Medical Ethics

 

 

Medical Ethics

The day before yesterday, I had a disagreement with an acquaintance. This person was hailing the virtues of the CDC after they gave the order to leave “service” dogs behind in Afghanistan, which upset me greatly. She was accusing others of “finding someone to corroborate what you already believe,” not “knowing how anything works, let alone the human body,” nor “how your radio works, let alone the internet.”

This person seemed to think the CDC was some kind of great thing. I cited the Nuremberg Code, point one, in showing how people are being fired from their jobs, kept from travel, being docked of their wages, and removed from some segments of society (restaurants, etc.) This goes against the mandate that people should not be coerced in any way into accepting any kind of medical procedure against their will. She either agrees with these punishments or does not believe they are happening.

She then goes on to state that the government is protecting the weak and vulnerable while posting an affirming statement on the practice of abortion the very next day. She stated I was a disservice, just as deadly as the Covid virus, a vector of disease, and a pustule of ignorance. All for having a negative opinion of the CDC and being against punishing people for personal health care choices. I guess that these choices are fine when you are murdering an unborn baby, but verboten otherwise.

I was then treated to a lecture in medical ethics by a friend of hers that went on and on about how great these scientists are, but then said “I’m so sick of this, seriously. If only I could choose to treat only vaccinated patients but that is the oath I took.” So, in other words, she’d choose to let people die. Great ethics.

I have seen medical ethics in practice. It was in 1996 that Nova produced a documentary called Ebola- The Plague Fighters. A group of doctors went to Africa to study the Ebola outbreak there that killed many. These doctors did not go to help the people, only to study the disease.

It was discovered that the burial practices of many involved touching the corpse before it was buried, exacerbating the problem. The doctors set up a ward where they studied patients as they wasted away and died in excruciating detail. Black fluids would issue from eyes, the nose, mouth and ears. From every orifice of the body. As brain cells were infected and died, people would gradually lose the ability to even think, which resulted in a disturbing stare in their last surviving days.

Very few survived but some did manage to fight off the Ebola virus. Nurses were charged with cleaning up the mess that was left on patients and their cots. Unfortunately, one of the nurses, a staff favorite, came down with the virus.

A debate started whether convalescent blood from a survivor should be used in a transfusion to try to save the nurses life. Every single doctor with the exception of one voted against attempting to save her life, even after she had been volunteering to help them in their job, putting herself on the line. “It’s against the scientific method,” the doctors explained in their reasoning to deny her treatment.

The one doctor who dissented decided to do the moral thing and do the transfusion anyhow. The nurse would die without the treatment. The nurse began to respond to the treatment and recover.

When the remaining doctors found out, they were LIVID with outrage. How dare you go against the consensus? We had a vote! How dare you attempt to save this nurses life? They were yelling and screaming and storming around. None of them cared that the nurse’s life had been saved. All they cared about was their precious scientific method.

This is my experience with “Medical Ethics,” and I remember it vividly to this day. And yes, I absolutely did point out the hypocrisy, immorality and evil intentions of these scientists every single year I showed the documentary to my students as part of the curriculum.

This is another example of how word meanings have been changed to suit a philosophy, one which I question. Medical ethics, indeed.

 

On Learning as You Go

 

Moid said something in one of his recent videos about how he had to learn to be a you tuber by gaining understanding as he went along. It reminded me much of a journey I have been through, in a manner of speaking. So settle back in your easy chairs and prepare for a short story.

It started with a character I ran, one of several in a certain place called Second Life. In this place, they had a Vampire the Masquerade game going on, and I joined not really knowing what I was doing. The people there were all quite patient with newbies and made me feel welcome.

There was one particular character who had an interesting story. Her name was Patricia Ann Heron. She wound up getting much too involved in a certain storyline, uncovering mysteries that were never meant to be exposed, much less poked or prodded at. As a result, she was made a Kindred, or vampire, against her will.

At first, Patty enjoyed her new vampiric powers, but she soon realized that this was a one-way trip, and that she was cursed, inhuman, cold, dead and damned. She wanted to find a way to reverse the curse- to become human again. But no matter how much I pleaded with the Storytellers (the AD&D equivalent of a Dungeon Master) they would not run a Golconda arc for her. (Golconda being the little-known mystical path that a vampire might become human again.) Then the VtM site on Second Life closed down. What was I to do? I had a character with no end, no resolution, no determination as to her outcome. It ate at me. A lot. Like an itch I could not scratch.

Finally, I determined that if an outcome were to happen, I would have to write it. I sat down in earnest and banged out a short story in two weeks, spending hours after work each day. The end result was absolutely horrid. It was an extremely bad example of written fiction, and would give (the book that shall not be named, RP1) competition.

Thus began for me a 7 year odyssey. I had to learn the craft of writing fiction and start over again. So I began to collect a small library of books on the subject. I learned about the Hero’s Epic Journey and the D.A.D. method, for description, action and dialog. I went through these books, highlighting, underlining and writing in the margins. (See the picture below.) For those interested in writing your own fiction, I have some recommendations. Some titles were not very useful, Writing Fiction for Dummies and Wired for Story come to mind. Anything by James Scott Bell was pure gold. Two books on writing stood out as being most used. The first was called The Emotion Thesaurus, and was extremely helpful in translating emotion into action. The very best book in the collection that ignited the fire to inspire me through to the end is not pictured. I used it so much that by the time I was finished writing my initial manuscript, pages were literally coming out of the binding and I had to throw it away. That book was Make a Scene by Jordan Rosenfeld. I would recommend Make a Scene strongly for anyone desiring to learn the craft of writing fiction. Jordan noticed I had mentioned her by name in a blog entry and sent me a short note. That started a correspondence and I was very lucky to hire her later as my first editor.

It is extremely rare for fan fiction to be published, but I lucked out again with a program put out by White Wolf (the copyright owners of the setting) called the Storyteller’s Vault. Thus, my goal was complete. I had written a three act, 142k word 500 page novel and actually had it published. I was able to hire the guru of all things VtM, Matthew Dawkins, to be my setting editor and had story analyst Merphy Napier read through it about a year ago, providing assessment to polish the polish. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of hiring one or more good editors and putting down the money to provide professional feedback.

Just like Moid has become a semi-professional you tuber, you also can do great things! It takes baby steps. Then, once you are on top of the mountain, you can look down on the hapless masses below, and lob the Media Death Cult bomb at them, chuckling in their despair.