From the NY Times: “Nearly eight months after Michael Jackson died, his personal physician was charged Monday with involuntary manslaughter for providing him with a powerful anesthetic that was ruled a primary factor in his death.”*
We all like to think of Doctors as people who always take the high road. Even when they’re played as comics or fools on TV, we still like to think of them as Dr. Welby. For those too young to remember, Marcus Welby, MD was a top-rated show on ABC, starring Robert Young as the perfect, caring, all-wise GP. It aired during a time many people refer to as the good old days (1969-1976).
But times have changed. Not many Dr. Welbys left. Not in this time of managed care, hospital rules and government rulings. You can’t spend more than five minutes with each patient and make the kind of doctor money mothers are proud of.
Not unless you’re taking care of a celebrity. One that has the money to buy you. And the power to make you believe you’re part of that celebrity. And in order to hang on to it, give the patient what he/she wants. And that means feel-good drugs. Feel-good to the point of becoming deadly.
Why, for heaven’s sake? It’s the groupie effect. The urge just to be around celebrity. And it doesn’t take much celebrity. Just let a local TV anchor, or even a week-end weather guy show up in a grocery store and people stare. Then go say to their friends, “Guess who I saw?”
A minor piece I used to do on a popular local morning show got me off a speeding ticket. The cop says, “You look familiar. Where have I seen you?”
I didn’t even tell him where, merely said, “You’ve probably seen me on TV.” That was enough. All I got was a smile and a “You take it easy now.”
It’s like an infection. Celebrity infects everybody, including doctors. I am somebody because I know somebody, or have even seen somebody. Like the silly, screaming girls who surrounded Michael and Elvis, and, yes, all the way back to Sinatra in his young days. They’re called groupies. And we all laugh.
But when one of our supposedly most intelligent and principled lets it take hold to the point of disaster, we need to reassess. Seriously.
For Michael and Elvis, their celebrity, which seemed so fabulous for a time, became very serious. And when doctors became groupies, fatal.
*via Michael Jackson’s Doctor Is Charged With Manslaughter – NYTimes.com.
