Medical Personnel

Gov. Parris N. Glendening will sign a bill today prohibiting assisted suicide in Maryland, despite warnings from opponents that the measure will have a "chilling effect" on pain relief for dying patients.The governor said yesterday that he had rejected pleas to veto the measure, but announced vetoes of five other measures that passed the General Assembly this year.Vetoed bills include one that would have given the Public Service Commission authority to raise the salaries of key staff members -- legislation the governor had tried unsuccessfully to amend to give him two additional appointments to the powerful regulatory body.

The decision by the nation's second-largest health insurer that doctors -- not HMOs -- will have the final say on treatment is receiving mixed reviews.The move last week by UnitedHealth Group was applauded by many, who said it puts medical decisions in the right hands. But others voiced skepticism about the significance of the policy and whether other HMOs are likely to follow suit.Officials at several HMOs in Maryland last week reacted cautiously."I'm not sure what we're going to be doing immediately," said Jeff Valentine, director of corporate communications for CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield.

The director of health services for state prisoners said yesterday that he was considering adding medical personnel at the Central Booking and Intake Center after complaints that the system for taking care of sick prisoners is costly and insufficient.Dr. Anthony Swetz, director of inmate health services for the state Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, said the department might take steps to provide medical care for booking center prisoners before they have had bail reviews.

I will frankly admit that I am afraid of medical care. I trace this fear to my childhood, when as far as I could tell, the medical profession's reaction to every physical problem I developed, including nearsightedness, was to give me a tetanus shot. Not only that, but the medical professionals would always lie about it."You'll hardly feel it!" they'd say, coming at me with a needle the size of a harpoon.As a child, I was more afraid of tetanus shots than, for example, Dracula. Granted, Dracula would come into your room at night and bite into your neck and suck out all your blood, but there was a positive side to this; namely, you could turn into a bat and stay out all night.

Carroll County's new $7.6 million 800 megahertz radio communication system will be running by October of next year, Motorola officials told a group of about 50 yesterday.The officials told the group -- which included County Commissioners, law enforcement officers and fire and medical personnel -- how the new seven-channel system will improve their communication capabilities, especially during major operations such as the natural gas explosion that leveled one house and damaged dozens more in Autumn Ridge in January.

Staging the Boston Marathon is an effort that resembles a major military operation.In an average year, it involves almost 5,000 volunteers, 570 medical personnel, 500 barricades, 40 delivery trucks, 200 buses, 5,000 bags of ice, more than 1,000 uniformed police officers, 170 massage therapists, 70 physical therapists, 100 podiatrists, 20 tents, 400 tables, 200 two-way radios, 65 shuttle buses. And 8,000 balloons, 24,000 feet of ribbon, 130 country flags, 58 national anthems.There are 13 YMCA water stations with 75 volunteers at each one to deliver almost 20,000 gallons of spring water and 20,000 gallons of sport drink in 350,000 cups to the athletes.

Not since the Vietnam War have medical services been provided aboard the Sanctuary, an old Navy hospital ship rusting away on the Fairfield waterfront in South Baltimore.That could change with two new uses of the ship proposed yesterday by the Maryland Army National Guard.During a planning meeting aboard the ship, Guard officers said they wanted to turn parts of the vessel into "Operation Sanctuary," a free community clinic for the needy that would be run by military personnel one or two weekends a month year-round.

While many citizens in the rest of the nation are telling their elected representatives to lower taxes, Howard County residents last night urged their chief elected official to raise them in order to expand services, especially in the areas of health, education and public safety."

Not since the Vietnam War have medical services been provided aboard the Sanctuary, an old Navy hospital ship rusting away on the Fairfield waterfront in South Baltimore.That could change with two new uses of the ship proposed yesterday by the Maryland Army National Guard.During a planning meeting aboard the ship, Guard officers said they wanted to turn parts of the vessel into "Operation Sanctuary," a free community clinic for the needy that would be run by military personnel one or two weekends a month year-round.

Does it seem that half the people around you are sniffling, sneezing, wheezing, coughing and generally feeling like heck right about now?Two weeks ago, 1,680 medical workers around the country reported that roughly 126,880,000 people -- about half the population -- had cold and flu symptoms as of Jan. 7, according to a survey by the SmithKline Beecham pharmaceutical company.Although that's a lot of ailing folks, doctors say it is the time of year for colds."I am seeing a lot of people with respiratory infections of one kind or another," says Dr. James Richardson, who practices family medicine at the University of Maryland Medical System.

