A scary time for patients everywhere
To the editor:
My wife was referred to the Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada by her family physician at Mike O’Callaghan Federal Hospital, at Nellis Air Force Base, for a routine colonoscopy because the hospital doesn’t provide that procedure. An official document arrived at our new residence in Florida a few days ago urging her to be tested for hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV, as she was a patient in February 2005, within the time frame that deliberate, sloppy infection-control practices took place.
We were in shock and utter disbelief that something like this could ever take place in this century. As a professor at the College of Southern Nevada for approximately six years, I taught Allied Health Mathematics for Nursing and constantly stressed the need to be careful, cautious and very observant to my students. I always told them that they were responsible for accurate dosages, sterile handling of syringes and ports and that if they had any doubt they should take it to the attention of their supervisors.
It is criminal that the nurses and doctors who were fully aware as to the practice of reusing syringes in the anaesthesia ports. These individuals should pay the consequences for their misdeeds. Investigations have determined that at least six patients contracted hepatitis C from that facility. They had no idea that those monsters betrayed 40,000 patients. They put their trust in them, as did my wife.
I am furious and scared at the same time. My wife will have to undergo blood tests very quickly. Sometimes hepatitis and HIV can remain dormant for years — that is the scary part of this tragedy. We have no recourse except to stay strong and pray that most of us will not test positive.
John Rago
HOLIDAY, FLA.
Blame management
To the editor:
Norman Petz’s allegation that the failing of the construction on Boston’s “Big Dig” was a result of shoddy union work is just another ill-informed conservative rant (Tuesday letter).
No worker can change the plans or the directions of the management overseers without losing their jobs. Perhaps Mr. Petz should put the blame where it belongs: with faulty design and directions by management on how the construction was administered.
Bill Bethke
LAUGHLIN
Blame the doctors
To the editor:
In his Sunday commentary, “On the road to health care hell,” Steven Miller quoted Michael F. Cannon of the Cato Institute, hardly a person who could be trusted to give an even evaluation of government spending on health care, considering that the Cato Institute wants to limit government.
It is wonderful of Mr. Miller and Mr. Cannon to place all responsibility for Southern Nevada’s public health crisis on the government and none on the greedy bastards who violated their oath to do no harm, and to line their pockets with as much wealth as they could squeeze out of the public. Those who treated Mr. Duke Breuer and sent him home with an IV needle in his arm all had licenses from the state of Nevada, so I guess that Mr. Miller and Mr. Cannon would, by their twisted logic, place the blame solely on the state of Nevada.
However, I hold the state of Nevada responsible for not providing the level of regulation that is currently required, and in view of the level of greed that these doctors have shown, it is high time to level the playing field. We should strip them of every nickel that they have.
Wallace Eastman
LAS VEGAS
Kid gloves
To the editor:
Imagine a white candidate for president being outed for attending a church for 20 years in which the KKK was revered and adored in daily sermons. Would he get the same tender treatment that Sen. Barack Obama now enjoys?
A good imagination is not really necessary to see that when the KKK story breaks, a furor erupts in the media like a nuclear burst over Los Angeles — a media frenzy unlike anything since Rodney King.
In the meantime, it appears that former Rep. Geraldine Ferraro is right for asserting that Sen. Obama gets an easy ride. While CNN’s word crawl asks if there may be guilt by association between Sen. Obama and his minister, CNN’s commentators are busy cooking up perceived similarities in GOP Sen. John McCain’s endorsement by a preacher with controversial views.
CNN ignores the fact that an endorsement is not the same as a 20-year personal relationship between Sen. Obama and the person he describes as his spiritual mentor and friend, the very racist, America-hating Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Steven C. Wilson
HENDERSON
