Friday, October 11, 2013

What's Up Doc?


What is it about becoming involved in Republican politics that causes medical doctors to lose all reason?

To become a medical doctor one has to start with pretty good intelligence, obtain excellent grades. display a good work ethic, have lots of sticktoitiveness …. well, everyone knows, it is a long hard road to a medical degree.

But somehow we are plagued with several Republican medical doctors who are badly in need of a cure for foot-in-mouth disease. Here in Georgia we have two medical doctors competing for the Republican nomination for US Senate. Listen to examples of the effusion of their mouths:

“There are more people killed with baseball bats and hammers than are killed with guns.”
-Congressman Paul Broun, M.D.   
[For the record: Firearms account for about 68% of killings, blunt objects about 4%.]

“Meanwhile, I’m stuck here making $172,000 a year.”
-Congressman Phil Gingrey, M.D. 
[I heard poor Dr. Gingrey inspire 500 preteens with the message that his poverty is so abject that he could never dream of a run for President like wealthy guys who have managed to ascend to that office, like rich-boy Abe Lincoln, I guess, or the current fellow who grew up in the lap of, I suppose, comparative luxury?]

And now, one of the best doctors in America, one who has a remarkable and truly inspiring life story, and successfully saved someone I love from the excruciating chronic pain of trigeminal neuralgia. So I am sincerely and deeply grateful to this good man for his skill and dedication.

But in the last few months this wonderfully accomplished physician has gotten involved in Republican politics. Today he spoke to a “Values Voters”* group and these absurdly hyperbolic words escaped his lips:

“I have to tell you, you know [The Affordable Care Act] is really, I think, the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery. And it is slavery  in a way because it is making all of us subservient to the government.”
- Benjamin Carson, M.D.

I have some much admired friends who are medical doctors. I have great admiration for them. I have great admiration for Ben Carson. But Republican politics seems to bring out the very worst in physicians.



* By the way, I have values, too.

1 comment:

  1. Yes, Republicans are evil. Must have no one standing in the way of instituting progressive policies.

    Everyone makes hyperbolic statements, but there is a point behind them.

    Things other than guns kill people, money has become important in politics, and people turning their money over to the government under adversarial laws isn't the best course of action.

    ReplyDelete