You can see Correll whining about being called a murderer. But what else is he if he pulls the plug on a treatment required for survival. And his comments about making money for a hospital that was established to provide treatment for the poor and indigent are ridiculous.

Let’s get doctors in charge of these boards and organizations. Not heartless former CEOs of organizations.

read for yourself and decide based on this ad taken out in AJC after the board meeting.

Lindsay Lohan, party on

Tonight at 8 pm EST I will be on the Nancy grace show (Headline News) and the topic will include Lindsay Lohan.
Now Lindsay is off to jail, and the worst part of it for her will be that she can’t take her drugs with her. She apparently has been doctor shopping, and is on Zoloft, trazodone, Nexium, Adderall, and dilaudid.

Taking opiates, amphetamine stimulants, and psychotropics, and mixing them with alcohol and cocaine, is potentially a very lethal combination. When you put so many mind altering substances into your system, who nows what will happen. But unfortunately the end result is that these young starlets eventually stop breathing.

The Australian Journal of Boneheads and Joint Medicine, which was published by Extracta Moneya, a division of Dutch scientific publishing juggernaut Greed-Elsleazier, also contained little in the way of advertisements apart from ads for Formonimax, a Phoni drug for osteoporosis, and Viletoxx, Phoni’s controversial pain-killer.

In a statement provided last week to The Scientist, an eminent Australian physician and long-time member of the World Association of Medical Editors reviewed four issues of the journal that were published from 2003-2004.

“An average reader, such as a doctor, could easily mistake the publication for a genuine peer reviewed medical journal”, he said. “Only close inspection of the journals, along with knowledge of medical journals and publishing conventions, enabled me to determine that the Journal was not, in fact, a peer reviewed medical journal, but instead a marketing publication for Phoni.”

“They’ve done a heck of good job, and it was only when I noticed that some of the names of the so-called “honorary editorial board” appeared to be made up that I became suspicious,” the reviewer admitted.

“Professor Phil. I. Daftwhoofing appears to be an anagram of “Ripping Off Fools Who Read This,” for example. Similarly, Dr. Leon Theophuleet is an anagram of “Pulled The Other One”. And “Gill Ripcheap” seems to be an anagram of Rich Pillager, who I believe is Phoni’s Head of Global Marketing…”

A spokesperson for Elsleazier, however, told The Scientist, “All of our journals are thoroughly peer-reviewed prior to publication, by our accountants. Our company would never publish a journal unless it was guaranteed to make us lots of money. After all, our publications are well-known for the standards they deliver – standards of living for our publishing executives, that is…”

Disclosure of Phoni’s funding of the journal was not mentioned anywhere in the copies of issues obtained by The Scientist. Elsleazier acknowledged that Phoni had sponsored the publication, but did not disclose the amount the drug company paid.

The spokesperson added that Elsleazier had no plans to look further into the matter. “The high prices of subscriptions to our journals are a guarantee of their quality,” he said. “After all, everyone recognises the quality of Australian scientific publications, in the same way that American diplomacy journals or Nigerian accountancy and banking magazines are regarded…”

One of the genuine members of the Australian Journal of Boneheads and Joint Medicine’s “Honorary Editorial Board,” Dr. Táké Bakhandar, a rheumatologist in Australia, said he was delighted to serve on the board, however. Dr. Bakhandar has been on Phoni’s Asian Pacific and international advisory boards since the mid 1990s, as well as the advisory boards of other pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer and Amgen.

“You get involved in a whole bunch of things at this level,” he said, adding that he had put his name on “quite a few advertorials” for pharmaceutical companies in the past 10 years. “I’m delighted to be able to promote the life-enhancing products of the pharmaceutical industry,” Dr. Bakhandar said.

His colleague and fellow member of the Australian Journal of Boneheads and Joint Medicine’s Honorary Editorial Board, Dr. Pádme Baksheesh, agreed. “My own observations conclusively show that there is a direct relationship between the number of products I plug for pharmaceutical companies, and the degree to which my life is enhanced,” he said.

Rich Pillager, Head of Global Marketing for Phoni Pharm. Inc. was also unrepentant.

“The Australian Journal of Boneheads and Joint Medicine” is an important tool in Phoni’s CME (Continuing Medical Education) programme,” he said.

“After all, we’ve been putting out advertorials for years. Everyone remembers our series of children’s books that were designed to promote the use of Phoni’s SSRI Saloadatat in children, for example,” Pillager notes, referring to the controversial “Mr. Bipolar” book based on the UK “Mr. Men” franchise.

