Think doctors here have it tough? More details are emerging from last week’s story of the Egyptian doctor who prescribed narcotics to a Saudi princess:
Raouf Amin el-Arabi, a doctor who has been serving the Saudi royal family for about 20 years, was convicted last year of giving a patient the wrong medication. Egyptian newspapers reported that he was accused of driving a Saudi princess “to addiction.”
He initially was sentenced to seven years in prison and 700 lashes, but when he appealed two months ago, the judge not only upheld the conviction, but more than doubled the penalty to 15 years in prison and 1,500 lashes.
When reading a story like this, or about Iraqi doctors getting killed, it puts the problems that American physicians often talk about in perspective.
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In America, if you have a chronic pain condition, doctors get to label you an addict and sentence you to torture for life. In Saudi Arabia, if you service a princess’s addiction, it’s you who gets tortured.
In Saudi Arabia, one doctor got this punishment. In America, millions of chronic pain patients get this punishment.
Few chronic pain patients would think what was done to this doctor is just. Most doctors think what is done to us is just.
I hope this illustrates the difference between the US and Saudi Arabia.