Hippocrates In San Diego

Veteran’s Day Blues

I spent the better part of an hour watching “Combat Hospital” on CNN. I could barely choke my pizza down past the lump in my throat. This was hard for me: although I had seen similarly gruesome visual images in medical school, the context of the images on the screen made them intensely powerful. Every one of the patients brought into the Combat Support Hospital (CASH) was under the age of 25, with the exception of a sergeant who collapsed from emotion after transporting two of his wounded troops to the hospital. American soldiers and Marines as well as Iraqi civilians of all ages were treated by the doctors and nurses. It seemed like an incredible waste of youth. To be 18 or 19 years old, given a powerful weapon (and often becoming a powerful weapon), to be taught unending discipline, all for the end result of a mangled limb or shattered psyche — this was the opposite of everything that I had been taught or trained to do in medicine. We are taught not to think of disease as the enemy, because that dehumanizes our patient, turns them into a battlefield rather than a person. “The War on Cancer” or “Assault on Diabetes” sounds antithetical to what I’m trying to do — improve the quality, and frequently the quantity, of life. Where in these soldiers’ field training manual is the quality of their life mentioned? Is it only addressed after a lucky, but incomplete, survivor leaves the CASH?

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Adu For A Change

DC United soccer star Freddy Adu — who has yet to live up to hype or expectations — reportedly will be spending two weeks in England training with Manchester United, the most famous (and most despised) club in professional soccer. This likely is a tryout of sorts, as the wealthiest of wealthy teams is unlikely to ask America’s most well-known young player to visit without the opportunity to show his wares for the club. ManU, now owned by Tampa Bay Buccaneers owner Malcolm Glazer, is potentially just making a tryout offer to Adu as a favor to fellow NFL owner (and owner of MLS teams in Columbus and Dallas) Lamar Hunt. But regardless of their intentions, Adu has an opportunity to make an impact on English soccer, where only American goalkeepers have had any success.

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Veni, vidi, vici

The Associated Press, Reuters, and CNN are calling the Virginia Senatorial race in favor of Democratic challenger Jim Webb, giving the Democrats effective control of the Senate. The final score: Dems 49, Repubs 49, Independents 2 — but both Indies (Connecticut’s Joe Lieberman and Vermont’s Bernard Sanders) have announced that they will caucus with the Democrats. It is a great sweep for the Democrats, who were left for dead after the 2004 election. Hooray democracy!

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Midterm Elections And The Road Ahead

Well, that was exciting, wasn’t it??? For the first time since 1994, a midterm election actually meant something. I haven’t seen so many people talkin’ politics since… when? It was nice to see people of all stripes get active, involved, and passionate about their government again. If there could possibly be a silver lining to some of the terrible events of the last 6 years (constitutional crisis over the 2000 election, 9/11, implosion of one of our major parties, major war, decline of our status as a moral world leader… I could go on) it might be that people are finally emerging from the apathy and numbness we’ve had about our politics since the Watergate scandal. While it could be said that the only thing that brings voters to the polling place anymore is a constitutional amendment to abridge someone else’s right to life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness, ultimately these abrogations of our constitutional liberties will be corrected by judicial or legislative mechanisms, or if all else fails, by popular movement. We are more cynical than ever. We can probably count on one hand the number of people that were truly shocked or surprised about Mark Foley, Ted Haggard, John Kerry, etc. Even charges surrounding a Congressional incumbent’s past domestic violence didn’t so much as cause an extra bubble in the simmering pot this election year. But we emerged on the other side — before even knowing which party will control the Senate — with a level of concern and wonder about what the next 2 years has to offer. Not radiant, naïve hopefulness, because after so many let-downs by our leaders, that would just be foolish. Concern and wonder — I’d take that over apathy any day.

Minnesota’s Muslim MP

I heard about the newly elected rep from Minnesota, Keith Ellison, yesterday while wading through the election results online. Apparently there’s been a big dirty campaign to discredit Ellison, who converted to Islam at age 19 (originally Nation of Islam, which is Louis Farrakhan’s group, then converted to Sunni Islam later in life). While he was loosely affiliated with the NOI (he denies ever having been an enrolled member), he apparently helped organize Minnesota’s contingent for the Million Man March, and wrote some incendiary pieces in his college paper trying to defend Farrakhan (who at the time was under scrutiny for an anti-Semitic comment). He later disavowed his NOI involvement as youthful indiscretions (he was in college through most of this) and has done well to distance himself from a brand of Islam that is considered by most Muslims to be heretical because of their belief that their founder, Wallace Fard Muhammad, was the “Mahdi,” or Messiah.

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