[Marxism] Re: Coates & Schaffer: Recrudescent debate on Schiavo

[<hari.kumar@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Andy Coates stated a phrase from Che Guevera.
ReplY:
i) As far as I recall his biographies, Che hardly WORKED for a sustained long 
period as a physician.
ii) I suggest a more meaningful revolutionary example in this MEDICAL context, 
s either Virchov, or Bethune. Or, even Henry Sigerist - not quite a revo.
iii) The ultra-leftism _implied_ that within capitalism no meaningful or humane 
goals can be achieved within the discipline of medicine - is redolent of the 
whole silly debate about "reform" and "revolution" as stark Two "separately 
stark & silo-ed" 'realities'..
No thanks to such a dichotomous anti-dialectical viewpoint.

Les writes:
"A JAMA article from March 9, 2005 repeats the claim from a 1997 study that 
770,000 people a year are killed or injured in Adverse Drug Events
(ADEs). The article further claimed that prescribing errors are the most
frequent source of these problems.

The article itself, "Role of Computerized Physician Order Entry Systems
in Facilitating Medication Errors", is one of the first of its kind to
evaluate the new IT systems being put in place supposedly to counter
these errors. Not surprisingly, the authors found some very basic
problems with the new software which in some cases contributed to
further injuries.......
The article ends with the claim that many of the shortcomings they discovered 
in software system could be easily corrected. But in an IT
industry that gets $34M a pop for these systems, with intense rivalry between 
existing vendors, IP and privacy, incompatible protocols between
different database systems, and so forth, fixing the fixer takes on a kind of 
Rube Goldberg quality. Meanwhile capital investment in medical
technology channels itself into ventures most likely to turn the healthiest 
profit, rather than the healthiest system."

What is your point?
Is it worth making minute steps forward, or is it worthless?
Please explain what you would say is your view: Not to an old Stalinist M-List, 
but to the nurses and doctors and respiratory techs and ward pharmacists at the 
bedside.

Hari K


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