“Our competitors have been doing exactly the same thing, only we’re aiming our latest fairy tales at the adult market. I can’t see what the problem is,” he frothed rabidly.

[this was a spoof piece but unfortunately the quote
"You get involved in a whole bunch of things at this level,"
was real, and the fake journal was real as well]

For more of Pharma Giles work see his hilarious children’s book ‘The Story of Modern Medicine’.

originally posted here on May 28 2009

Chapter 27

In 1823, an 18-year-old boy from Palmyra, New York, was visited by an angel, who told him of some magical gold plates. Armed with special glasses, he was able to translate them into a book that told about how the lost tribe of Israel was visited by Jesus in the Americas hundreds of years ago. In 1831, he started a church in Kirtland, Ohio.

He later said that church members could act as proxies for deceased persons, baptize them, and “seal” them into family clans that would be reunited in Heaven. His successor wrote about “the perfect mania” that possessed some of his followers as they started “to get up printed records of their ancestors.”

Over the next 168 years, 113 million people were introduced, after death, to the church.

Members of his church, called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS, commonly known as the Mormons), are worried that their ancestors who lived before the beginning of the church won’t be able to join them in heaven. But in order to get them into the church, they have to figure out who they are first.

That makes them some pretty damn good genealogists.

They’ve got a vault carved into the solid granite of a mountain 20 miles southeast of Salt Lake City, Utah, where they store information about the births, marriages and deaths of over 2 billion people, the largest single database on the details of the human race in the world. Buried 600 feet into the mountain, protected by two nine ton and one 14 ton doors built to withstand a nuclear blast, the Granite Mountain Vault isn’t going anywhere soon. Five billion documents are stored on 1 ½ million rolls of microfilm and 1 ½ million microfiche. 25,000 volunteers are currently working to scan and index all of these documents as well as put them on the internet so that one day soon you can access all of this data while sitting in your kitchen in your slippers with a laptop on your lap.

Ancestry.com, a subscription based service started by members of the LDS church, has 900,000 subscribers, and is growing. Ancestry put millions of documents online, including 5 billion names. They have census records for all of the US from the past 200 years, birth, marriage and death records, and more. In May of 2007 they dumped the military records of all of the soldiers who fought in all of the US wars, 90 million of them, online.

Genealogy is now America’s #1 hobby. Millions of documents are being put on line so that subscribers can sit in their kitchens rather than traipsing across the country in search of obscure church and governmental archives.

As the fastest growing church in the world, you have to wonder if the Mormons are onto something. That connecting with the nodes of your family, those linked to you by sperm and eggs and DNA, looping simultaneously backward and forward through space and time, like the drooping lines connecting the electricity towers that move through mowed swaths of forest in the rural parts of America, will lead you to paradise?

Who am I to say no?

Chapter 2.

Tony and I drove from the hospital in my BMW convertible. As we drove up along GA I-75/85 the drone of a million frogs drowned out the sound of the mechanized vehicles that slid along the 16 lane mechanism of death. Giant billboards declared the benefits of eating chicken over beef in pidgeon English. Another one burst out the details of the Georgia Tech football game in electronic bursts of light.

Walking into the Buckhead bar “Cheetos” with Tony the music hit us like a blast of hot air on a hot Georgia night. I walked up to the bar with Tony, checking out some of the hot blondes and trying to remind myself that I was officially married.

After ordering we grabbed beers from the bar and headed for a booth. The loud noise of the music made it hard to talk. The gyrating bodies of some of the women on the dance floor was distracting.

“So how’s Carletta?” Tony said.

“Oh, you know. The usual thrills of married life.”

“Ever think about branching out?”

“I couldn’t do that. I am married, after all.”

“They’ve got these hot chicks that look like they want to get banged, no strings attached.”

“Can’t you get off this already?”

“Are you hung up?”

“What’s with you?”

“Is your marriage satisfying?”

“What are you, some kind of fucking psychoanalyst?”

“I mean, do you do it with her? Like… ever?”

“Not lately.”

“So how long has it been?”

“I don’t know. A while.”

“Like… weeks? months?”

“Probably longer than weeks.”

“Hey, look, man! There’s Carletta on her home and garden show! On the TV!”

We sat back and watched Lulu on the TV. The music was blaring, so all you could see was her face and animated gesticulations as she went on about some potted plant. As I sat and watched her I felt oddly detached, like this was some kind of media celebrity that had nothing to do with me.

