Thorne Webb Dreyer, Editor
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Tag Archives: Medicine
Medical Referrals: Another Part of the Problem with the American Health Care System
Mark Allen Miller.Referral System Turns Patients Into CommoditiesBy Sandeep Jauhar, M.D. / May 25, 2009 I was chatting recently with a doctor friend who was depressed because he thought he had lost a referral source. “This internist was sending me … Continue reading
Dick Cheney and The Curse of the Pomegranate Seeds
Image by Larry Ray / The Rag Blog. No one is happier than Hades, chortling down in his dark homey hell while topside the earthly GOP, Guardians of Pomegranates, urged on by Hades’ emissary, Dark Dick, pass out the fruit’s … Continue reading
Swine Flu Redux : We’re Not Out of the Woods Yet
Doctors and nurses treat patients at a tent hospital for influenza victims in Lawrence, Mass., in 1918. Archive photo from Hartford Courant. The outbreak in the Spring of 1918 was not the huge killer. It came back in a second … Continue reading
The Swine Flu Scare, and the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic
Masked Albertan farmworkers during 1918-1919 Spanish flu pandemic. Photo from Wikipedia Commons. When the deaths began to pile up, and most of those affected were young healthy people, just like the Spanish flu, it is easy to see how the … Continue reading
Don’t Panic : Seven Facts About ‘Swine Flu’
Swine Flu scare: a man wears a mask upon arrival at Gatwick airport in London on a flight from Mexico City. Photo by Dan Kitwood / Getty Images. Your best defense — your only real defense in any flu season … Continue reading
Health Care : ‘I Was Sick and Ye Visited Me’
‘Country Doctor Ernest Ceriani Making House Call on Foot in Small Town.’ Photo by W. Eugene Smith / Life Magazine Archives. Here we are in 21st Century America and health care must be rationed out to the population by money-driven … Continue reading
Posted in Rag Bloggers
Tagged Health Care Reform, Medicine, Single Payer, Universal Health Care
4 Comments
Medicine and Torture: Bad Bedfellows
Handcuffs sit at the foot of a chair used for interrogation inside a cell in the maximum security Camp 5 at Camp Delta on May 9, 2006 in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images.U.S. Medical Personnel and Interrogations: What … Continue reading
Dr. Stephen R. Keister : The Insurance Industry Could Use a Hippocratic Oath
Hippocrates / josh pincus is crying. Nowhere, does the Hippocratic Oath require a physician to be a peon, or a servant of a HMO or insurance company. By Dr. Stephen R. Keister / The Rag Blog / April 6, 2009 … Continue reading
Posted in Rag Bloggers
Tagged Health Care Reform, Health Insurance, Medicine, Universal Health Care
3 Comments
Iraqi Medicine: Bad and Getting Worse
Here is an example of that wonder of American generosity: “bringing democracy to the Middle East.” If only George could’ve left well enough alone. And his successor is proving to be equally incompetent. Richard Jehn / The Rag Blog Dr. … Continue reading
Dr.Stephen R. Keister : The Doctor and the Body Politic
The Doctor by Luke Fildes. I, as an elderly retired physician, idealize what is shown in the painting by Luke Fildes’ ‘The Doctor,’ and look upon the word ‘physician’ in the Greek derivation, i.e. ‘healer.’ I think of Hippocrates, Maimonides … Continue reading
Posted in Rag Bloggers
Tagged Health Care Reform, Health Insurance, Medicine, Universal Health Care
1 Comment
Dr. Stephen R. Keister : Tell the Republicans: ‘Without Health Life is Not Life’
François Rabelais lisant, anon. drawing, early 17th Century / Wikimedia Commons. Rabelais: ‘Without health life is only a state of languor and an image of death.’ This reminded me of a painting of a 17th century hospital with its endless … Continue reading
Posted in Rag Bloggers
Tagged Health Care, Health Care Reform, Health Insurance, Medicine, Public Health, World History
1 Comment
HEALTH CARE / Western Medicine and the Dilemma of Life’s End
One version of life’s end: Charon the ferryman. I do not write these observations as a medical ethics expert, but merely as an 87 year old retired physician, a secularist, with cancer of the prostate; thus, with some insight into … Continue reading
