MD Whistleblower

I’m a law abiding blogger.  Laws are meant to be obeyed.  If an individual opposes a law in a free country, then he should operate within the system to modify it.  I recognize that even in free societies, certain laws are so unjust and in violation of natural law that that the citizenry may be justified in relying upon other measures to affect necessary reform.  I’m not suggesting that an unwelcome federal tax on gasoline be greeted with pitchforks in the street.  However, our own democracy is a nation where slavery, ‘separate but equal’, exclusive male suffrage and Jim Crow discrimination were all legal.  In such cases, can we expect a legislature to strike down unjust laws that it enacted? Law and medicine are increasingly intertwined today, and more than they should be.   Physicians no longer practice unfettered from legal encroachments and regulations.  I am not referring here to the unfair medical malpractice system, a subject that ...

A few days before this writing, a 32-year-old woman came to see me for an opinion on stomach pain.  Why would I refuse to see her again?  Abdominal pain is an everyday occurrence for a gastroenterologist.  She was accompanied by her mother.  I had never met this woman previously.  She had suffered abdominal pains for as long as she could remember.   She recalled frequent visits with the school nurse when she was a young girl. The Stomach - Usually Not the Source of 'Stomach Pain' She has abdominal distress of varying severity every single day. Despite this medical history, she was not ill and appeared well. Why did I refuse to take on her case?   She seemed like a very appropriate patient for my practice.  I have expertise in evaluating and treating abdominal pain.  The patient was pleasant and cooperative.   I believe she would have been comfortable with me as her gastroenterologist. I learned tha...

Hobby Lobby, unfairly demonized in various corners of the public square, had their religious beliefs upheld in the highest court of the land in a 5-4 decision this week.   The company’s leaders are deeply believing Christians, which I believe is still a lawful practice in this country.  The company tithes to charity and pays its full time employees at least $14.00 hourly, both evidence of a culture of compassion and fair play. No, not these Supremes, the other ones. There is a din of shrill protestations that the company is against contraception and women, which is a complete falsehood.   Hobby Lobby is not the Catholic Church who objects to all forms of artificial birth control as fundamental religious dogma.  The company always intended to cover 16 different forms of contraception, including oral contraceptives, condoms and tubal ligation.  It objects to birth control methods that take action after an embryo has been created. I don’t g...

The meaning of many holidays can be elusive.  On Memorial Day, are we contemplating our fallen heroes, or grilling burgers?  How many shopping days ‘til Christmas?  Labor Day?  Isn’t that the last weekend at the beach? The Fourth of July has just passed.   Hopefully, we paused at least for a few moments to meditate on what happened in Philadelphia in 1776.  I’ve seen the actual Declaration twice in my life.  The first time was when my mom took me to D.C. as a young child.  Later, I took the kids to the National Archives, where we waited in a long line to be rewarded with a few second gaze at the very faded ink that was sequestered behind thick glass. History is such a thrill.  It’s a dynamic discipline that breathes.  This past week, a scholar from Princeton, New Jersey claims that a punctuation mark – a period – does not appear on the original parchment, but was included in the official transcript of the Declarat...