Margaret Jannetti and David Cohen were victims of a lax and secretive medical system. Both underwent surgery and both died, not on the table, and not from the disease the operation was meant to correct. Although they had little in common in life, Jannetti and Cohen shared a cause of death with the estimated 90,000 people who are infected every… return to article
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Reader Comments (14)Page 1 of 1 pagesIt seems that many afflications thought to have been wiped out long ago have returned with a vengeance such as syphalus, TB, and certain kinds of topically spread and airborne infections. This is perhaps symtomatic of the whole pattern of social regression over the past two decades. The broad public health concerns for which no expense was spared from the end ot WWII unitl turn of the new era with the onset of the “Reagan Revolution” was seen as constructing the sturdy social infrastructure needed for a stable, profitiable, and just society. Today’s outsourcers and globalizers no longer see any point in such “extravagant” concerns and have deemed sensible to return hundreds of billions of tax money for public welfare to the richest taxpayers to support financial speculation, niche markets, overseas investment, and luxury consumption. The US public takes a beating and the spread of formerly eliminated diseases with the emergence of new preventable ones is only one example of the bitter consequence of the new neo-liberal, post-Keynsean world and its priorities. Perhaps there are actually more immediate and specifically health related explainations for the hygiene problems in contemporary US society but it surely pays to look at the social, political, and historical context in which they now exist.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Mar 16, 2006 at 12:14 PM Syphillus, tuberculosis, and TB are bacteria. The bacteria have never been “wiped out”, and probably shouldn’t be. The diseases the bacteria cause when they overwhelm a person’s immune system have been treated successfully with antibiotics and therefore, not spread as widely.
Strains of bacteria become resistant to antibiotics through the overuse of antibiotics, poor cleaning and sepsis protocol, and insufficient hand washing. One thing I’ve noticed is that people often behave as if gloves were magic and are not vigilant enough about where all they are putting their hands when they are wearing gloves.
These infections can also be spread through contact with bedding and clothes. Nurses in England are pushing to have the hospitals sanitize their uniforms so that they can cut down the risk of spreading the bacteria outside the hospitals.
Hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, jails and prisons, should be required to culture all infections and test them before treating them with an antibiotic.
MRSA and VRSA are nasty antibiotic resistant staph infections. Identification and proper sepsis are critical.
Individuals would be wise to stop using antibacterial soaps and to learn how to clean ----wash, rinse, dry, then use a disinfectant according to instructions, if there is a pressing reason to use a disinfectant. Harsh disinfectants can kill a pathogen’s competition and lead to anti-biotic resistant strains of bacteria flourishing. A disinfectant should be used on a dry surface that has been properly cleaned, and the soultion should be left on the surface for the proper amount of contact time. Repeated spray and wipe cleaning that does not remove dirt and bacteria allow a biofilm to develop, in which microbes can get small enough doses of disinfectants and antibiotics to develop a tolerance/resistance.
People might also learn to wash their hands thoroughly for 17 to 21 seconds with a mild soap, rinse well, dry well. Antibacterial soaps are harsh and if used properly and frequently are likely to make a person’s hands break out in sores. They are also unnecessary and probably contribute to resistance.
It seems like the entire medical establishment is understaffed. HMO’s were a horrible idea, and the CDC might want to get busy educating industry about using more sepsis protocols and prophylactic measures and fewer antibiotics.
This problem is preventable, but it takes time, testing, thoroughness, training, and more staff.
Posted by wileywitch on Mar 16, 2006 at 7:08 PM Thanks for the highly expert if anal retentive explaination of the spread of disease. Also thanks for the correct spelling of syphillus. I think that your point about anti-biotic resistant strains coming from anit-bacterial soap and other surface cleansers is a good one. I realize that stuff like TB and Syphillus have never been totally wiped out though they were reare when I was young. It seems they’re making a comeback and it seems that it could be related to all the other regression that we are making as a society. I think greater regulation of the health care profession would help. Health care is one industry that stands in incredible need of reform. It would save many lives and much misery. Unfortunately, the current Administration could care less!
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Mar 17, 2006 at 12:07 AM Just about every year hospitals are evaluated and number one on the list is a need for increased handwashing.
I think part of the problem is that there are more people living longer, and our society is unhealthy. It’s not natural for a person to wash their hands every five minutes, and to wear latex or vinyl or neoprene gloves all day. Health care people have developed allergies to latex and died from thier gloves. What’s necessary isanal.
