August 11 - August 17, 2002
Saturday, August 17, 2002 Unitarian Church Calls For an End to the War on Drugs In a recent "Statement of Conscience", the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations called for an end to the war on drugs as a matter of conscience. Some exerpts: * For United States taxpayers, the price tag on the drug offensive has soared from $66 million in 1968 to almost $20 billion in 2000, an increase of over 30,000 percent. In practice the drug war disproportionately targets people of color and people who are poverty-stricken. Coercive measures have not reduced drug use, but they have clogged our criminal justice system with non-violent offenders. It is time to explore alternative approaches and to end this costly war. * The war on drugs has blurred the distinction between drug use and drug abuse...Yet many people who use both legal and illegal drugs live productive, functional lives and do no harm to society. * Legal prohibition of drugs leads to inflated street value, which in turn incites violent turf wars among distributors. The whole pattern is reminiscent of the proliferation of organized crime at the time of alcohol prohibition in the early twentieth century. That policy also failed. * Instead of the current war on drugs, we offer the following policies for study, debate, and implementation...Establish a legal, regulated, and taxed market for marijuana. Treat marijuana as we treat alcohol. Comment: this is a thoughtful review of the failed US led "war on drugs." It is important in that it comes from the Unitarian Universalist Association. article ] Friday, August 16, 2002 Court Upholds California's Limits on 'Emotional Distress' NewsMax.com Wires. Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2002. SAN FRANCISCO – Relatives of patients allegedly victimized in medical malpractice cases may not sue for "emotional distress" unless they witness the injury and are aware of what is going on at the time, the California Supreme Court ruled Monday. The ruling came at a time when a number of medical organizations have warned that doctors were being forced to give up their practices because of multimillion-dollar jury awards that were catapulting malpractice insurance premiums out of their reach. In a unanimous decision, the court found that two women who were at the hospital did not have a valid claim for "negligent infliction of emotional distress," or NIED, as a result of surgery performed on their mother in 1994 that nearly ended in tragedy because they were not in the operating room when surgeons nicked a major artery, causing the elderly woman to suffer serious bleeding that triggered a frantic effort to save her life. "The plaintiffs have not shown they were aware of the transection of [the patient's] artery at the time it occurred," the court said. "Nor have they shown they were contemporaneously aware of any error in the subsequent diagnosis and treatment of that injury in the moments they saw their mother rolled through the hallway by medical personnel." Janice Bird and her sisters, Dayle Edgmon and Kim Moran, had sued three doctors on the claim they witnessed the incident in which their mother, Nita Bird, wound up in a critical-care ward after what was supposed to be a 20-minute outpatient procedure at a Los Angeles-area hospital on Nov. 30, 1994. The two daughters who were at the hospital that day, Bird and Edgmon, contended that they suffered emotional distress when, after an hour of waiting, they began hearing from hospital personnel that the procedure to implant a chemotherapy catheter had run into problems and that their mother might have suffered a stroke. Moran, the third daughter, was told of the situation by telephone. Their growing alarm was fueled by calls over the hospital loudspeaker for a thoracic surgeon to respond immediately, the sight of a doctor hurrying by carrying an armload of blood units, and the sight of their mother, her blue coloring indicating a lack of oxygen, being wheeled down a hallway into emergency surgery. The court disagreed however, and concluded that state law required a potential plaintiff to see the injury take place and to be aware that negligence was involved. In a statement that could have implications for future NIED suits, the court found that the adult daughters did not have the necessary medical knowledge to be aware that malpractice may have been involved in the code-blue crisis. "The problem with defining the injury-producing event as defendants' failure to diagnose and treat the damaged artery is that plaintiffs could not meaningfully have perceived any such failure," the decision said. "Except in the most obvious cases, a misdiagnosis is beyond the awareness of lay bystanders." The lawsuit and its potential impact on malpractice awards drew the interest of American Medical Association, which said in a June 5 amicus curiae, or friend-of-the-court brief, that a broader interpretation of who is eligible for NIED damages could have major implications in the financial survival of health care providers and the future access that family members will have to hospitalized patients undergoing treatments. "It may not be known when malpractice will occur, but it is known that, when it does occur, one or more members of a patient's family may be nearby," the brief said. "Moreover, health care professionals worried about potential bystander NIED liability can take steps to isolate the patient from his or her family." Bird's daughters said in their depositions that they knew something was amiss, but the court ruled that was not good enough and that the sisters needed to have witnessed the artery transection and known that a mishap had occurred. "Even if plaintiffs believed, as they stated in their declarations, that their mother was bleeding to death, they had no reason to know that the care she was receiving to diagnose and correct the cause of the problem was inadequate," the court said. Nita Bird survived the surgical procedures, but she died of cancer in 1996. Copyright 2002 by United Press International. All rights reserved. Reprinted from newsmax.com [ article ] Thursday, August 15, 2002 Australian medical association calls for medical litigation rules overhaul After a key medical insurer, St. Paul, stopped providing medical malpractice insurance in Australia, a medical liability crisis has been unleased in Australia. Liquidators were called in to help cover medical liability costs, but they can only guarantee coverage until the end of 2002. [ The Lancet Volume 360, Number 9331 10 August 2002 ] Wednesday, August 14, 2002 How to Keep Health Care From Being Sued out of Existence Dave Eberhart, NewsMax.com, Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2002. The soaring cost of medical lawsuits is leaving some parts of America without health care. One state has a successful solution that could ease the problem nationwide, but powerful interest groups are ready to fight.
In one recent skirmish in the battle over tort reform, President Bush blasted, "What we want is quality health care, not rich trial lawyers.” Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C, a trial attorney whose lawsuits against doctors and insurance companies helped make him a multimillionaire, claimed that medical lawsuits were not driving up health care costs.
Despite such fighting words, experts point out that tort reforms can work and history proves it.
[ article ] Tuesday, August 13, 2002 Book Review: You've Been Had! This book by epidemiologist Melvin Benarde makes the case that the media and environmentalists have turned American into a nation of hypochondriacs. [ BMJ 2002;325:343 ( 10 August ) ] Preventing Falls in the Elderly This study of 1090 Australians over 70 years old found that group based exercise was the best way to decrease falls at home. The exercise seemed to cause improved balance. Group exercise was more effective than home hazard management and vision improvement. Comment: this adds weight to another study that showed that Tai Chi exercising reduced falls. [ BMJ 2002;325:128 ( 20 July )] Monday, August 12, 2002 Hand Lacerations < 2 cm Long Don't Need Suturing This study of 154 patients found that full-thickness uncomplicated hand lacerations less than 2 cm in length don't need suturing. Cosmetic outcome was the same whether or not the laceration was sutured. [ BMJ 2002;325:299 ( 10 August ) ] |
All times are GMT -8. The time now is 00:46. |
Powered by: vBulletin Version 3.0.3
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.