A burglary suspect pronounced dead by medical technicians after he was shot in the head by police lay for about 30 minutes on the floor of a Northwest Baltimore convenience store before officers noticed he was alive, city police said Monday. A spokesman for the city Fire Department, which oversees emergency medical personnel units, said it was the first misdiagnosis of its kind he could recall in the past five years. Department officials are conducting an internal investigation into the incident, according to Chief Kevin Cartwright, the spokesman.

It may seem craven to say so, but a person really had to wonder at the inability of trained medical personnel to hook wire A to battery B to alarm clock C and detonate a car loaded with gasoline and nails in London. And then having to resort to the rather amateurish alternative of crashing a Jeep Cherokee into the Glasgow, Scotland, airport terminal - the suicide bomb alumni association must be shaking their heads. Nonetheless, the fiasco in London is bound to bring new directives from the Department of Homeland Security forbidding doctors and nurses from operating motor vehicles.

Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity, and the War on Terror Steven H. Miles, M.D. Random House / 222 pages / $23.95 The central image of my Roman Catholic faith is, on the most literal level, a tableau of torture. While viewing countless depictions of Christ's crucifixion during a recent trip to Italy, I was struck by the heinous inhumanity of such an act and, at the same time, by its symbolic meaning as God's sacrifice to save humankind. In his harrowing book Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity, and the War on Terror, physician Steven H. Miles shows how far from that symbolism our nation and its leaders have moved, concluding in his first chapter: "The United States is a torturing society."

The arrest of a doctor and two nurses yesterday on charges that they administered lethal drug doses to severely ill New Orleans hospital patients during the desperately worsening conditions after Hurricane Katrina raises ethical questions about what medical personnel can do in life-threatening emergencies. Would doctors, who take a professional pledge to "first, do no harm," break their oath when they thought the only merciful thing to do was to help end the life of a patient? The charges also put a spotlight on the use of morphine, commonly prescribed for patients in severe pain, but which can cause death when in an overdose.

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon placed new restrictions yesterday on how doctors can be involved in interrogations of detainees, but critics deplored any policy that gives medical professionals a role, saying it could lead questioners to use harsher tactics than they would without medical advice. The military's use of medical professionals in interrogations has drawn fire from human rights groups and medical ethicists. They have charged that doctors have been unethically used at the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by force-feeding detainees on hunger strikes and providing medical advice to help interrogators.

Military interrogations resurfaced recently when an Army officer was convicted of negligent homicide for smothering an Iraqi general to death. He received only a reprimand. As controversial as that crime and its punishment have been, little attention has been paid to the relevance of the case to another contentious debate: Should military doctors be allowed to participate in the interrogation of prisoners? As an Army Reserve doctor twice deployed in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, my answer is an unequivocal one: yes. First, physicians involved in questioning prisoners can prevent abuses.

NEW YORK - Faced with a court order and unyielding demands from the families of victims, the City of New York opened part of its archive of records from Sept. 11 yesterday, releasing a digital avalanche of oral histories, dispatchers' tapes and phone logs so vast they took up 23 compact discs. For the first time, about 200 accounts of emergency medical technicians, paramedics and their supervisors were made public, revealing new dimensions of a day and an emergency response that had already seemed familiar.

When students at Fairmount-Harford High School feel sick, principal Karen Lawrence is forced to tell them there is no nurse and send them home. At Polytechnic Institute, a teenage diabetic waits for her mother to come twice a day to help her administer an insulin shot. These are some of the problems that have resulted from budget cuts to a $10 million nursing program that is meant to place a nurse or health aide in every Baltimore school. The medical personnel are provided by the city Health Department, and the program is funded by the schools and the city.

U.S. military medical personnel grossly abused medical ethics at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, helping to design interrogation techniques, turning their backs on abuse by guards, failing to protect the rights of detainees and actively hiding evidence of abuse, a Minnesota bioethicist charges in today's issue of the journal Lancet. Some even went so far as to revive prisoners for further torture and falsify death certificates of prisoners killed during interrogation, according to official documents examined by Steven H. Miles of the University of Minnesota.

The decision by the nation's second-largest health insurer that doctors -- not HMOs -- will have the final say on treatment is receiving mixed reviews.The move last week by UnitedHealth Group was applauded by many, who said it puts medical decisions in the right hands. But others voiced skepticism about the significance of the policy and whether other HMOs are likely to follow suit.Officials at several HMOs in Maryland last week reacted cautiously."I'm not sure what we're going to be doing immediately," said Jeff Valentine, director of corporate communications for CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield.