Spreading the Wealth
Thursday, April 29, 2010 at 3:38PM (Is “Social Justice” Unjust?)
Let me first answer the question with another question: Does one size REALLY fit all?
Here is a true story. (We report. You decide.)
My parents were divorced when I was two. Although my father was an attorney, he was never successful, and provided very little child support to my mother, who essentially raised me as a single parent. (Until I attended college, I saw my father every other Sunday.)
My mother earned a very modest income as a secretary for the Navy Department. We were fairly poor, although I never really thought of ourselves as such while I was growing up. In spite of the daily financial hardships she faced, my mother tried to do what she could to allow me to enjoy summers away from the hot city. When I was 7, I was given the precious gift of a 4-week stay at a Jewish Sleep-Away Camp in the Pocono Mountains. It was not until many years had passed that I learned about the heated parental argument this situation had engendered. Mom and Dad were both Jewish, but had very different personalities and philosophies. My father was a true Conservative, who taught me the Ten Commandments, plied me with classic literature & poetry, and educated me about American values in many, many ways. My mother was a good woman with a good heart, but was not very sophisticated.
My father, as I learned, had strenuously objected to this camp because, in his opinion, it was Communistic.
I will never know what my mother knew, or understood, about his point of view or about the ‘philosophy’ of that camp. At any rate, I went there. A week or so into my stay, she spent what little money she had on a ‘care’ package of ‘goodies’ for me.
I opened the unexpected gift from home and started to savor the various cookies and candies it held. You might imagine my surprise and chagrin when, within seconds after I had peeked inside, it was briskly whisked away by the senior counselor who told me, “We share everything here.” Over the next few days, the contents were parceled out - equally - to each and every child in my bunk. I had no say in the matter. I cannot recall if I cried, but the vivid recollection of this incident has remained with me for 56 years. No more care packages arrived for the rest of my stay, which I cut short.
As Margaret Thatcher once said, “The trouble with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”
Joseph M. Scherzer, M.D.
Reader Comments (4)
I've been seeking an M. D. who will protect me from off-label anti-psychotics given without informed consent. Can't find one. Any suggestions? I'm in Iowa. The practice seems endemic. One M. D. wrote me that it was futile. Another: 'Tell me when you find one.' Thanks! Chuck
Charles Howard Hartman on Facebook.
Great lesson in the fallacy of socialism, Dr Scherzer.
Chuck Hartman, you can go to www.acam.org , put in your zip code and a 100 mile radius and then choose from a list of dotors likely to be more in line with your goals. Best regards!
--
Mr. Hartman, it is never a matter of finding a physician who will "protect" you from any mode of treatment - "off-label anti-psychotics" or whatever else freaks you out - but rather YOUR decision to assent to a recommended course of treatment.
If you conceive the risks associated - in fact or in fantasy - with a particular medication or procedure to be unacceptable, a doctor really has only two options.
1) He must find an alternative way to address your medical condition
2) He must withdraw from your care so that you can seek and find another practitioner with whose treatment plans you agree.
You're the patient. It's your life, your well-being. Those of us in the sawbones racket are at YOUR service. We advise you. We give orders to nurses, to technicians. We do NOT give orders to you.
Any doctor who deals with you otherwise is violating the canons of medicine, and I advise you - that's ADVICE, not an order - to stay the hellangone away from him.
If the practice of prescribing off-label seems endemic, it's because the inscription over the front door of the FDA really ought to be "A Day Late and a Dime Short." This bureaucracy is NOT to be relied upon as the arbiter of proper pharmaceuticals use, their arrogance and self-importance notwithstanding.
Bear in mind that the use of very low-dose daily Aspirin therapy as a means of reducing platelet aggregation in patients at risk of atheromatous ischemic cardiovascular disease - while undisputed standard of care in most cases - is STILL "off-label" according to the bloody FDA.
Mr. Hartman, if you repose complete and uncritical trust in politicians, bureaucrats, and other suckers-at-the-public teat, you aren't just suffering from a mood or thought disorder.
You're stupid.
--
Thanks for the post Dr Scherzer. I can relate to your outrage. If its clear how unfair redistributive justice is to a child why do so many adults not get it?