brecht and prof hayes

Strangely enough, I have been thinking alot about health care lately. I am out of school and finished with training next year and thinking about what I am going to do. I think most of in the doctor world are not agitators so many times there are very few mentors who are excellent physicians and at the same time asking hard questions about race and class and poverty and gender. And big money and pharma. I came across this poem that is so right on and obvious but strikes me as really profound because we don't really get trained to think on these terms. Check it out.

A Worker's Speech To A Doctor

We know what makes us ill.
When we are ill we are told
That it's you who will heal us.

For ten years, we are told
You learned healing in fine schools
Built at the people's expense
And to get your knowledge
Spent a fortune.
So you must be able to heal.

Are you able to heal?

When we come to you
Our rags are torn off us
And you listen all over our naked body.
As to the cause of our illness
One glance at our rags would
Tell you more. It is the same cause that wears out
Our bodies and our clothes.

The pain in our shoulder comes
You say, from the damp; and this is also the reason
For the stain on the wall of our flat.
So tell us:
Where does the damp come from?

Too much work and too little food
Makes us feeble and thin.
Your prescription says:
Put on more weight.
You might as well tell a bullrush
Not to get wet.

How much time can you give us?
We see: one carpet in your flat costs
The fees you earn from
Five thousand consultations.

You'll no doubt say
You are innocent. The damp patch
On the wall of our flat
Tells the same story.

- Bertolt Brecht

There is this prof at UC Berkeley, Dr. Tyrone Hayes who has studied a particular pesticide, atrazine and its effects on amphibians. And his findings have shown that a very small amount,(a smaller amount than is allowed to be in the water by the EPA) effects amphibians sex organs drastically. And he was attacked by the big pesticide company Syngenta who sells atrazine to farmers at a considerable profit. And he was villified. He is a black man tenured at 32 and an excellent scientist and he could not be bought. His work and story is testimony to the lenghths industry can go if your work, your science becomes a threat. http://www.mindfully.org/Pesticide/2003/Syngenta-Tyrone-Hayes31oct03.htm

And I wonder what would happen if doctors in addition to studying AICD's (Automatic Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillators) studied the damp. What would happen if we spoke out, in mass, about the damp? It dawned on me, so late in my training that evidence for what we do and why we do it as doctors is often based on who puts up the money.

and there is no money in studying the particular toxins that may be linked to black women and cancer, for example. There is no money in studying the damp, or treating the damp. But those who do, and there are some.. like Dr. Tyrone Hayes can maybe lead the way for us clinicians who have a ways to go.