Pats on the back

May I suggest you start by having a cheeky little look at this link.

Matthew Gaythorpe

In case you can't or decided not to read it, it is about a ten year old boy who had life saving revolutionary surgery in my home town of Melbourne.  It was a great outcome for medical science, the patient and doctors and staff involved.  But while the news about the procedure was very positive and everyone involved was patting themselves on the back I don't think everyone should be congratulating themselves.

The medical team and the parents of the patient decided on the surgery a year ago following a stroke the boy suffered.  From then it took a year for the surgery to go ahead.  A whole year where the patient was suffering regular fits, struggling from poor general health and lethargy and during his developmental years would have had his development stunted both physically and mentally.  He would have also felt terrible from the fourteen different pharmaceutical medications he was on that didn't work (but hey, Glaxo would have loved him;).

So it begs the question why the delay?  You could excuse them if the specialist equipment took a while to be manufactured in the United States.  Or it took a while to train up a medical team for the procedure.  But no.  Once again it was the magnificent bureaucratic bullshit and the ethical, or should I say 'unethical committee' that held thing up.

And how ridiculously stupid.  Here is a young boy with deteriorating health and next to no quality of life being made to wait for life changing and potentially life saving surgery.  Sure it was a world first surgery and a trip into the unknown but I honestly have to say that most of (if not all) the people on the ethics committee have never been faced with a debilitating disease that does not respond to conventional treatment.  I've said it before and I'll say it again.   As far as I am concerned the current medical establishment considers it fit to let people suffer provided it is done ethically.

Now don't get me wrong, I do understand that ethics committees are there to protect people both collectively and individually.  But in cases like this I really don't understand why it takes a year to approve.  So to the medical team and doctors involved with the surgery and the patient and family and friends I congratulate you.  As for the ethics committee, for every day you procrastinated on the decision for this surgery you should be made to give yourself an uppercut.

Until next time, stay well:)