Patient-Doctor Relationships

Regardless of the social constructs about race and gender present at any given point in time, a physician carries a lot of clout. Even outside the arena dominated by Western medicine, any type of healer is in a highly reguarded position in his or her community. People put their health in doctors' hands every single day, or at least allow them to guide their decisions in some way or another. It's absolutely terrifying to read something like Diana Axelsen's article about J. Marion Sims and have to come to terms with the fact that doctors make mistakes too, sometimes big ones. Axelsen portrays "the father of American gynecology" as motivated by his own ambitions rather than his patients' well-being and, given his apparent decision not to even attempt to anesthetize a woman who went through thirty excrutiatingly painful surgeries, that may have very well been the case. But what if Sims was wary of anesthesia despite its gaining popularity and believed his surgeries to be safer without it?

I can't think of a situation in which experimental medicine would not be extremely risky. Surgery is always full of risks. That's what makes communication between patients and doctors so important. People need to know what they are getting into, which was definitely not the case with Sims' experiments - no matter how noble his intentions may have been. Tragically, exploiting slave women was acceptable in the time and place that he was practicing medicine. I'm still convinced that Sims believed that he was somehow helping those women. I don't care how preoccupied you are with making a breakthrough or how prevalent racism and/or sexism is in your society, no doctor wants to be held responsible for someone's suffereing - if for no other reason than it's bad for business, although I like to think that physicians are more personally invested in their patients' lives than that. When anyone has to go through a serious medical procedure, doctor and patient alike have to tell themselves that it's for the best. But what if it isn't? And how are you supposed to find out without experimentation? And what kind of sacrifices are we willing to make for the sake of such experiments? Not the well-being of a unconsenting or misinformed patient solely because he or she is underrepresented in his or her society, at least not anymore.

This subject matter reminded me of the discussions we've had about the surgical procedures performed on babies born intersex. Here again we have patients being operated on that are not in the position to speak for themselves. Are these children victims or recipients of the most cutting edge technology medicine has to offer? The pros and cons of the surgical "corrections" they're receiving long before they can talk are still being hotly debated. I wonder who, if anyone, is going to end up looking as cruel as Sims in another 150 years.