Dr. B's Finest Kind Medical clinic and Fish Market

Dan Rather's expose on Bush's National Guard "lies" have been quickly debunked thanks to a few quick thinking internet junkies. The Vast Right Wing conspiracy strikes again: Freepers to Powerblog to Blogfather to LGF to Drudge.

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/28276.htm

Like the clock that strikes in Shakespeare's Julius Caeser, it was a little thing that clued ordinary people to the problem...

Scrappleface did this parody of the "memos":

http://www.scrappleface.com/MT/archives/001832.html

(2004-09-09) -- CBS reporter Dan Rather today released the text of a recently discovered email from then-Lt. George W. Bush's Air National Guard commanding officer which casts more doubt upon the military service of the man who would become the 43rd President of the United States.

The revelation of the email comes just hours after questions were raised about the authenticity of typewritten memos from the same officer, shown yesterday by Mr. Rather on 60 Minutes.

According to the previously unseen email message sent in May 1972 by squadron commander Jerry Killian, Lt. Bush phoned Col. Killian because "his internet connection was on the fritz and he couldn't IM me."

Now, medical journals have long "vetted" articles with experts, and allowed letters to rebut or question the problem. However, it takes a long time. Six weeks to publish (at least) and six weeks for feedback. At least the BMJ allows all their articles to publish and allows instant feedback. But most medical journals are now restricting online access to those getting the paper journal.

What we need is a "journal club" like they hold in many hospitals, but one that allows online feedback and comments. One suspects that problems will be found at a much earlier time than the present snailmail/treebased journal monopoly.

Here are three examplesof where my personal experience predated the actual reporting of problems:

1)Years ago, I was going to give a little old lady Talwin, and a nurse's aide said, "don't give her that pill...it makes them go crazy"...two years later, paranoid psychosis from Talwin was reported in a journal.

2)When I was an intern, a man came and said he was hearing voices, and blamed it on his wife's "arthritis" medicine-- Indocin. Two years later, we had a man hallucinating in the ICU...we first thought it was DT's, but it didn't fit the pattern. Then I noted he was receiving Indocin for post infarction pericaritis, and stopped it. Within 24 hours he was better. I told our residency director what had happened, and was ridiculed in front of my fellow residents...but three weeks later a NEJM article reported a high frequency of Indocin related psychosis in ICU patients...

3)In the late 1980's, the NEJM posted ten articles on euthanasia...6 pro, two against, and two neutral. But all ten had an almost identical phrase: that experience in the Netherlands "proved" that euthanasia could be well regulated to prevent abuse.So ten times, I wrote letters (not published) pointing out that articles about the Netherlands had "estimates" ranging from 500 to 20 000 cases a year, and that since regulations required reporting, that such disparate numbers were inconsistent with "regulations"...finally, Lancet published an article in late 1991 confirming what I had pointed out: That few cases were reported, that no investigation was done, even of suspicious cases, and that essentially no "regulation" was occuring at all.

Now, multiply my experience by 600 000 doctors, 590 000 of whom are too busy to type up a nicely phrased letter, and you have a potential of knowledge of little things that is waiting to be exploited.\

Charles Johnson, call your office...

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