Should prisoners be denied scarce medical resources?

YES

What is the right to healthcare? It seems to me that a right is a natural entitlement. Basically, my only real right is not to be interfered with. I have no rights to other people’s stuff, their money, time, expertise. Governments may choose to provide things but they arent rights. If I violate your right to life, you can legitimately resist me, violently if necessary. If I refuse to give you health care, or to care for you in your dotage. Well, it is my choice not to.

I had a quick chance to look at Dr. Bernstein’s website comments-many from nursing students-about what pain is-and how it should be treated-or not treated-or how you have to be careful not to make patients addicts-and how we should be using ‘safer’ drugs-such as Actiq.

There is no shortage of misguided and misinformed individuals entering into the health care field.

There is some serious lack of proper training going on when nursing students believe that all pain patients should be running around with fentanyl lollipops.

No patient should ever be denied opioids based on fear of possible addiction or regulatory scrutiny [ see; Katzung-Principles of Pharmacology-Lange Medical Publishers-chapter on "Opioids" ]

If you review thw writings of Dr. Benjamin Rich on medical ethics related to pain treatment, along with the writings from Dr. Joranson-Univ. Wisconsin Pain Studies Group, some of these very issues are properly addressed.

There are effective barriers to pain treatment which act-in unison- to deny legitimate pain sufferers their right to obtain these types of medications.

It seems like our current generation of health trainees-both doctors and nurses alike-haven’t managed to overcome these same “Barriers” to any more significant degree than the majority of their forebears.

This is probably the fault of the teachers in the institutions where they are training.

Legal decisions and research papers-=on this subject-have very nicely pointed out that even most members of states medical boards are unable to properly judge the credentials and actions of pain specialists-given the fact that the members of those boards are ignorant as to the issues.

This is why its easy for cops to arrest and prosecute doctors—and why it is easy to see that REAL PAIN PATIENTS will continue to get the ‘short end of the stick’ in our society.

I suggest to these students who blog into Bernstein’s site that they look up the above mentioned references-so they can actually learn what’s going on-before they go off ‘waxing philosophical’ on a subject that they not only don’t understand-but where their bloggigs reflect a degree of immaturity inconsistent with the needs of their future patients.