In fact, health care people could be written up for not being anal or compulsive enough with handwashing.
People have been having amputations for staph infections. It can’t just be inadequate hand washing at the hospitals; but hospitals need to report it to study it. It would help if the World Health Organization and AMA made that a requirement.
The rise of syphillus has been attributed to a rise in sex without condoms in articles I’ve seen in the last few years. Hope that one isn’t getting to be anti-biotic resistant. Talk about a public health disaster.
Good housekeeping really isn’t all that “anal” either. Most of what women do at home is unnecessary cosmetic work that often spreads germs. Handwashing, airing out the house, being especially careful with meat handling, getting hot food hot, and keeping cold food cold are the most important daily things. The chemicals most people clean with are more threatening to health and nature than a messy house.
Posted by wileywitch on Mar 17, 2006 at 10:23 AM The last time I checked, hospitals were the fourth leading cause of death in the United States. And besides infection, drug administration (medicine) is the other major culprit along with gross negligence and incompetence at all levels.
“Most of what women do at home is unnecessary cosmetic work that often spreads germs.” —an arresting accusation. Got proof or is this merely bashing the woman of the house? LOL
If this bird flu pandemic ever gets off the ground… I seriously doubt anyone will be willing to part with any product claiming to be antiseptic - that claims to kills germs and bacteria, etc. A hospital will be the last place in the world you will want to be. Avoid people and avoid getting sick or dying. It could come to that.
Posted by Tim Christopher on Mar 17, 2006 at 1:53 PM “Most of what women do at home is unnecessary cosmetic work that often spreads germs.” --an arresting accusation. Got proof or is this merely bashing the woman of the house? LOL
Well, I could dig up some studies if you’re interested, Tim. I’ve studied this for years and have years of experience as a caregiver and housekeeper. Did you really perceive “bashing” in my post, or are you joking? Being “the woman of the house” myself, and all. It’s hard to tell with LOLs these days. I have no problem with cosmetic cleaning btw.
Over 80% of the deaths caused by the last small pox epidemic were caused by secondary infections. Sepsis protocol is sepsis protocol, it’s a biological thing that’s been tried and tested. Anyone properly educated in it would not be running willy-nilly for any poison that might be effective to douse their household with. Soap and water is often enough. And antibiotics do nothing to alleviate viruses.
I agree that avoiding hospitals and clinics is a good idea. I think it would be a boon to public health if doctors went back to making house calls. As it stands, about 40,000 people in the U.S. die every year from influenza.
Posted by wileywitch on Mar 17, 2006 at 3:46 PM I work on a Labor and Delivery floor in a hospital as a RN. Within the last 6 years I have noticed a trend. My patients as a rule, do not wash their hands. (This includes after using the bathroom, changing bloody pads, etc.) Even suggestions to wash their hands, some even act as if I didn’t say anything. It has nothing to do with being a young patient, as I have seen this behavior in 16 year olds as in 30 year olds, and in educated verus uneducated.
Posted by atlantaelaine on Mar 18, 2006 at 11:48 PM Hi, antlantaelaine, I don’t doubt what you say, but I don’t want to let clinics,hospitals, and medical personnel completely off the hook, either. I’ve seen a nurse touch an MRSA infected and weeping sore, then---with the same glove--- touch a lot of other areas on the client’s body, bedding, and wheelchair. I wanted to clock the woman.
I also saw a client in the hospital for a week with an iatrogenic infection caused by surgical implements that weren’t properly sterilized. It was a University hospital, the admitted their mistake. My client could have died from that, and we both do our best to go to hospitals and clinics only when necessary.
I accept that there is going to be error, but if medical institutions aren’t consciously and scientifically dealing with that error, then they are leaping into the arena of malpractice. Documenting is square one, we shouldn’t even be arguing over the ethical imperative of documenting deaths due to iatrogenic infection, and anti-biotic resistance infections brought to the hospital.
I think the hospital, btw, should be well within it’s rights to give a warning, and then to evict a patient that continues to refuse to wash their hands, which is a refusal to carry out a simple act to sharply reduce the risk of infecting others; which is rational, responsible, and adult behavior that should be socially expectable.
Posted by wileywitch on Mar 19, 2006 at 12:45 PM “Most of what women do at home is unnecessary cosmetic work that often spreads germs.”
