Patient Rights

Death by a Thousand Cuts: When the Cures of Big Pharma are Worse than the Diseases

The vaccine debate and prying into Planned Parenthood’s Standard Operating Procedure are two arenas I have not gravitated toward. Genetically-engineered crops, industrial farming, confined feeding operations (CAFOs), dams killing wild salmon, these are my fortes.
The news daily is like death by a thousand cuts for me tied to new studies on collapsing ecosystems, indigenous people fighting against mines and other extractive industries, and more and more on climate change/global warming.

American Teaching Hospitals: Where Pelvic Exams Under Anesthesia Happen

Before undergoing a liver biopsy at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, I asked my surgeon’s nurse whether I was to be catheterized for the procedure. In response to this perfectly legitimate question the knave sardonically replied: “I’m really not supposed to say this, but what difference does it make? You’re going to be under general anesthesia.”
It was at that moment that I started to wonder: With an attitude like that, what do they really do to us when we are under anesthesia? And thus a little Internet surfing was most certainly in order.