DOCTORS AREN'T RESPONSIBLE: - How can we blame people who spend their childhood and teenage years working their butts off learning details by the proven rote method? The parents and society encourage the behavior that leads to a large number of dysfunctional patterns. They often have no time to socialize as they learn volumes of unrelated and un-integrated bits of data. Much of the data should be in hand held computers - it doesn't help to put names to things or impress people with arcane and abstruse jargon. On the other hand the doctors who rise to the level of expert want to ensure their awesome importance continues and they are responsible. The chicken and the egg analogy or the cycle of violent abuse have the same structural roots and needs to change. Who will make these changes? How can accountability and compassion be legislated in education and all other areas of bureaucracy? McMaster University has a good idea when they refuse to graduate a doctor no matter what his marks are, if the individual hasn't had experience. They have a co-op program and they could benefit a lot from Patch Adams still. I highly recommend his movie and life to any doctor who doesn't want to become part of a machine that is destroying lives. At least Dr. Mengele had a goal to improve the genetics; he wasn't so involved in his pocketbook. Of course it is an exaggeration to hold Dr. Mengele up as an example of the medical 'beneficent paternalism' theory of 'expert' guidance. Jerry Spence has a grass roots ethics summer course for lawyers that doctors might learn from as well. Why do schools turn out anti-social elitists in the first place? The problem was already well established in 1000 BC as the top 300 members of Milesian society operated the 'Perpetual Sailors' form of government where the rich got richer and fighting for increased power was commonplace. One thing can always be certain in such strife, someone loses and usually the winners' total improvements in resources are less than what was lost by all parties to the conflict. The doctors who make money or the lawyers as modern aristocratic hopefuls are desirous of power rather than helpful and compassionate or acting as healers. Society would be better off by far if it found a way to reward those who deserve it and enable those who try. There was such a system that lasted for a lot longer than our current history of 5,000 years or what James Joyce calls a 'nightmare'. |
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