RES: doctor disease

[Marta Russell]

Points well taken.  I don't deny any of that what you list here does
contribute largely to the problem in many cases and in many areas of
the world.  However, in the case of my friend's blood clot case these
doctors are well fed, well paid, not overworked in a community care
clinic (though they may be undertrained) physicians.  In Bob's case it
was not some overworked doc in a poor neighborhood (who might actually
have done a better job when you think about it) it was several docs in
Malibu and Santa Monica, CA  with plush offices in the more affluent
communities.  The fact that a leg turns blue and swells to boot is a
pretty clear sign that blood flow is being cut off, yet Bob had to
become disabled to the point of using a crutches and a wheelchair
before he got to a physician that did the correct test and that
physician just looked at the leg and knew.  Bob could have lost his
leg not to mention all the pain he went through!!!  So one doc out of
four with medical degrees (probably from well known universities given
the socio economic neighborhoods in which they live and practice
medicine) interpreted the picture correctly. In the US, we have always
had capitalist medicine and a two or three tiered system where care is
available to those with the best insurance and scarcer for those
without - where docs, insurance corps and other institutions all can
profit from health care - the prices keep going up and the quality of
care seems to be getting poorer.  I suspect that the RAnd study was
conducted because more of the bourgeoisie are being affected by the
lack of quality care.

best,
Marta

Alexandre Fenelon wrote:
> 
> -I would like to make some statements to defend my profession here:
> 1-It´s true that medical mistakes cause a lot of harm to people, however,
> much of this harm is due to the limitations of medicine as science. Each
> disease has many diferential diagnosis, so it´s not always possible to
> establish a correct diagnosis. Furthermore, many medical treatments have
> a certain rate of complications, however, they are used despite this
snip