Et enfin encore, nous sommes de retour.
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I’m used to having the occasional libertarian tirade countered with something along the lines of “But if you get rid of government*, who’ll ensure that our drugs are safe and effective?” My usual riposte involves terminal cancer patients who can’t get experimental drugs because they’re in the middle of interminable FDA approval processes, but Dr. Lowe gives me another option:
- Sheesh (In the Pipeline)
Yes folks, it turns out that the people making sure that clinical trials are run properly are about as competent as the people who were making sure that credit rating agencies were run properly:
Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., criticized Health and Human Services officials for failing to catch the fictitious IRB and registering it despite numerous red flags. “Nobody picked up on names like Phake Medical Devices, April Phuls, Timothy Witless and Alan Ruse — in the town of Chetesville, Ariz.?” he asked department reps.
Your tax dollars at work.
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We move north of the 49th for another story of health-care idiocy:
- Hospital staff call ambulance for man outside ER (Vancouver Sun)
Ken Olson, a Saskatoon contractor, was on his way to a meeting Monday morning when he noticed a man in a hospital gown lying on his back “less than 10 feet” from the entrance to the ER.
“I parked and ran in through the emergency doors and said, ‘You’ve got someone in hospital clothing outside your doors unconscious,’ ” he said.
Olson said he was stunned when staff responded by phoning 911 for an ambulance. He says they told him policy prevents hospital staff from attending to patients found on the grounds.
“Policy”. The very word invokes images of oily, coiffed, smarmy dipshits in cheap suits, doesn’t it?
Oh, look, here’s one:
“When something happens to an individual on our grounds, it is our policy that we do call 911,” said Patti Simonar, director of emergency and critical-care services for the Saskatoon Health Region. “And in this instance, it would seem that policy was followed.”
I’d like to shake the hand of the gutless motherfucker who decided that adding extra verbs to perfectly good sentences — “that we do call 911″ — was a good idea. I’d like to shake his hand so that when I kick him in the nuts I’ll be able to pull him into the blow. But back to the matter at hand: Why do you suppose that this policy was put into place?
“We don’t always know what’s wrong with the patient, we don’t always know if it would be safe for our staff and our medical equipment is not mobilized,” she said.
The health region believes trained paramedics or first responders with the proper equipment are better able to treat patients found outside the hospital, Simonar said.
Um. So a hospital ER doesn’t have the proper equipment to treat patients, but an ambulance does? I know single-payer health care isn’t the panacæa Michael Moore painted it to be, but I didn’t realize we were fucking the dog that enthusiastically.
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Of course, every time one of its erstwhile colonies imposes idiotic restrictions in the name of “policy”, Great Britain sleepily raises a metaphorical eyebrow and mumbles, “I can top that.”
Yeah, really.
The move has been blasted as ‘ludicrous’ by firemen who say they are trained to climb ladders as part of their job.
One said: ‘It is preposterous. Climbing a ladder safely is an integral part of being a firefighter. It is what we do and we receive expert training to ensure we do it properly.
‘To now be told we are not to be trusted with a set of step ladders is ludicrous. We will be banned from tackling fires because they can get quite hot.’
This is the same place where fire extinguishers were banned because we grubby untrained masses might try to use them. Colour me skeptical.
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It’s not that we new-worlders aren’t doing our best to catch up to the old country in terms of ridiculous regulations for the ostensible advancement of public safety:
- Wisconsin hopes to protect kids from Capitol nuts (Earthlink News — who knew, Earthlink’s still around)
No, they’re not talking about figurative nutcases prowling the Capitol grounds for prepubescent prey. They aren’t even talking about the nutcases within the Capitol. They’re talking about honest-to-balls nuts.
Wisconsin is asking people to refrain from feeding squirrels at the state Capitol because they might inadvertently harm a child with a peanut allergy.
The tragedy here is that no-one gives a fuck about adults with peanut allergies. Oh, sure, you might suppose that allergic adults would have the sense to avoid things they know could kill them, but given the sort of dipshits they’ve voted into office I rather doubt it. Oh won’t someone PLEASE think of the poor precious ADULTS?
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And speaking of ex-British colonies with asinine public-safety regulations, we find this story from Australia where the tenebrous menace of the blasphemous firearm is getting, um, rather creative in its many forms:
- Arrested for wheel lock “gun” (CourierMail.com.au)
No, not this kind of wheel lock:
He was dragged out of his car and tossed to the ground for this kind of wheel lock:
*facepalm*
That cop has great potential for a career in California politics….
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* Note: I’m a libertarian, not an anarchist. This distinction is lost on many people.
That was worth the wait. Welcome back to the tubes.