Steve Tvedten believes this May help to explain some "Sound Science"
Subject: What's up, doc? You look a bit ill
Date: Sat, 9 Feb 2002 10:20:48 -0500
From: Stephen Tvedten <steve@getipm.com>
Organization: Get Set Inc. (www.getipm.com)
To: Paul Helliker <phelliker@cdpr.ca.gov>
Director, State of
California, Department of Pesticide Regulation
cc: Christine Whitman whitman.christine@epa.gov
OPINION - (May help to explain some "Sound Science")
Nelson Mail columnist Alan Clarke approaches "Dr Godly" with some trepidation.
I have a rather delicate question to ask before you begin your examination.
As you know, I am at an age when enlarged prostates, reduced libidos and greying, thinning hair mark us as being largely spectators or, at best, bench players in the game of life.
But before I grant you access to that unfortunately-positioned, walnut-sized gland at the bottom of my concerns, I must ask you Dr Godly: are you, to put it politely, a few pills short of a prescription?
You don't understand? I fear then that my inquiry may have foundation. You force me to be unusually blunt. What I'm wondering then is, are you nuts?
I do not wish to seem inappropriate, sir, and I have procrastinated for nearly three months before asking to see you.
But the answer could be a matter of life and death ... my life, in fact. I'm confident, therefore, that you'll understand and forgive me my outspokenness.
I refer to a study by the Wellington School of Medicine, published in December, which found that more than a third of doctors and pharmacists have "significant" symptoms of mental illness.
In fact, the study says 10 percent of those in your profession have symptoms of severe illness, and doctors' level of psychiatric "distress" is higher than in the wider community.
You are fortunate indeed, sir, not to be so diagnosed when mental doctoring was in its infancy.
I don't suppose you've read Three Hundred Years of Psychiatry, 1535-1860?
Some "cures" once practised in the name of medical science can only have been dreamed up by sadistic madmen. The poison purgatives, the bloodletting, the freezing water "treatments", the wall chains, the wounds kept open and infectious to "drain the devil" via pus ... modern medicine has such flaky foundations.
Nevertheless, I sympathise most sincerely. Overworked, increasingly underappreciated - your fall from grace to a position somewhere near that of other mere mortals has surely been most difficult to bear.
So I hope you can similarly appreciate my position - pants down, bottom up and feeling more than vulnerable.
I'm sure you would not give a nutcase free access to your own vital passages Dr Godly, so surely you will understand my misgivings? Especially with the number of medical misadventure cases these days.
I read that ACC is getting more than 600 new medical error or mishap claims a year, and that the annual cost of such claims is around $20 million.
Worse, only 20 percent of cases are being reported, according to the ACC.
Which means that thousands of patients are finding their innocent participation in medical misadventuring to be rather more costly than your fees and charges.
Such a curious term, that, incidentally. Medical misadventure. Coined, perhaps, by members of your honourable profession in denial that they or their peers could possibly make a mistake?
Does it mean that you see the examination you are preparing to undertake, assuming all goes well and my sphincter survives largely intact, as an adventure?
It may be so for you doctor, but I assuredly do not see it in the same light.
Perhaps it would be best if you put the rubber glove away in the meantime and sit on your thumb, as it were, while I consider further your fitness to examine me.
You seem a sherry-soaked trifle stressed, Dr Godly. The vein in your temple is throbbing like a sex-crazed cicada, and your cheeks are bright scarlet.
I hope you aren't forgetting your B complex tabs. They can do wonders for stress ... and may I also suggest a little daily meditation?
No need to attempt a full lotus on the surgery floor; just lie back on your couch for several minutes, breathe low, slow and deep and count mogadons.
I offer you this advice in all sincerity Dr Godly, but, dear me ... the whites of your eyes are the colour of old newsprint, a blotchy, yellowing, fading yolk of yuckiness, if you'll pardon my clumsy expression.
I hope you'll forgive my mentioning it, doc, but that breath ... perhaps you could try chewing a clove or too. And if you see a police checkpoint on your way home, I suggest you pull into the nearest driveway.
I prescribe dandelion and milkthistle tea for your liver, doctor - five cups a day, and stay off the grog.
What? You need it to help you sleep? Nonsense. Try passionflower and hops tea, or a banana and warm milk just before bedtime.
And I think you should try munching a few kawa kawa leaves. The old bushman's cure-all grows prolifically round the duckpond - it may help bring your shaking fingers under control.
I am worried about those marks on your wrists and inner elbows. Savage mosquitos up your way, are there? Incidentally, you shouldn't leave all those used needles in your surgery trash can. Someone might have a nasty accident with them.
Your psoriasis is particularly bad this summer. A friend claims some success with acupuncture and Chinese herbs, but it's a difficult one, isn't it?
You seem to be ignoring me - trouble with your hearing? Perhaps your kidneys are shot. You should quit processed salt and takeaway meals, and you could try nettle tea I guess, but really, you're so far gone I think a full body transplant is your only hope.
What's that Dr Godly? My 10 minutes is up? Well, thanks for your time, and no charge for my advice.
Perhaps I'll rely on organic pumpkin seeds for my prostate, and saw palmento is said to put the "do" back in one's libido.
I'll rebook the examination for next January. You'll be on your drug company-sponsored vacation by then of course, if you're still alive or not in jail; it is nice of them to recognise so generously your efforts to peddle their poisons.
Actually, I'm quite taken with that rather dishy locum who fills in from time to time for you. Her eye is steadier and her touch more sure. But first I will need to ask her a few questions.
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