Read prior posts on the history of this issue here.

Protest in front of Emory U over closing of Grady Dialysis

GA Sen Vincent Fort presents letter to Gary Hauk of Emory

Protest at Fresenius Dialysis Clinic

Grandchildren of one of the Grady dialysis patients

I invite doctors and other healthcare workers to speak out about the death sentences being handed out to patients.

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Max Baucus is keeping the industry guys well fed.

Here is an update on the Grady story from Neil Shulman MD:

IT IS SAD.  I had a meeting with the woman who wrote the book THE GRADY BABIES and a woman who works at Channel 11 and the nurse from Nigeria who has been here ten years, Is married to an American and just got her Green card.  SHE NEEDS TO BE HERE 5 MORE YEARS BEFORE GEORGIA MEDICAID PAYS FOR HER DIALYSIS.  The Channel 11 lady and the author (WROTE A GREAT BOOK WITH DICK GREGORY) are connecting with Dorothy to get the book on the dialysis crisis rolling (30 people who may lose their lives after Jan 3rd when the inner city hospital stops supporting dialysis for their kidney failure.)  They are planning on putting personal stories about the patients on the internet.

In the meantime,  there is a movement by some docs within Grady Hospital to change things such that humanization takes precedence over monetazation. ALSO,  THERE IS A PLAN TO TAKE A BUS LOAD  OF THE DIALYSIS PATIENTS TO A HOSPITAL EMERGENCY ROOM ……….ALL AT ONCE…EVERY FEW DAYS ……after Jan 3rd.

 ON another front,  the medical volunteerism conference WWW.EMORYIMVC.ORG  is MOVING ALONG VERY WELL…………..we have some fantastic presenters,  the first edition of the book about  these heroes is almost ready,  the White House is sending folks………….AN OUTPOURING OF SUPPORT FROM HUMANIZERS.

IF YOU HAVE SOME TIME,  WE SHOULD AT LEAST CHAT ON THE PHONE TODAY.  I AM AT 404-321-0126.  IF NO ANSWER,  JUST LEAVE YOUR NUMBER AND I WILL RETURN YOUR CALL SHORTLY.

NOW A SHORT OVERVIEW OF THE CURRENT CIVIL WAR IN THIS COUNTRY:

We are in the middle of a war in this coutry between the monetizers and the humanizers.  Sadly,  the victims of this war are poor sick people.  IF everybody was a humanizer as the folks involved in the medical volunteer activites………….there would be no problem.  We would have peace and poor sick people would not suffer and die……. One of the major obstacles to winnning this war is the barrier between the poor sick patients and everybody else.  The caring nurses and doctors AND LAY FOLKS who are on the front lines Understand the current atrocitIES.  The further one is away from connecting with poor sick people,  the less likely you can empathize with them.  It is easy to use words like “ILLEGAL ALIENS”  OR “LIMITED RESOURCES FOR POOR SICK AMERICANS”  and just let people suffer and die when you don’t have to look in the eyes of these people or hear their stories. 

One of the free clinics in South Atlanta struggles with getting patientsurgent health care by specialists every day.  Recently, there was a case of a man needing back surgery before “he became paralyzed.”  The community clinic (docs, nurses, and pastors) FOUGHT HARD AND got the patient into Grady Hospital for the surgery.  On the other hand, there are folks like the 23 year old woman who recently died in Grady because she was shut out of her access to steroids for her Lupus.  She did know how to overcome the new barriers (more paperwork and more upfront fees to be seen for a few minutes so she could get her refills).  She ended up in Grady’s ER very very sick. She was admitted and died. Medical students and staff docs told me the story.  Many folks are familiar with this recent tragedy.  There are many folks in similar situations every day who die at home without even getting to the emergency rooms.

In developing countries where there is lack of access to health care………..at least there is not a COVER-UP.  When we brought a little girl from Kenya to Univ of Alabama Med Center for heart surgery…………..the Kenya media, the local Kenya politicians,  the local roatary club,  THE HAVES AND THE HAVE NOTS…..ALL JOINED TOGETHER AND HELPED SAVE THIS LITTLE GIRL’S LIFE.  IT WAS AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT CULTURE.  THERE WAS NO HIDING OF “THE FACTS.”  THERE WAS NO INTIMIDATION OF THE CARING FOLKS BY  MONETIZERS.  We are experiencing a larger and larger class of HAVE-NOTS in this country because of the economy.

DAILY MEDIA ATTENTION SHOULD BE FOCUSED ON EFFORTS OF THE HUMANIZERS TO HELP POOR SICK PEOPLE.  THIS WOULD GALVANIZE EVEN MORE PEOPLE TO JOIN IN.  THIS WOULD GALVANIZE MORE PEOPLE TO ADVOCATE FOR LEGISLATION TO ELIMINATE THESE ATROCITIES.  Maybe we could even get the Georgia Legislature to allow poor people to get medicaid coverage BEFORE THEIR CANCER SPREADS.  THE MEDIA WILL NOT INFOMORM THE PUBLIC THAT IF YOU HAVE A MALIGNANT MELANOMA ON YOUR SKIN AND YOU ARE POOR…………..THE STATE MEDICAID EMPLOYEES ARE FORCED TO TELL YOU “SORRY MEDICAID DOES NOT COVER YOU UNTIL YOUR CANCER SPREADS THROUGHOUT YOUR BODY.” 

