40,000 People Played Roulette And Didn’t Know It
This is absolutely appalling. The doctors, the nurses, the staff, and everyone else involved with that clinic should have the book thrown at them. What the hell were they thinking? It’s not like procedures done at a clinic like this don’t make money.
It just proves that you can spend thousands and thousands of dollars on an education and still be the stupidest person to live on the planet.
Nearly 40,000 people learned this week that a trip to the doctor may have made them sick. In a type of scandal more often associated with Third World countries, a Las Vegas clinic was found to be reusing syringes and vials of medication for nearly four years. The shoddy practices may have led to an outbreak of the potentially fatal hepatitis C virus and exposed patients to HIV, too.
The discovery led to the biggest public health notification operation in U.S. history, brought demands for investigations and caused scores of lawyers to seek out patients at risk for infections.
Thousands of patients are being urged to be tested for the viruses. Six acute cases of hepatitis C have been confirmed. The surgical center and five affiliated clinics have been closed.
“I find it baffling, frankly, that in this day and age anyone would think it was safe to reuse a syringe,” said Michael Bell, associate director for infection control at the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
One of the infected patients is retired airplane mechanic Michael Washington, 67, who was the first to report his infection. On the advice of his doctor, he received a routine colon exam in July at the Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada.
While many people wonder how many of the 40,000 people were actually infected, I can’t help but wonder about the untold thousands they came into contact with after the fact. How do you track them? This is much bigger than people think it is.
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2 Comments so far
This is so freightening! It could be happening anywhere. People need to protect themselves, make sure that the needle used on you not only comes out of a bag, but make sure it is sealed first. You have the right to ask, do not be afraid to do so.
It’s mind-boggling. There’s no way those people weren’t aware of the risks. They simply didn’t care. Clearly they’d already judged the clinic’s patients as not worthy of good health care. Talk about doctors and nurses “playing God”. Sickening.