When I started writing this site, I was sure that it was something that would remain non-political, but in this post I break that choice.
This week I had the opportunity to talk to a family that has recently lost their son to oral cancer. A man in his early thirties, a non smoker, athlete, and a father of two daughters. There are many aspects to this tragedy that I could explore here. The lack of early detection screenings in his dental appointments, his ignoring some hoarseness that persisted for several months, the treatments that were conducted initially by a small, local city hospital with minor cancer capabilities - which did not bring to bear all the potentially beneficial medical assets soon enough, and much more. But this particular entry is about the recent ruling by the high courts related to who in our population may have access to drugs which are not yet approved, but have shown potential in the trials to date and may even save a life. The current state of the situation is that there has been a ban on their use, regardless of the willingness of a patient to fully accept the risks associated with that use. Most of the patients who have petitioned for this ability have been in terminal disease states with no other hopes. Certainly the drug manufacturers have been quiet about much of this as they are regulated by the FDA’s rulings, but you have to believe that they too would be interested to see if a particular drug had impact or not, if only from a scientific perspective and not a compassionate one.
I can think of no greater means by which this administration, under the leadership of President Bush (and those that support his power base) has debilitated our country, for decades into the future, than his appointments to the judiciary and specifically to the supreme court. US Court of Appeals judge Thomas Griffith has ruled this week that “there is no right, deeply rooted in this nation’s history and tradition, of access of experimental drugs to the terminally ill.” It must be noted that Griffith, recently appointed by Bush, is a relatively young man. As such he has the potential to be making inane comments like this for decades to come. It is no surprise that Bush’s newly conservative weighted Supreme Court supported this ruling, and refused to hear the case themselves.
This is yet another instance, Iraq comes to mind immediately, in which “compassionate conservatives ” are willing to kill people in order to protect them. This distinction is not just academic, it is much more. What conservatives on the courts refuse to comprehend, is that the Bill of Rights is a list of rights that the citizens of this country grant to the government, NOT vice versa. The ruling should have been that the government has no fundamental right to deny potentially life saving or life extending drugs and treatments to dying patients… particularly when all parties concerned are cognizant of the inherent risks, willing to accept the consequences of their decisions, and no others are harmed through the process in any manner.
There were options and opportunities, granted with significant inherent risks for this young man with oral cancer. We will never know if those options would have given him a few more months with his family to communicate that which is now forever unsaid, or even to have defeated this disease and lived on. Thank you judge Thomas Griffith, I wonder how you would feel were this you in a life and death battle, and how that might impact your decision making process. One only has to remember the reversal of opinion from other compassionate conservatives, like Ronald Regan and his wife, when they found themselves on the other side of a disease issue that they failed to champion when the chance was theirs.
