"When many cures are offered for a disease, it means the disease is not curable" -Anton Chekhov
''Once you tell people there's a cure for something, the more likely they are to pressure doctors to prescribe it.'' -Robert Ehrlich, drug advertising executive.
"Opinions are like sphincters, everyone has one." - Chris Rangel
Overactive Activists: Abortion activists in New York have succeeded in requiring abortion training in New York obstetrics/gynecology residency programs. (link requires NY Times registration). This was one of the goals of the Hillary Clinton health plan, too, and now it looks like it has won out. The story says that residents can pass on the training based on moral and religious grounds, but I wonder how many will feel pressured by their attendings and their fellow residents to do the procedure despite their personal misgivings. Everyone has to pull their share of the load in residency programs. If someone opts out of a procedure then another resident has to do it instead, a circumstance that can foster an awful lot of resentment between co-workers who have to work long, hard hours together. And how many will feel that to refuse to do something an attending asks will label them as a "bad resident," and hamper their careers?
Laws that mandate medical practice never bode well for a society, and in this case it should give everyone pause. Ob/Gyn residents are taught to consider the fetus as their patient just as much as the mother. Now, they are being required to learn to terminate that patient. Can mandated euthanasia in geriatrics programs be far behind?
