Friday, October 05, 2007

Got Kids? Then you need to read up on what your doctor might be doing with them behind closed doors.

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15 Comments:

Blogger Sebastian said...

That's really unbelievable. I don't have children, but you can bet I'd find another doctor if he started snooping into my affairs like that.

As I said in my post yesterday, having M.D. after you name isn't a license to be a busy body.

9:52 AM, October 05, 2007  
Blogger Peregrine John said...

Instapunk has a (rather lengthy) article on this as well. His take will be very familiar to many of your readers, and, I fear, all too accurate.

10:33 AM, October 05, 2007  
Blogger David Foster said...

Lots of people have complained that doctors are too rushed to really listen to patients and properly evaluate their symptoms.

Evidently, however, they are not too rushed to snoop.

11:02 AM, October 05, 2007  
Blogger Vinnie said...

Didn't we used to make fun of the Soviet Union for doing this? In school, in social studies?

12:08 PM, October 05, 2007  
Blogger N/A said...

It isn't all that surprising. This is Massachusetts we're talking about, after all. A state where we've taken the first steps toward socialized medicine.

This business with peadtric snooping is just a cost cutting measure. For socialized medicine to work, people can't get sick, which means the government has to root out and (ahem) discourage unhealthy habits like drinking, smoking and firearm ownership (remember in 2001 the AMA started listing firearms ownership as a health risk). This business with the doctors snooping is just one method of finding out who's misbehaving.

We can look forward to more of this kind of thing with Hillarycare or Obamedicine.


Unless I'm just being paranoid, which is entirely possible.

1:05 PM, October 05, 2007  
Blogger Serket said...

What I find most disturbing about the article is how they compare guns to drugs or sexual abuse.

1:36 PM, October 05, 2007  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Reminds me of the Frank Zappa tune.
"It Can't Happen Here".

It is happening here. Every day. It is gaining momentum. Every day. It is insidious, becoming more so. Every day.
Michael Savage gets less and less weird. Every day. That, in and of itself, IS scary.

Man, I hope that people who see it this way (with no tongue in cheek) never, ever, get the opportunity to say "I told you so, but you wouldn't listen". Especially if speaking with them about it from adjoining cells. Too many in mankind's past have had that opportunity.

Truly, where in the hell are we headed? When the doctors are done telling the "government" who has guns, and where they live, it's easy to come and get them in the middle of the night. Similar feelings have been expressed on other blogs, and in hard to find articles. So if I don't trust
liberal democrats, and don't believe their true agenda is in view, I'm not the only one.

Paranoid? Isn't paranoia the FBI's job description?

6:15 PM, October 05, 2007  
Blogger k said...

I really think this stuff started when we started getting all wound up with sexual abuse. And in that I include the phony cases ... I am not talking about real, honest to goodness abuse. Dr Helen can talk a little about how laws started to change, and ethical boundaries started to shift as we realized that sometimes the first person who might find out about abuse might be a health care professional, and that professional needed to be excused from normal patient confidentiality in order to rescue a victim. Well, I believe this story demonstrates an extension of that. If the doc can detect sexual or other physical abuse, why not detect other health risks while you're at it? So ask about guns, so you know if accidental shootings are a risk. And what about second hand smoke? Etc Etc Etc. Dr Helen - what do you think? Is this just a carry-through from the original realization that the doctor can be on the front line of abuse?

7:18 PM, October 05, 2007  
Blogger Larry Sheldon said...

The short summary:

If I knew then what I know now I would never have fathered any children.

I I certainly would never have EVERY allowed somebody else's child within 50 feet of me.

I have nightmares about being charged with something that happened 40 years ago, of which I have no recall, and for which there are no witnesses still alive.

10:07 PM, October 05, 2007  
Blogger B. Durbin said...

Interestingly, in the "nanny state" I live in, a doctor is not ALLOWED to examine a minor without a parent in the room. Literally, in the same room.

I guess it's one case where one nanny-statism prevents another.

11:15 PM, October 05, 2007  
Blogger Glenn Reynolds said...

k,

Doctors, psychologists and mental health workers must report suspected abuse--sexual and physical of minors and the law even extends in Tennessee to reporting elder abuse. I do think you are right to some degree--that these laws gave health care workers the "feeling" that they are the gatekeepers of other "health" issues such as gun ownership. Doctors and others can not be held liable for reporting such abuse. I think this gives a sense that they can extend the boundaries further. Also societal groups like DARE have played a part in giving license to "authorities" using kids to tattle on parent's drinking or drug habits. The schools, doctors and healthcare workers seem to think it is their duty to warn about every aspect of a child's life. However, I see it as more than this. It is about controlling parents and making sure everyone marches in step with the state and its power, not so much about protecting kids. I do think that doctors are being indoctrinated more into the role of social problem solver and see themselves as the overseers of public good. Maybe this is to start preparing them for universal health care where they will be required to do an interrogation of every family to make sure they are not too fat, too gun happy or too into sex. This is not good and the more of us who stand up to this type of emotional and political abuse, the better.

5:47 AM, October 06, 2007  
Blogger Helen said...

K,

That comment is from me, not Glenn, I forgot to switch to "different account."

5:49 AM, October 06, 2007  
Blogger k said...

Thanks, Dr Helen. I am not sure I agree that there is a larger force purposefully and intentionally driving this trend -- YET. At this point in time, I will just observe that, unlike my dad - retired 10+ years from medicine - today's doctors neither plan nor expect to have to work more than a 40 hour work week (with exceptions, of course). They have a whole different mindset, to me, that does NOT have patient care at its forefront. This means they no longer act as patient advocate, but simply as a service provider. This mindset plays into your impression that some larger entity is driving this nannyism (a bureaucracy, state agency, whatever) because if the doc is just service provider, then someone else is providing the protocols and "treatment plans," and those can become the tools of "espionage," monitoring, and enforcement. And the doc, who is not interested in getting emotionally invested in the patient, goes along. Would that it were not true, but I believe it is!

10:10 AM, October 06, 2007  
Blogger k said...

Oh, and as to the comment about DARE, I have heard of too many kids who come home and start crying about Daddy drinking an after-work beer because they've been so frightened by DARE's message at school. Crazy!

10:12 AM, October 06, 2007  
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3:16 AM, June 08, 2009  

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