Wednesday 19 January 2011

“Do As We Say, Not As We Do”, Example: 458

The NHS is gambling with patients' health by increasingly banning operations for hernias, cataracts and arthritic joints to save money, one of the UK's most senior medical figures said.
Really? Gosh, how awful, something must be done, etc, etc…
John Black, the president of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, accused NHS primary care trusts (PCTs) of pursuing a "dangerous" course by refusing treatment to patients, who will then suffer unnecessary pain and have less chance of recovering fully.
I wonder, where was John Black when his fellows were enthusiastically endorsing plans to refuse treatments to patients smokers? And no doubt, later on, drinkers and people who are ‘obese’…

I don’t remember him condemning that. Does anyone else?

4 comments:

PT said...

It is, of course, to a certain kind of Doctor, perfectly permissible to discriminate against people whose lifestyle has resulted, or may have resulted, or conceivably might possibly have resulted, in the sickness which they present. People who have a lifestyle, that is. And we hear on the BBC this morning that rickets is making a comeback because people are not getting enough sunshine. The health Nazis blame this on people sitting indoors with their computers, TVs, PS3s etc, and not getting out enough. What about those same Health Nazis who have been berating us all for not using factor 50 (a sheet of cardboard, in effect) on our kids and ourselves? Does that have nothing to do with the Vitamin D deficiency?
I do wish they'd stop trying to be so politically correct, so smugly superior, and just get on with doing the job we pay them to do. Medical advice is fine, but it should be just that - advice, which I have the choice to accept or reject. I don't wish to allow these people the power to compel or blackmail me to follow their orders.

Dick Puddlecote said...

Maybe he whispered it very quietly ... to himself. ;)

Ta for the link.

Anonymous said...

I'm just glad those who are clearly mentally ill and / or simply bored are still able to get their breast enlargements done on the NHS etc etc!

WV -grope!

JuliaM said...

" And we hear on the BBC this morning that rickets is making a comeback because people are not getting enough sunshine."

That was a bizarre case!

"Maybe he whispered it very quietly ... to himself."

Maybe. Shall we give him the benefit of the doubt?

Nah! :)