons have come to light, there are few public records detailing the clinical oversight of an interrogation. A complaint by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) led to an Army investigation of an interrogation at the United States prison at Guantanamo Bay. The declassified Army investigation and the corresponding interrogation log show clinical supervision, monitoring and treatment during an interrogation that employed dogs, prolonged sleep deprivation, humiliation, restraint, hypothermia and compulsory intravenous infusions. The interrogation and the involvement of a psychologist, physician and medics violate international and medical norms for the treatment of prisoners.

the “r” word

...and everything else, Bioethics

Oiy! Obviously I’m tired – my brain is coming up with brilliance hours after it’s needed! The next time I’m asked for suggestions about what video clips to use to illustrate bedside rationing, someone make sure I remember Survivor!

(This is what happens when I start re-reading Multitude. Voluntarily. Brain synapses just start committing suicide, thinking they’ll get it over with earlier rather than latter. By the end of the weekend, I doubt I’ll be able to form a coherent sentence. But man, I’ll have cool ideas…)

is it safe to come out yet?

life and living

Dip me in teflon, roll me in kevlar, and drop me off at home?

No? Okay…

Alright, seriously, and kind of amusingly, I had no less than eight people contact me today wondering where the hell I was, and was ambushed by another few after class and dragged out for alcohol and confirming I wasn’t a figment of imagination. It would seem that when I don’t post here, or at the AJOBlog, or WoBioBlog, or MedHumanities, it looks like I dropped off the face of the planet and people worry.

…I’m actually touched, so thanks for contacting me.

But, I’m fine. I’m utterly swamped, between work and class, and to be very honest, I’m trying to to do a full semester of schoolwork in half the time – when I’m traveling and in Oregon, I’m spending time with my sick mother, not so much with the philosophy. (And frankly, I think that shows I have my priorities right, but that might just be me.) I’ve kept up on one class (god, I should hope so), fallen miserably behind on the other, and am doing, I think, okay at work.

On top of everything else, I came down with a nastyass sinus infection post-travel last week, so have been knocked on my ass from that. Mmm naproxen is my new favourite painkiller! (And for me, that’s saying something!)

And while I am fine, and coping, I occasionally do flip right the hell out and go major stressball – feel sorry for the people who have to be around me for that, though, not me. I bounce back rather rapidly from those moods, but I worry about the people who have to see them. (And I really do my best to melt in private, but sometimes, I fail.) Well – I worry about most of the people who see ’em. The people who push my buttons in class Weds night can fuck right off.

Oh hey, it’s Wednesday, innit? Humm, go figure.

Anyhow. Rambling. Tired. Going to finish watching American Idol and go to sleep – gotta be awake and perky at o’dark o’clock.

when through water’s thickness

...and everything else, life and living, wisdom and folly

When through the water’s thickness I see the tiling at the bottom of a pool, I do not see is despite the water and the reflections there, I see it through them and because of them. If there were no distortions, no ripples of sunlight, if it were without this flesh that I saw the geometry of the tiles, then I would cease to see it as it is and where it is — which is to say, beyond any identical, specific place. I cannot say that the water itself — the aqeous power, the syrupy and shimmering element — is in space; all this is not somewhere else, either, but it is not in the pool. It inhabits it, it materializes itself there, yet it is not contained there; and if I raise my eyes toward the screen of cypresses where the web of reflections is playing, I cannot gainsay the fact that the water visits it, too, or at least sends into it, upon it, its active and living essence.
-Merleau-Ponty