Trust me I’m a doctor….

Doctors are very special people. I know this because doctors, retired or current, phone me at work sometimes. And unlike any other member of the public, who do not, by and large, tell me their job title,  most of them seem compelled to tell me that they are/have been a doctor.  Sometimes we get e-mails that have a special URL with the word ’doctor’ in, so you know it’s from a doctor.  I don’t know why this is - my work is absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with medicine. And actually my workplace employs lots of doctors (of philosophy, not medicine) who are specialists in the field. Unlike people who went to medical school. However from this we must conclude that there is a special course in medical school which is entitled “how to think you are an expert on absolutely any subject under the sun, when you’re not”

Now I must stress that I am not one of those people who are routinely anti any kind of medical intervention. I happily swill down the products of big Pharma (hormone replacement therapy) and you would have to fight me to snatch them from my hot little hand. I would not be taking such products however if I had relied on the diagnosis of my GP who told me I had reactive depression because I was “too young to be menopausal”, and I presume my bones would be crumbling as we speak while I necked prozac. So from this I conclude that medical school teaches you that women reach menopause at exactly age 50 with no variation, and that if you want to know what’s wrong with you - go to the surgery armed with a diagnosis and be prepared to argue.

But I am sceptical. Yes the lives of people in my family have been saved by medical intervention.  But when it comes to those ‘women’s troubles’ which actually form a huge part of the medical profession’s work, there are major problems, largely caused by the attitude that the “patient”  - maybe it’s time doctors started calling them ”customers” like everyone else?  - is supposed to be a bovine creature,(yes I know) waiting for the medical wisdom to be dispensed from on high, and in no way questioning it.

Of course medicine has a long and dishonourable history of pathologising females. Like hysteria caused supposedly by the womb wandering about the body. Later adopted by everyone’s favourite crackhead, Sigmund Freud. But we’ve outgrown all that stuff surely?

Allecto just wrote about a  new blog “Gardasil: women hurt by medicine” set up to highlight the effects of the new  vaccine for human papilloma virus, which is now being given to schoolgirls in Australia. Please note this is not being given to schoolboys - despite the fact that HPV is almost exclusively transmitted through heterosexual intercourse. Instead it’s being promoted as a ‘cervical cancer vaccine’. So only girls need it and only girls get the - fairly horrendous, from the stories on the blog,  side effects. I won’t even start on the assumption that 12 and 13 year old girls are automatically going to be heterosexual. There are some incidences of abnormal smears appearing in women who have never had sex with men - so it’s a myth that lesbians don’t need smear tests. But there does seem to be an assumption of compulsory heterosexuality behind the administering of the vaccine to girls so young. Like the rubella vaccine that was recommended when I was at school (this was before MMR) before we ‘reached childbearing age’. Well I still haven’t reached it, sorry.

Anyways let’s move onto another area - medical examinations of women. I was fairly shocked to hear recently from a woman who worked in the NHS that they weren’t allowed to have female only staff in their breast screening units. Apparently the reason behind this is that a number of male staff have taken cases to tribunal claiming this is sex discrimination and because a woman cannot always be guaranteed a female doctor, tribunals have upheld the claims, on the basis that having female staff is not a genuine occupational qualification.

The net result of this is that a lot of women aren’t using the service. I am absolutely amazed that even if the legal position is correct, (which we must assume it is unless it is overturned), someone who is supposedly working in the field of patient care and, we would assume, is concerned about patient health,  would take a stance that would make women feel so uncomfortable accessing a service, they would prefer to run the risk of developing cancer.

So women can’t be guaranteed a female medical professional. But at least they can be guaranteed that if they are examined by a man that man isn’t a sex offender can’t they? Well no. I personally know of a couple of women who’ve experienced  sexual assaults (and yes, they WERE sexual assaults, helpful trolls - they weren’t part of any medical procedure, they were straightforward assault) from medical professionals. But even better than that is the news that even if a doctor is convicted of a sexual offence, they may still be allowed to carry on practising.

Yes as of September last year, there were 11 doctors free to work in the NHS despite being convicted of sex and child pornography offences. The General Medical Council (GMC) has imposed conditions on six of them but five are free to treat patients unsupervised. Now this is out of 52 cases that came before the GMC, so a hefty 20% of those are still free to practise medicine. One of them could be in a surgery near you and you would never know. Because you’re not allowed to.

I could go on forever, but you get the drift. Doctors - special people. They know everything, they can carry on working even if they  are convicted of a sex offence, they don’t seem to feel any need to adhere to the kind of customer service standards everyone else in the  f******g western world has to. And most annnoyingly of all they phone me at work and tell me how to do my job. Bastards.