By now, you have all seen this.
The Bush administration today issued a sweeping new regulation that protects a broad range of health-care workers -- from doctors to janitors -- who refuse to participate in providing services that they believe violate their personal, moral or religious beliefs.
The controversial rule empowers federal health officials to cut off federal funding for any state or local government, hospital, clinic, health plan, doctor's office or other entity if it does not accommodate employees who exercise their "right of conscience."
I am a physician. I am Board Certified in Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases, and I am currently working as an Internist in a major, urban tertiary care center.
I would like to make an announcement.
If any of you reading this use cocaine, then STAY THE HELL OUT OF MY HOSPITAL.
Cocaine use is illegal. It is powerfully addictive. It can cause a heart attack or stroke, which may cause sudden death. But most importantly, the use of cocaine violates my personal, moral, and religious beliefs, and as such, I can no longer provide medical services to those of you that abuse cocaine.
Everybody got that? If you use cocaine and need the help of a physician on a Friday night, do NOT come into the emergency department where I am working. I will not help you, even though I am the only admitting physician in our hospital at 4 AM. Please take a moment from the middle of your dopaminergic crisis, and call ahead to ensure that I am not working, before you present to our hospital. It's the least that you can do, to ensure that my personal and moral beliefs are not violated.
For that matter, any of you that shoot heroin, you're implicated too. Stay the HELL away from my hospital. Crystal meth? GET OUT. In fact, any of you that have a positive urine toxicology screen for any illicit substance? Please be advised that as soon as your little habit is revealed, I will be immediately signing off on your case. If this happens in the middle of the night and no other physician is available for 12 hours, then oh fucking well. That's what you get for violating all that I perceive as good and pure.
Gotta string you stoners up, too. After all, for many excellent reasons, marijuana is illegal, and as such it violates my - what is it again? - right, my "right of conscience."
While we're at it. Prisoners, you're on my shit list. If you're in prison, then this usually means that you have committed a crime. Crimes are illegal. And as such, crime violates my sense of (everybody, say it with me!) personal, moral and religious beliefs. As such, prisoners are no longer eligible to receive medical care by yours truly. Bloodless heathens.
And all of you that have been in car accidents? You have probably been either speeding or drinking. Speeding and drinking under the influence are both illegal. No care for you.
And don't get me started on all of the PERFECTLY LEGAL rights and privileges (including some that have been guaranteed to you by the Supreme Court) that are going to get the scalpel. A bunch of you guys are about to be disqualified from my care, too.
Specifically: all of you African-Americans, gay-Americans, Jew-Americans, Muslim-Americans, women-Americans, poor-Americans, uninsured-Americans, and especially all of you foreigners - I will no longer be providing medical care to you, either. Today, I am hereby permitted to hide behind my 19th-century prejudices, under the premise that providing care to you violates my "personal beliefs."
Everybody got that? STAY OUT OF MY HOSPITAL, you ingrates.
What?
Say that again?
I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.
I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug...
I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know...
I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.
Hippocratic Oath, Modern Version. Excerpts.
Wait a second. Do you actually mean to tell me that everything I just said violates the oath that I took when I finished medical school?
Oh.
OBLIGATORY UPDATE: This is my first time on the recommended list. I just called my Mom, and told her that she HAD to see this. :-) Thank you!
DOUBLE OBLIGATORY: Top of the recommended list??? Wow. Thanks everyone.
ONE MORE: h/t Casey, who I think has the comment of the thread below:
No one person should be let to suffer with an ailment when a doctor stands readily by. Indeed, it is a travesty and inhumane, especially given the career choice of the individual who refuses treatment to the patient.
Exactly. EXACTLY. That's our anthem on this moving forward.