January 10, 2012--Advanced Neurosurgical Care

A friend sent me an innocent-seeming email that linked to a recording of a phone call to The Mark Levin radio talk-show.

The note said--

"Steve, one of my doctor clients sent this to me over the weekend. Are you familiar with this provision this neurosurgeon is discussing here?"

Back in November a caller to The Mark Levin Show (who identified himself as a brain surgeon) claimed he had recently attended a meeting in Washington, D.C. where the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) presented its purported guidelines for treating neurological patients under various scenarios.

The caller made two disturbing points.

First, he noted that HHS used the term “units” when speaking about patients. He likened this description of humans as units to practice in Nazi Germany, thus comparing the Obama administration to the Nazis.

Second, he provided an example derived from the alleged HHS document that mandated that the standard “treatment” for a 70-year-old patient who arrives in an emergency room with a brain aneurysm is to be “comfort care,” unless more comprehensive care is authorized by a medical review board. Comfort care means keeping the units comfortable until they die, otherwise untreated. A version of Sarah Palin's infamous, and bogus, death panels.

The "doctor" noted that when he gets a call to treat a brain aneurysm in the middle of the night, he is not going to wait for a medical board from an insurance organization to review his decision; rather, he will defiantly and courageously do what is right to save a life—something that will no longer be the standard of care.

My friend is a busy person so I assume he did not have the two miniutes to spare that it took me to track down the truth. which is contained in a joint statement from the American Association of Neurological Surgeons and the Congress of Neurological Surgeons:

Washington, DC--On November 22, 2011, an individual claiming to be a “brain surgeon” made several statements referencing neurosurgical care on a Mark Levin radio show segment. The American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS) and the Congress of Neurological Surgeons (CNS) reviewed this segment and found that it contained several factual inaccuracies which we wish to clarify.

The AANS and CNS are unaware of any federal government document directing that advanced neurosurgery for patients over 70 years of age will not be indicated and only supportive care treatment will be provided. Furthermore, in conducting our own due diligence, the caller who identified himself as a brain surgeon is not actually a neurosurgeon, nor was there any session at the recent Congress of Neurological Surgeons’ scientific meeting in Washington, DC at which a purported government document calling for the rationing of neurosurgical care was discussed.

Neurosurgeons are committed to providing timely, compassionate, and state of the art treatment for all patients--regardless of age--who have neurosurgical conditions. As such, we have requested numerous times that this podcast be removed from Mark Levin’s website as it portrays inaccurate information which could potentially be harmful to the patients that we serve.

I of course urged my friend to pass this along to the other people to whom he circulated his initial email. I included a little lecture, which I hope he will also send out:

I am not familiar with this because it is totally untrue.

It is an example of why I urge you not to pass along bogus commentary. As you will see, it is total garbage. I suspect you are prone to pass this kind of thing along without researching its veracity because of your political views and distaste (mild word) for anything having to do with your president. You, and I and everyone else, need to put our ideology aside when attempting to have a meaningful discussion of any fraught issue.

You should pass my note along to all those to whom you circulated this scurrilous recording of a phone call to a ultra-right-wing radio show. I would expect nothing less of the host Mark Levin, but I expect a lot of you.

The good news--he assured me that I was the first person he sent this to since he knew I would check it out. I then asked him to at least send it along to his doctor client. He told me that he had already done that since he does not want this kind of slander to be in circulation.

That's why he is my friend.

But still--is this any way to engage in discourse in 2012?