"the hardest thing in this world is to live in it"
“It’s risky and invasive…”
“That’s why God invented the long consent form.”
For all this show can drive me up the wall when dealing with chronic pain issues, I really love it. Especially when they just focus on medicine, and the ethics around all that they do.
So, I was doing a quick search through this blog, as I sit in the airport and idly wait for my plane to board. I was looking for some of my thesis-related affect writing, figuring it might be a good thing to tie to the just-posted topic on torture. (I actually re-read most of my thesis yesterday, a surprisingly not painful procedure, and have affect on the mind. Kind of like Georgia, but less melodic.) And what I came across made me laugh, hard – which makes people look at you kind of funny when you’re sitting in the airport – and I thought, what the hell, I’ll share. I’m particularly amused at my instant irreverent tone, flat out declarations of wrongness (which I still think), and playful invitation to argue.
A new report says that “prisoners subjected only to psychological torture report as much mental anguish as those who are beaten.” Well, perhaps if we ditched the notion of a ghost in the machine and left the mind/body division where it belongs – in the past – this wouldn’t be nearly as much a surprise.
I exist in my finger, I exist in my hand, I exist in my arm and leg and chest and… where do I stop, and where do I begin? What can you remove to still retain I, and what must go away for I to be lost?
Over on the MedHumanities blog, I have a chance to wax philosophic about how medicine has turned into the modern equivalence of the grocery store mustard isle. (No, really.) Perhaps the saddest thing is, that bit is straight out of my thesis.
No one will ever have room to accuse me of taking myself too seriously.
The LA Times has a follow-up on the organ procurement/transplant case that Ina’s Sporula mentioned a few days back. Some intrepid soul at the paper decided to request the originally referred to report via the Freedom of Information Act, and received a 76-page document from federal investigators that reads like a litany of 101 things to not do when procuring organs for transplant.
As more comes out about this case, it’s likely that the transplant surgeon will be the one made an example of, the over-zealous doctor that pushed too far. It is, after all, a nightmare scenario I hear repeated as the basis for why so many people are not organ donors, even though they would want an organ transplant themselves if it were necessary. But what is so interesting, in a “if you can’t be a good example you’ll be a horrible warning” sort of way, is reading the summary of the full report in the LA Times and realizing how many medical personnel (nurses and doctors) were present in the room, uncomfortable with what was going on, and said nothing until days, days, later. This seems a much more systemic problem than one over-zealous surgeon, to something endemic within the culture of the hospital itself.
-Kelly Hills
Originally published at the American Journal of Bioethics Editors Blog.