The Star Chamber

One of the most popular folk remedies against the common cold in this country is extract of echinacea purpurea. Hundreds of studies have been made, the thorough ones (you know - randomized double-bind studies? - the sentence the alties never seem to comprehend?) - this was researched in 2004, and now a meta-study has concluded the same thing; the product is worthless.

That is, medically worthless. For those who manufacture it and make ha handsome profit selling the stuff, it's worth millions.

But the population in this country will be fooled, of course; the paper is already full of citizens claiming that the stuff works; because it has helped them - a sample size of one.

Something is seriously wrong with the eucation in this country. Kids go into school as sceptics, curiously asking all the right questions; when they leave school all that is flogged out of them, and they end up being prone to all sorts of tricks.

One of the major subjects in school ought to be science - and by science I do not mean the ability to repeat the second law of thermodynamics in a parrot-like manner; I mean the ability to personally and independently assess whether a thesis, sentence or slogan is false or true.

Being critical is innate. It ought to be nurtured, not exterminated.

Apparently, 150 of them have started working in Norway.They ave been duly licensed by the Board of Health.

Now it transpires that "a number of them" don't have any medical education at all.

But no, "nobody" feels that obtaining a Norwegian medical license is too easy.

This is an example of sloppy work by the licensing authorities, and there can be absolutely no doubt about that. If a doctor had done his diagnostic work with similar negligence, his licence qould be toilet paper within a week.

But as a governmental bureaucracy is responsible, as the authorisation agencey (SAFH) is, no heads will roll. That's the beauty of being a bureaucrat, isn't it.

...is one of the main reasons I never once considered orthopedic surgery as a carriere. (The other reasons being the low average IQ I perceived among the orthopedic surgeons - the surgeons closest to gorillas -, the boring repetitiveness of the nuts-and-bolts handicraft, and also the fact that I never once could manage to get a radial fracture straight).

Now an orthopedic surgeon is in trouble over shoulder pain - not his own, but a patient's. The doctor has been working at Rana Hospital, just a few kilometers south of the Arctic Circle. Apparently, he has operated a shoulder but the patient didn't get well. That is the problem with orthopedics, you know. That is the reason they have been leading in med-mal cases throughtout these last years (neurosurgeons and OB's are in a class by themselves, of course) - their patients are looking for restoration of their lost health, and surgery isn't going to give them that, just as a car, once it has been repaired never more will regain its pristine state.

The doctor has now received "criticism" from the Board of Health - for record keeping, as always. The Health Personel Act is so vaguely written concerning record keeping that it constitutes an enabling act, the Board of Health can put whatever they like into it; this is the beauty of the thing, they can discipline anyone they like, making the transgressions up as they go (having been on the receiving line of this process, believe me, I know...I know...). There are always some t's to be crossed or some i's to be dotted; there are always some thoughts, reactions, actions or something you didn't write down ("In the records you mention the patient's last stools...however, we cannot see that you have adequately described their volume, color, smell, density or possible radioactivity...nor the patient's reactions to them...nor the penultimate stools not to mention last week's menstrual period...this is clearly in violation of the Health Personell Act")

Thank God most orthopedic surgeons I know of don't give a rat's ass about the Board of Health or anything these corrupted bureaucratic lawyers might spew out of their word processors. But in case this one does, here is some personal advice:


Dear orthopedic colleague:
- Take the letter you have received from the Board of Health.
- Look at it. It is written on high-quality paper (having received a number of these myself, I know...).
- It is written on high-quality absorbant paper, isn't it?
- This fact alone should alert you to the possible practical uses you might have for this piece of paper.
- The rumours that printer's ink can cause anal cancer are completely fictious. Don't listen to them.

in Bergen, Norway's scond largest city.

No solution is forthcoming. I remember when I worked there (many years ago), the genuine patients in need of the ER were few and far between - shoulder dislocation, fractures of the radius, the odd foreign body on the eye and so on and so forth.

But the doctors were kept busy nevertheless:
- Drug addicts seeking drugs took up a great portion of the doctor's time,
- old decrepit ladies whom the children suddenly had had enough of and wanted out;
- drunkards wanting somebody to quarrel with
- prisoners wanting to get some time off from prison
- neurotics that felt their lives were empty unless they got examined by a doctor every day

and during these last years this bunch has been completed by

- asylum seekers trying to get some diagnosis - any diagnosis - that will give them the possibility of being granted residency for "humanitarian reasons".

Now if these groups were formally banned from even entering the ER, this service could function without waiting and cheap too. But then the politicians must act to keep the Board of Health off the ER's back.("The doctor is reprimanded for not crossing the t's and dotting the i's in Mr Inebriated's chart" - "even if he was dead drunk, puking can theoretically be a symptom of an intracranial tumor - so a MRI was clearly indicated and should have been ordered" - "if the old lady with metastatic colonic carcinoma had been admitted to the hospital, she could theoretically have lived for two more hours, perhaps three, so she should have been admitted")

I have said this so many times; the easiest and cheapest way to make the Norwegian Health System efficient is to abolish the Board of Health altogether. You could even as a bonud save their salaries (althoug some sort of social security had to be paid to them - they are unemployable)

This is a new one to me:

Norway has a very strict law regarding committing the insane to asylums against their will. But it has recently come to the notice of the Board of Health that some of these wackos escape abroad.

So now the Board of Health wants foreign police to track down escaped Norwegian lunatics and forcibly bring them back to this country.

Honestly speaking, this must be the very hallmark of a country too rich for its own good. Fortunately, our European brethren are reacting to this Gestapism. This is another proposition that will go down the drain of oblivion.