A distressing terror report card for public health centers
If you've been a reader of mine for any length of time at all, you know how I feel about our nation's preparedness for a terrorist strike involving bio-warfare or other airborne agents. If you don't, you can probably guess from the general tenor of my Daily Doses that I think we're almost ridiculously under-prepared for the next 9/11 - especially if it involves the intentional spread of deadly diseases.
And though I hate to be proven right on this point, some new evidence gathered by an independent policy research organization, the respected RAND Corporation, confirms just how scary it is in the terrorist's playground that is the U.S.A - even four full years after that darkest of days in the summer of 2001. Here's what I mean:
According to an Associated Press article from a few weeks ago, a group of RAND researchers posing as emergency physicians called government health centers across the country in a sort of medical "secret shopper" exercise. During the calls, made to public health centers in communities of all sizes, they described TO THE LETTER symptoms of various bio-toxins the DHS has determined are likely to be loosed on us by terrorists. The study's "doctors" spoke to each clinic's personnel in the context of treating an actual patient exhibiting the symptoms.
And although the rate of response for these clinics turned out to better than expected (91% of those that couldn't answer the phone returned calls in less than 30 minutes), NOT ONE of the sample of 19 clinics suggested isolating a "patient" exhibiting the textbook signs of highly contagious smallpox! Also, in none of these interactions did the government "action officer" even advise the caller to use any kind of protective equipment or procedures to avoid contracting the disease.
Beyond this, one of these bozos apparently even told a RAND imposter doc to "go back to bed" because no other cases of the disease being described (in that instance, bubonic plague) had been reported in the area…
This, despite the fact that bubonic plague is NOT TRANSMISSABLE from person-to-person, but rather the result of an infected flea's bite. Duh!
Needless to say, the study, funded by the department of Health and Human Services, points to some dismally discouraging shortcomings in our emergency terror response mechanism. There are 2,800 such clinics across the United States, and if each of them is advising first response doctors this poorly, we're in major trouble, folks…
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The (pediatric) Empire Strikes Back
Back on June 3rd, I wrote to you applauding the fact that an increasing number of informed, educated, and conscientious parents nowadays are electing not to have their children vaccinated for many common (I should say formerly common) childhood diseases.
But it seems this just isn't OK with some prideful doctors.
According to reports from WMAQTV in Chicago, WBAL in Baltimore, and other sources, a national survey of pediatricians conducted by researchers from Illinois' Rush University Medical Center indicates that doctors are shunning little patients whose parents don't want them jabbed with needles and pumped full of obsolete diseases.
Nearly 4 in 10 physicians surveyed have refused to treat families who don't want their children vaccinated for any reason. Around 30% reject kids whose parents only object to SOME of the jabs.
The gist of many of these egomaniacs' responses was that if parents didn't trust their judgment as doctors, there was little they could do to help their children. Hmmm. When did doctors become dictators? If every doctor "fired" every patient who didn't follow their advice to the letter, no one in this or any other country would be getting any medical care.
I hope the doctors who turn these kids away simply because their parents are smarter than average get fired by all the rest of their patients. It's time to clean house of this type of medical authoritarianism…
Never afraid to "dictate" what's right and wrong,
William Campbell Douglass II,