Well, I mean, I had always suspected the possibility… if it were not for women us men would still be living (happily) in trees, after all.
Save your kitchen stories, witchy woman, proof is in the bathroom…
How is it the great American toilet ended up being designed solely for women and when men adapt to using it according to their own physical anatomy, they are castigated for it? Never mind this underlying architectural oversight but heaven forbid that the toilet seat ever gets left in the upright position!
If women were genuinely concerned about anything other than their own gender bias or frivolous cosmetic considerations in this matter, the issue would be the insistence that the toilet is always flushed with the lid down. Forget the seat, it’s the lid that should always be down.
Ah, but that would make women equally responsible for preventing the escape of all those pooh pooh germs into the bathroom atmosphere from where they eventually land on your toothbrush....
Posted by Tim Christopher on Mar 20, 2006 at 2:03 PM Wrongo, Mr. Christopher, there are more fecal coloforms (sp?) in the kitchen than in the bathroom---there is food in the kitchen. In tests done by microbiologists, household kitchens are often found to contain more pathogens than public restrooms. Biggest offenders---sponges. People go out of their way to spread microbes by wiping surfaces all over the kitchen with a nasty sponge so that the kitchen looks nice. If you built two identical kitchens and had one sterilized like a NASA clean-room, and the other covered with deadly pathogens, you couldn’t tell the difference by looking.
My papercrete dreamcottage that exists in my head, has a hand sink by the entrance to the kitchen and it has a foot pedal, just like the ones in hospitals and clinics, to avoid the ridiculous contamination and recontamination of handles. My bathroom sink (the one in my imagination) has a foot pedal too, and a soap dispenser that doesn’t require a person to touch it (ditto for the bathroom) with their unwashed hands.
I’ve tried to design toilet seats that would close themselves after flushing as an exercise in imagination; but that could be hurtful, especially for those men who get up in the middle of the night and go to the bathroom in their sleep.
I kinda doubt that the toilet was designed for women. Most fixtures were definitely not designed for the persons who clean them or for sanitation.
Maybe you can answer this Tim, why are men not allotted the same amount of privacy in public restrooms as women are? Why are men expected to whip it out in front of whoever happens to be at the urinal wall?
I wouldn’t mind if urinals were routinely built into home bathrooms, there would be no doubt about who should clean them.
Posted by wileywitch on Mar 23, 2006 at 10:26 PM wileywitch: I never claimed that the bathroom contained any more or any less germs than the kitchen - but merely that a measure of tongue-in-cheek “proof” existed there. And even though I chose to agree with your original supposition, you still find disagreement....
you wrote: “I kinda doubt that the toilet was designed for women.”
Actually, it was designed by men, for women, according to the architectural parameters of affordable housing. It’s the woman that requires a nest, you see, and men are always willing to make certain sacrifices for women - particularly if those sacrifices will save them some hard earned cash or provide the illusion of something better for less while maximizing their own self worth and spousal appreciation.
What is particularly feminine about the American standard toilet is the small size (most women are smaller in stature than men) and donut shaped seat. I think women prefer the donut shape mostly for cosmetic reasons, while it subliminally provides a sense of sitting on ones throne in symbolic rule over men.
Better toilets do exist if you are willing to pay for them and you have the space. They are taller and larger overall, oval shaped, and having a hefty horseshoe shaped seat. They flush with the same thrust force as an F-14 Tomcat. Ideally, they are equipped with motion sensors to automatically cover and flush when you are done using it and they are self cleaning, too. Basically, what is now a commercial fixture for the handicapped.
The bathroom of the future becomes a “biosphere” and space exploration discovers a species of tiny creatures that are only too happy to serve mankind by cleaning our bottoms. Their motto is: “Your fecal bacteria is our bread and butter!”—and so on.
“Maybe you can answer this, Tim, why are men not allotted the same amount of privacy in public restrooms as women are? Why are men expected to whip it out in front of whoever happens to be at the urinal wall?”
Because men would rather watch the game than wait in line to use the can. And besides, men aren’t interested in checking out each others body parts, anyway. Standing eliminates picking up God knows what from seat contact (seat covers can’t be trusted, btw) and here’s the main thing that women don’t get: It’s the male prostate gland that requires a higher squat or standing position to allow for a free flowing evacuation.