 We need more media attention, legal action, and MORE folks EDUCATED AND involved.  IT IS A STRUGGLE WHICH CAN ONLY BE WON WITH AN ARMY OF HUMANIZERS.  I have found that people with resources who are humanizers are MUCH HAPPIER than people with resources who are monetizers.  You are surely one of the humanizers.

 IF THE MAJORITY OF MEMBERS OF THE US CONGRESS WERE NOT MONETIZERS………….THEN TRULY MEANINGFUL NEW LEGISLATION WOULD BE PASSED TO ELIMINATE THE BASIC HEALTH DISPARITIES BETWEEN  THE HAVES AND THE HAVE-NOTS.  WE CAN STILL HAVE PEOPLE WITH BIG HOUSES AND SMALL HOUSES, PEOPLE EATING AT FANCY RESTAURANTS AND PEOPLE EATING BASIC HEALTHY FOOD AT HOME,  PEOPLE GOING ON  EXPENSIVE VACATIONS AND FAMILIES DOING MEDICAL MISSIONS………..BUT AT LEAST WE WOULD HAVE A COUNTRY WHERE POOR SICK PEOPLE HAD ACCESS TO BASIC HEALTH SERVICES AND BASIC MEDICAL THERAPIES……….WHICH ARE AVAILABLE TO MOST PEOPLE IN EUROPE, CANADA, JAPAN, KOREA, ETC.

AND BY THE WAY,  IT WOULDN’T HURT IF MEDICAL LITERACY WAS AN INTEGRAL PART OF OUR EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM………..WHY DO JUST DOCTORS AND NURSES LEARN HOW TO EXAM THE HUMAN BODY, WHAT SYMPMTOMS ARE IMPORTANT, HOW TO PERFORM SIMPLE PROCEDURES LIKE TAKING BLOOD PRESSURES?……………..WHY NOT EMPOWER CONSUMERS SO THEY CAN USE THE HEALTH CARE SYSTEM MORE EFFICIENTLY.  READING, WRITING AND ARITHMETIC ARE IMPORTANT BUT YOU CAN’T DO ANY OF THOSE IF YOU ARE DEAD.  MARTIN LUTHER KING EMPOWERED FOLKS BY TEACHING THEM HOW TO VOTE.

LET’S EMPOWER AMERICANS BY TEACHING THEM MEDICAL LITERACY………….LET’S EDUCATE THE SCIENCE TEACHERS SO THEY ARE MEDICALLY LITERATE, SO THEY CAN TEACH OUR FUTURE GENERATIONS ON HOW TO EFFICIENTLY USE THE HEALTH CARE SYSTEM.

BEST,

NEIL SHULMAN

Oh, and their “followup” was to send at least two to Mexico which doesn’t have long term dialysis, and therefore they will die there.

The lawyer for the patients argued that closing the clinic was sentencing them to death, therefore depriving them of the right to live. I mean, doesn’t the US Constitution give us the right to live? If we have someone on death row for killing someone we spend millions to give them due process, but if they are a Grady dialysis patient we just turn off the plug. People go nuts over pulling the plug on brain dead Terry Schiavo but we have no compunction turning off dialysis.

One of the patients has a green card and is short of one year to qualify for Medicaid. But, I guess, she must die. One was sent to Florida because they said he could get dialysis there but couldn’t get it, had a stroke and came back to Atlanta.

Fulton Courthouse, Sept 23, 2009

There is something seriously messed up with a country that allows people to die like this. The Judge is supposed to give a ruling today or tomorrow.

Join the FB cause “Protest Grady Hospital’s Death Sentence for Dialysis Patients” here.

Grady alliance protests board meeting

Neil Shulman MD addresses the board, outlining inhumanity of their decision

Indeed.
Afterwards we waited for an hour and a half for the Chief Operating Officer, Denise Williams, to come talk to us about how these people are going to be taken care of. She never showed up. I guess she doesn’t really give a crap.
It really makes you wonder when all our local paper can cover is the angry people being bused to Washington to protest healthcare reform. How can any humane person allow this to happen? One sign said “Healthcare is a human right”.
I couldn’t agree more.
For more information contact Dorothy Leone-Glaser of Grady Advocates for Responsible Care, (404) 633-5843, dlg [at] wisdomofwellnessproject.com.

To make this simple, let’s say that you think a drug will make your face turned blue. In this case the “primary outcome” would be “make your face turn turn blue.” So what if your face turned red? Maybe you would like that your drug actually “did” something and you decided that was better than nothing. So after the fact you *changed* the primary outcome and said that you actually had wanted the drug to turn your face red? Pretty dishonest, huh? Well it actually happens all the time in clinical research, especially for drug trials where pharma companies have billions riding on the outcomes of these trials. 

So lets turn to the evidence. Guys like the investigators in the Paxil 329 study, which I have written about previously here, were deciding that the primary outcome they were studying should change after they found that it didn’t turn out to be significant, and they should come up with something else. In the case of the 329 study there was a rather arrogant letter on the behalf of the lead author along the lines of “I know best and I changed the outcome because I wanted to and I am an expert and leader in my field.”

Well now a lot of investigators have piled on to registering their trials and some government and funding agencies are requiring it. That is why it is interesting that a recent study has actually looked at the relationship between the registry and what people actually reported in the literature. What they found is that 46% of trials were properly registered. However of those, 31% had changed their primary outcome. In those studies in which it could be evaluated they favored results that were statistically significant over those that were not in 83% of cases.

In other words, 1/3 are blatantly lying and cheating. And that is in the ones that have registered. What about the ones that never did or in era before clinicaltrials.gov? Can we trust the data collected by all those drug company trials? If not what does that mean