An irregular, irreverent, post-modern account of the surreal, the ordinary, and the bizarre happenings on and around the Felia lavender farm in Crete

Friday, July 25, 2008

Who died and put pox doctors in charge of our morals?

I'll be honest - I'm sick and bloody tired of doctors telling us what we should and shouldn't do - what's right and what's not. Today Radio4 carried a piece about "fertility experts" announcing that people who smoke or are overweight shouldn't be given IVF on the NHS. What the fuck? These hubristic gits have been pontificating on the evils of smoking for years and are now turning their bile on obesity. And on what basis have they elected themselves to speak on these matters? Pure hubris.

Doctors have always felt themselves to be inherently superior to the rest of us. In the old days the general public were stupid enough to believe them. Do not forget that the selfish, money grubbing GPs and consultants all but derailed the whole idea of the NHS at its very conception - threatening to take their ball and go home unless the government allowed them to continue with their private practices, no mater how badly it damaged the unborn NHS. "Trust me, I'm a doctor" said Harold Shipman - and hundreds did.

Only this week it transpires that these paragons of virtue and upholders of value within the NHS have failed to stop prescribing anti-biotics willy nilly (38m prescriptions for antibiotics were written by doctors in the UK in 2007, costing the NHS £175m) as they were instructed some years back. Prescribing for ailments that they know anti-biotics cannot affect.

The one thing that I'm sad that they didn't ask the so-called "fertility experts" surveyed was whether they refused IVF treatments in their private practice to smokers and the obese because I know that they don't. Hippocrates or hypocrites? They love to tell the freeloading NHS patients how to live their lives but nod to the mighty pound whenever enough of them are waved under their dirty little noses.

I have some news for doctors - NHS patients pay for their treatment - NHS patients pay the bulk of doctors wages - NHS patients paid for the training of doctors. So guys and girls - get over your superiority and get on with doing your job while keeping your mealy mouthed moral rectitude firmly to yourselves. We pay for your medical opinion and expertise not your self serving hypocrisy.

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