A COMPASSIONATE CRITIQUE OF THE US SENATE’S WOMEN’S HEALTH PROTECTION ACT # 1696
Philip G. Ney M.D.
There is little evidence of human’s inherent goodness. Although there are good family and community building instincts, these had to be encouraged and guided by just laws enacted by wise people elected by a well-informed populace.
Healers thru doing good are elevated by patient gratitude to a higher status. Too many have used this position to disregard the self-imposed restraints of their profession. Thus there has always been legislation to keep all physicians within the bounds of good conscience and best practice. S 1696 seeks to remove necessary health maintaining safe-guards. It will permit a noble profession to regress to a time when political favours, money, vanity and popularity determined whether or not doctors would cure or kill their patients.
From history and experience it can be predicted that S1696 will:
1) Set a national precedence, opening up pathways for any vociferous self- interest group to demand special treatments no matter what the outcomes.
2) Establish international precedence which will encourage the use of political pressure to obtain special health care considerations in like-minded countries.
3) Rapidly increase the cost of health care because patients no longer trust doctors to be guided only by what is in the patient’s best health interests in the long term.
4) Disrupt the Species Specific Instinctual Restraint to Aggression and Abandonment (SSIRAA) which controls destructive impulses of parents and physicians toward those who depend on them.
5) Embolden the most depraved and inhibit the most caring physicians.
6) Set up time and money consuming conflicts within the health profession.
7) Destroy the underlying tenets of self-regulation of the medical profession.
8) Undermine the scientific pursuit of better care for now clamour wins the day.
If the movers and backers of this legislation are forthright, they will ensure that all aspects of women’s health care are promoted and maintained as it is in the best of all other aspects of prevention and treatment. This will mean that all procedures, medications, advice, inoculation and counseling for women are regulated by evidence based practice. Thus, every component must be:
- i) necessary to improve or maintain the best health possible in the long term.
- ii) beneficial, demonstrated by good science.
iii) with no unavoidable harmful side effects.
- iv) provided only after less invasive and more reversible remedies have been offered, tried and failed.
- v) done only in good conscience, meaning the provider has completed a proper follow-up and is convinced his/her treatment will work.
- vi) Done only after fully informed consent.
Wisdom usually requires promoting self- restraint rather than self- indulgence.
Yours truly,
Philip G. Ney MD, DPM, FRCP(C) MA. Retired medical professor 13/7/14