I ran all this, previously, by my significant other (who also happens to be an RN) and, surprisingly, she mentioned the urinal thing, too. And through further interrogation (I have my methods) I discovered the ultimate truth: that women actually think that a mans penis is a disgusting thing; except of course, when it becomes useful to them as a means to an end.
Posted by Tim Christopher on Mar 24, 2006 at 4:31 PM ...women actually think that a mans penis is a disgusting thing; except of course, when it becomes useful to them as a means to an end.
Disgusting? That’s harsh. Do they think their own genitalia are “disgusting”?
Have you ever sat down on the toilet and fallen into the bowl? It’s most unpleasant, but when I do, I take equal blame for not making sure the seat was down, and I have to laugh because it’s slapstick.
If I were going into home architecture I’d work a urinal and the sensored self-flushing, lid closing toilet into the bathroom.
I don’t know what town you live in. I saw a movie once, where the characters crash landed somewhere in Alaska and they were being hunted by a huge bear. When I saw the bear from behind, I thought <i>ohmmygod!, I’ve seen that ass all over this town, in tights no less!
Posted by wileywitch on Mar 24, 2006 at 9:52 PM Kitchens and bathrooms, sinks and toilets. Hospitals!
I am in my kitchen and bathroom daily and haven’t died yet.
I was in a hospital a few times recently, for the first time in my life (since I was born) as a patient, for a few procedures to deal with a kidney stone (probably calcium oxalate) too large (1.0 x 1.3 cm) to pass in the normal fashion. It would appear my body gets medieval with calcium but still doing some more 24 hour urine collections for analysis and yet to recieve the analysis of the bits of sand I collected in a strainer.
Cystoscopy (to take a look) and double J stent insertion ( to prevent blockage), lithotropsy (to break up the stone into sand and dust), cystoscopy and double J stent removal (to get it over with). Ultrasounds and Xrays before, during and after.
The nurses and doctors were excellent. I am hyper aware of contact with people and they did a good job of keeping me at ease and following proper sterile procedures. I’m still alive, even after they had their way with me.
The least of my worries (I am the opposite of a hypochondria, I think I can’t get sick, super human powers and all) was about catching something at the hospital.
Although it did cross my mind knowing that some people who go into hospitals come out dead and not necessarily due to the problem that brought them to the hospital. But some people slip in the bathtub too.
Staying super hydrated to flush the kidneys. Using natural probiotics to restore the benficial flora and fauna to my digestive system after the anibitiotics. Keeping my immune sysytem strong, before, during and after.
These were the steps I took to protect myself and I am very confident in my ability to take care of myself. Mostly. Thankful for an excellent health system to take care of things when my abilities cannot.
Are hospitals hazardous to your health? Yes, So is Life. But hospitals maybe more. I don’t want to go back any time soon.
Posted by David in Canada on Mar 24, 2006 at 9:55 PM It’s great you got through it, David. Catheters are high on the list for hospital bred, anti-biotic resistant bugs.
Clouds was stuck in the hospital for six days with an infection he was given him while they cleaned out his bile ducts and put in a new catheter. If the infection was antibiotic resistant, it wasn’t resistant to all of them---or he’d be quite dead. It was staph.
I don’t want to go to the hospital either. Once, I thought I had a kidney infection (it turned out to be lumbar pain from working ten minutes on an assembly line while a line worker went to make a quick phone call), so I went to a hospital. That alone, was remarkable. After taking the forms I filled out, they put a bracelet on my wrist. I started to cry, then pulled myself together---it felt like they got me. I only stayed for a few tests, and they prescribed a muscle relaxant, but boy did I feel like they bagged me---I lost. Affliction won.
Getting sick, or going to the doctor or hospital is like “losing” to me. I get very indignant about it. I’m competetive with microbes, I guess. That’s why I am learning their ways. Know thine enemy---especially when you live with and/or work for people who are immunosuppressed---I’d rather die than be Typhoid Mary.
I have two sisters who are nurses. From their vantage, tuberculosis is raging. The nurses who tend to TB patients at one of their hospitals don’t tend to any other kinds of patients and they have to wear a really elaborately prepared, personally fitted mask. TB would change a person’s life, hey? Curses. Ptooey. But the anti-biotic resistant strain of TB (Russian) was bred in prisons.
Crowded, enclosed spaces without fresh air and sunshine are a pox on man and beast.
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