So it’s OK for Jerry to make an exaggeration for effect but a Very Bad Thing when Xeni does it?
Who is Jerry to you, that you can speak for him?
Post hoc, ergo propter hoc.
Sort of - It is an inaccurate citation and cites a non existent issue - one needs to find the author - (in cbs article linked) go back to the journal site (as linked in BB extended article) and do search for the author. Or some alternative method to get to the same result. But yes all the information needed to find it is in the post.
As a practicing veterinarian, this statement is complete BS. I’ll agree that our true client is the owner, they have final say, as they’re the ones who have to pay the bill, and have to make decisions for a patient that clearly cannot make decisions for themselves, but to say that “the patient on the table isn’t considered to have a stake in the outcome” is ridiculous and insulting.
We Vets are in the unfortunate and hopefully unenviable position that we are honestly trying to practice the best medicine with our patient’s outcome as our PRIMARY concern, but we’re beholden to the people who hold the purse strings. I can’t tell you the number of Vets who comp services or end up getting burned out because of the sometimes incompatibility between the patient’s best medical interests (which is the Veterinarian’s primary concern), and the financial, or sometimes simply emotional concerns of the clients who make the final decisions.
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A significant number of animals we own are livestock, and a significant number of those are given antibiotics to bulk up, rather than to help them get better. How is this benefitting the “patient” recieving the medication? Seems that treatment is purely for the owner. If we were to talk about pets, I’d submit that a pet would not choose to get neutered, or have their ears or tails docked. Again, purely for the benefit of the owner.
To me it seems an apt comparison, given the enormous amounts of antidepressents given to humans, to mitigate the same kinds of issues of overcrowding and negligence.
And looking at cancer treatment through the filter of productivity, makes me wonder who is supposed to be benefitting from such treatment.
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“In those not-so-clear patient decision scenarios, the likelihood you’ll lose your job is one of many factors to be considered. How messed up is that?”
This makes sense ONLY if you think that there are women who look at this as a choice between surviving cancer and keeping their job longer than 4 years, and they decide the risk of losing their job 4 years down the road is too great and so decide not to try to survive the cancer. Do you really think that happens? Anyone with half a brain realizes that you have to be alive 4 years from now to worry about losing your job 4 years from now.
Trying to see the bright side of this, I hope some of that 30% are women who, faced with the reality of their own mortality, stopped taking so much shit from their bosses and walked away from terrible jobs with a feeling of peace and self-actualisation.
Sadly, since it’s the US, that is a high-risk strategy most of the time. But if you were pretty sure that of all things, starvation is the least likely to kill you in the next four years, I can see some people going for it. That or an office killing spree.
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Are you reading the same post I am? Xeni’s post links to this article at the bottom. That’s the one we’re talking about. That’s the one the CBS quote describes. There’s no need to go to the CBS article and search the author. It’s right there in Xeni’s bottom link.
As the article says, for adjuvant chemo “the expected benefit is low.” So it’s not a black-and-white decision whether to live or not, it’s a decision to take additional treatment that may make a difference – but quite likely won’t make a difference – and very likely will wreck the patient’s body enough that they’re less likely to be able to hold on to a job in the future.
It’s not an easy decision, to be sure. But it’s certainly a real decision.
In many ways, it’s like the arguments that led up to health professionals recommending against many forms of cancer screening – it’s possible that for some people there’s a benefit, but for most people the chance of a benefit is tiny, and the chance of a bad outcome is higher, so the screening was worse than not screening.
hmm that link was not there or not linking properly when was reading it yesterday - the only link i found went to a generic site for the Journal.
(also possible that as I went in circles between the short, long posts and the links that i did miss that one)
I moved 4 posts to an existing topic: HOW TO do this and that in BBS
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You can find exceptions to every rule, but to make bulk statements that pretty much directly state that every veterinarian is clearly uninterested in the patient as a primary concern is an enormous insult to most of the veterinarians that I know that have dedicated their lives to caring for animals.
There are atrocious abuses that occur, both in livestock medicine (which was a good example to bring up), as well as with other areas like “military veterinarian” or “racetrack vet” (the worst IMHO), but I’ll speak only for my area of practice which is “companion animal medicine” and say that my statement is still applicable to that.
As far as sterilizing, I’d agree that it’s done largely for the benefit of the population rather than the individual. There are significant medical benefits to spaying, and some to neutering, though, if I could directly ask the animals involved, they’d still likely rather take their chances with various cancers or a pyometra rather than having a surgery.
At my clinic we do not dock ears or tails. There’s actually a lot of debate within the industry as to whether this is an ethical practice.
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This reminded me that if you were to ask young children about the life-saving vaccinations their parents and doctor want them to get, I’m sure the reaction would be “no shots!!”
Responsible guardianship often means making difficult choices on their behalf.
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I’d like to see the numbers for people who take short term disability or long term disability time off, or FMLA leave, and the likelihood that they’ll be unemployed within 1-5 years. I’ve seen a few cases where seemingly decent workers took short term disability leave, then were railroaded out shortly after they returned. Psychopathic corporations and their representatives must think: why risk the chance that they’ll get sick again? Especially in this job market of disposable human resources, where people are crawling over each other for a chance at a decent job.
Apropos of nothing…
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