“Let’s get out of here, man,” I said.

As we rose from the booths everything seemed to slow down. I could see the sweaty gleaming off the backs of the young people dancing to the booming music. The darkness from outside seemed to pour into the club and permeate everything with its general message of death. I guess we all have to die sometime, but I didn’t want to think about it right now.

I moved out to the street. I could smell the sweat coming off of the backs of the younger club goers. Each one was different. But it all merged into one. I pushed past the sweaty backs into the night air. The brunt weight of the Georgia night with its warm and fluid air hit me like a policeman’s batton in the face. I took it in stride and moved slowly along the sidewalk with Tony. We breathed in the must of the young people as they waited in line to be let into the club. I wondered if any of the younger females would find me attractive. They didn’t pay me much attention, though, and we moved on to the parking lot.

I said good bye to Tony, and drove home.

Now we can all agree that Mark Becker killed someone, and that he was psychotic at the time, unless you want to convince me that football coaches are actually Satan and that you can use teddy bears to hypnotize people. Why calling him a “psychotic killer” is therefore offensive is therefore beyond me. Whether or not he was traumatized by his family, I have no idea, since I never interviewed them, but to assume that he was is my opinion fairly lame.

What gets me is that these posters feel like that since I am a psychiatrist they can throw whatever rocks they feel like. I mean, just because you are suffering from mental distress, or a mental disorder, or whatever you want to call it, doesn’t mean that you can act like a troll. This isn’t the first time this has happened, so I am calling them out. This is no excuse to act like a mean person.

In their post, they took advantage of the fact that I had previously written about my mother, who died when I was four and a half years old, an event that was deeply traumatizing for me. They said that my experiences, in comparison to the trauma that all schizophrenics suffer, apparently at the hands of their families and the mental health system, were “trifling” and insignificant” in comparison. Why they had to bring my mother into this, I don’t know. But All I have to say is …

Leave my mother out of this.

Making comments like that is dehumanizing and insensitive. There is no excuse for that. You can’t judge my experiences and what I feel. I’m sorry if you are angry at the mental health system. But I am not responsible for whatever happened to you. If you don’t like what I write, don’t read it.

Chapter 1

“Hi mommy. How are you?”
“Hi Johnny, I’m doing well. I’m lonely Johnny. Can you talk to me?”
“Sure mommy, what do you want to talk about?”
“I don’t know, Johnny.”
“Maybe you could tell me a story, Mommy.”
“Sure, that would be great. What kind of story would you like to hear?”
“Could you tell me a story about life on the other side of the river?”
“Sure Johnny.”
“On the other side of the river, there are many different types of plants and animals. But we know them all.
“It is like every leaf on every tree we know them all very well. They glimmer in the afternoon sun
“As the light flickers down through the canopy of trees and branches that dwell over us far above.
“We know every intimate detail of every leaf and branch. As if we have been with them through eternity.
“And I am there in a house, waiting for you, Johnny. When you come, we will never be separated again. We will be together, throughout time.”
“That will be nice. I can’t wait to see you again, Mommy.” “I will be waiting for you, Johnny. I will be here.”

***

The stretcher slammed through the doors that led into the operating room. The surgical tech pushing the guerney took a sharp left into operating room #3.
I had already gotten the emergency page and was scrubbing down outside OR #3. I walked into the room in his greens and mask with my hands over my head.
The surgical nurse opened the sterile package with a plastic glove inside. I thrust my hand into one glove, then another.

“Death Cab for Cutie!” I yelled out. One of the techs scrambled to shove a cd in the cd player.
I approached the patient lying on the operating table. Surrounded by green scrub sheets with a square of open skin in the middle of the chest.
A nurse reached out with a plastic bin of brown betadine liquid solution. A sponge floated in the middle, its handle hanging over the side.
I picked up the sponge by the handle, and slowly massaged the chest in circular motions, starting from the middle.
Dropping the first sponge in the trash, he picked up the next and started again, repeating the ritual.
Then he picked up a clean cloth and wiped away the brown fluid, again moving in a circular motion, starting from the center.
When I was done, I held out my right hand. the handel of a scalpel snapped into my palm. I leaned over the square of skin.

“The Atlantic was born today, and I’ll tell you how”

The blade of the scalpel touched the skin, and for a moment there was tension as the surface of the skin bowed below its weight.

