Dr.  Lawrence Huntoon lectures on the common tactics used by the enemy forces who have taken an uninvited seat at the table of power in the regulation and control of the noble profession of medicine.  Collectively this band of nitwits and thugs  represent an enemy occupation and the damage has been ruinous to both the science and the art.  Clinical decision making has been reduced to algorithmic pathways and binary options that throw knowledge base and clinical acumen out the window and replaced them with  a heap of feel-good bottom-line poorly constructed dictates. These simple-minded marauders are nothing more than idiots with sticks but they’ve bamboozled the citizenry,  sweetheart-swindled the politicians and Robber barroned  their  morally disengaged  logical  fallacy into bandwagon reality under the rhetoric of cost containment and public welfare.

An enemy force has occupied our turf and it has indeed been ruinous.  Pride, integrity and enlightenment  have been torn out of the medical profession by the acceptance of poisonous ideas and concrete thinking and this disease  has  viruntly spread  from regulatory agencies to hospital administrators to those charged with governing academic medicine.

I recently spoke with a medical resident who yelled at a nurse as she was about to fatally inject  an anti-arrythmic medication at 10x the dose into a patient’s IV.   Had he not intervened the patient would in all probability have died and he undoubtedly saved  the patient’s life.  This fact is irrelevant in the current climate as the nurse he yelled at reported him for it and instead of seeing this as an acute human emotional response in a tense situation where a patient’s life was in danger,  the powers that be interpreted it as a red flag and recommended he be assessed for anger issues.  The evaluators suggested an inpatient evaluation and the assessing facility recommened treatment in their cash-only facility which, as a resident physician,  he did not have the means to pay.  Without the treatment he could not return to his residency program.  The nurse who almost killed this patient was cleared ( it was deemed a systems error) of any wrongdoing while the doctor who saved the patients  life has potentially lost  his career because he exhibited an understandable human response to a crises situation –  Apparently he should have said “pretty please” or whispered “just don’t let this happen again”

I heard of another case in which  a patient had  had multiple colonoscopies, endoscopies and batteries of lab tests for an undiagnosed gastrointestinal ailment for which no one could come up with a diagnosis.  The patient subsequently consulted with an independent astute diagnostician and who came up with an accurate yet unusual diagnosis; a so called zebra among the horses and he was able to treat the condition and the.symptoms abated within a week.  Coming up with the correct diagnosis when others have failed is an accomplishment that has historically generated the praise of one’s colleagues; met with respect, admiration, a toast and round of applause. But those days are long gone and instead of accolades this astute diagnostician and finder of the cause and cure of a difficult diagnosis got a raft of shit and sneers as the sniveling sheeple dong repeated colonoscopies without a clue felt disrespected.  He made them look bad.  He failed to communicate with them and they reported him to hospital administration for being “unprofessional” An investigation ensued that took on a life of its own.  Mobbing and sham peer review followed and he ended up dying by suicide– A death sentence for making a brilliant and correct diagnosis.