“the clouds above opened up, and let it out”

A thin stream of blood oozed out below the blade. I pushed it in farther. I could see the pink glimmering of the muscle tissue open up

“I was standing on the surface of a perforated sphere, when the water, filled every hole”

The body opened up suddenly, like an oyster, when the knife finally pops it free, and it yields its glimmering and quivering contents

“and thousand upon thousand made an ocen, making islands, where no island should go”

I drew the blade vertically down toward the abdomen, making a perfect incision

“Ohhh oohh no.”

A nurse started the circular saw. She placed it in my right hand

“those people were overjoyed, they took to their boats”

Starting from the bottom of the sternum, I cut through the bone up toward the chest.

“I thought it less like a lake and more like a moat”

As the blade moved up through the chest, a pungeant smell of burning flesh filled the room

“the rhythm of my footsteps crossing flood lands to your door have been silenced forever more”

With a single quick motion, I cracked open the chest. “Ice!” I called out.

“the distance is quite simply much too far for me to row. It seems farther, than ever before.

The heart lay open before me now. Beating in its rhythmic movement. A pale red. It looked like a piece of liver.

“ohhh no.”

The fluid on the beating heart glistened, and reflected the light of the fluorescent lights of the operating room

“I need you so much closer.”

The nurse poured ice over the heart. It pulsated.

“I need you so much closer.”

I inserted a plastic tube into the right atrium that was connected to the heart-lung bypass machine. Then I clamped the aorta.

“I need you so much closer.”

“Bypass is on!” I called out. I held out my right hand. The handle of another scalpel was slapped into my palm.

“I need you so much closer.”

I bent toward the heart, now layed out before me like a nude model in an artist’s studio. Vulnerable, but waiting for my craft.

“I need you so much closer.”

My blade pierced into the soft tissue of the heart.

“I need you so much closer”

It was easy, and there was nothing, or better yet noone, to stop me.

“I need you so much closer.”

The nurse had the graft ready. I sutured it in bypassing the clogged coronary artery that had caused the patient to have a cardiac arrest.

“I need you so much closer.”

I gave the order to take the patient off bypass, and watched as the tissues filled with blood, reddening

“So come on onnnnnnnnnn. So come on. onnnnnnnnnnn.”

I sutured the heart, then pulled the two sides of chest incision together and began to suture up the chest

“So come on onnnnnnnnnn. So come on. onnnnnnnnnnn.”

Holding the suturing pliers in his right hand, I pierced the skin, pulled through to the other side

“So come on onnnnnnnnnn. So come on. onnnnnnnnnnn.”

and pulled the thread all the way through to the other side, making my tie, all in rhythm to the music

“So come on onnnnnnnnnn. So come on. onnnnnnnnnnn.”

then I did it again, taking pride in my skills and my craft

“So come on onnnnnnnnnn. So come on. onnnnnnnnnnn.”

I left the resident to finish closing up. Exiting the operating room, I pulled off his green surgical gown and dropped it in the hamper.

then I pulled off my gloves and surgical cap and dropped them in the trash. I felt a heavy fatigue as I moved toward the sink.

Getting up a good lather I scrubbed for several minutes, then put my hands under the running water, watching the brown soap run down the drain.

Then I walked out of the OR and through the door that led straight into the surgeons lounge. A couple of the guys were lounging around on the leather sofas.

Reading the paper or a medical journal, waiting for their surgical suites to open up. Mahogany lined the walls.

Mike Malone was lying back on a sofa with his feet resting on a table, staring at his blackberry. He looked like he hadn’t gone to bed the night before. When I walked into the room he perked up, like a dried out house plant that had just been given some water.

“Hey Johnny!” he said, rolling over fromt the slouching position he took on the couch. “How’s it going buddy”

“I had to go back and salvage another one of these fucking Cooper stents,” I said. “The second one this week.”

“Why, what happened?”

“The fucker clogged only a month after it was placed. We had to do an emergency bypass operation. I’m starting to wonder if this is a coincidence. So what have you got on the docket?”

“I’ve got three scheduled CABGs. First one’s 20 minutes behind schedule. How about you?”

“Yeah I’ve got three more routines as well. Wanna get a beer afterward?”

“Yeah, sure.”

I got a call that my next suite was open and walked back in to scrub again. After a couple of more routine CABG surgeries I returned to the surgeon’s lounge. I drifted off to sleep and was awakened by a gentle shaking of the shoulder by Tony.

“Hey buddy. Ready for that beer?”