I got an e-mail from a doctor who works with Dr. Fadhli. He is upset about the approach I took to posting about this shooting incident, and the speculation about whether jihad was a motive. He is concerned because the doctor and his family have enough to worry about, without being unfairly branded as a terrorist. I think that he has a point.

I didn’t think I was doing that when I posted—but perhaps my words were inflammatory and not neutral. I still don’t see anything wrong with asking questions about motivation—as long as the questions are neutral in content. In fact, I think that everytime such an incident happens, the question will be the elephant in the room.

That said, I think that it is important that we be fair about discussing this case in the blogosphere. There is, after all, no evidence that the doctor holds jihadist beliefs—like there is in the other cases that Michell Malkin details—or that such beliefs motivated this incident. In fact, I think that Michelle should take the doctor off the list.

So, I intend to back off on this issue until there are more facts.

UPDATE:

Please see my update here. I think that we need to reserve judgment on the Houston/Galveston case. The information coming from folks who know him in Galveston is pointing to different direction. Let’s remember that there is no evidence that the doctor practices islam or has jihadist sentiments.

Last night I wrote about the Muslim doctor in Houston who, apparently radomnly, shot the bicyclist. Tonight, Michelle Malkin tells us about a Pakistani national who shot up a bunch of women at the Jewish Federation justifying this act because of the Israli-Hezbollah war.

Will we see more of these types of incidents involving Muslims in our country?

Update:

A commentor who knows Dr. Fadhli points out that I am making an assumption that the doctor is Muslim. That is correct, I am assuming after googling the name to see if it is a Christian Arab name. I could be wrong.

There is also apparently a possibility that the doctor was chasing the bicyclist because the latter (or someone) had tried to rob his wife and son.

Regardless, I still want an investigation to determine if this man had jihadist beliefs. He was born and raised in the United States, and by all appearances is All-American. How frightening it would be if such a man is a jihadist.

If this incident has nothing to do with jihadism, I will be happy that is the case. Then, I would say that it is tragic that such a man possibly sacrificed a wonderful career and life in a moment of anger.

P.S.: If Dr. Fahdli was defending his wife and son from a robber—or protecting himself while trying apprehend a robber, then he doesn’t deserve prosecution. And, shame on law enforcement for not listing that as a possibility and solely characterizing it as random.

Also, shame on me for being too inflammatory.

Further update:

Rusty at My Pet Jawa is writing about Dr. Fahdli as well. A commenter came to his site and says the following:

from the rumor mill on the island, the doctor had been attacked previously by the cyclist and buddies(gang-related) while at a corner convenience store. from what I know he was very happy to be here as his family had fled the overthrow of the shah.
regards,
galveston resident

Posted by ron at July 29, 2006 02:20 PM

So, the prosecutor’s claims that this was a random shooting may be false—and possibly reckless. I know that there are some bad neighborhoods in that area. This shooting may have been provoked by gang behavior. In fact, the dearth of information about the guy on the bicycle might be a result of political correctness.

I hope that it the case. The doctor’s bio posted here makes him seem very assimilated. The person who commented here this morning seems to think that he is a very accomplished and compassionate doctor.

It is possible that he was either defending himself, or had grown weary of dealing with local gangster scum.

Nevertheless, the questions I raised earlier are legitimate questions. Hopefully, the worst case scenario is NOT the answer.

UPDATE:

Please see my update here. I think that we need to reserve judgment on the Houston/Galveston case. The information coming from folks who know him in Galveston is pointing to different direction. Let’s remember that there is no evidence that the doctor practices islam or has jihadist sentiments.

See update below.

Doctor charged in drive-by shooting of bicyclist

DICKINSON, Texas — A doctor has been charged in the drive-by shooting of a bicyclist who is now recovering at the hospital where the physician works.

Dr. Wameeth Fadhli, a doctor at the University of Texas Medical Branch hospital in Galveston, remained jailed Thursday under a $60,000 bond after being accused of firing “numerous” shots at a 22-year-old man Tuesday.

The 33-year-old doctor has been charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. If convicted, he faces a prison term of two to 20 years and a fine of up to $10,000.

Officials declined to release the victim’s name.

According to witnesses, the victim was riding his bicycle when a sport utility vehicle pulled alongside and began firing what they described as a pistol. The witnesses told police the shooter was alone and wearing what appeared to be surgical scrubs, Maj. Ray Tuttoilmondo of the Galveston County Sheriff’s office said.

He was shot once in the chest and once in the left shoulder. He underwent surgery and was listed in guarded condition Wednesday evening.

Investigators found a vehicle matching witness descriptions in front of a home where they found Fadhli and took him into custody. Police had not found the gun by Thursday.

Fadhli would not perform any clinical work while the shooting was under investigation, hospital spokeswoman Jennifer Reynolds-Sanchez said.

Officials said they had no evidence that the two men knew each other.

“At this point, this looks like it could have been just a random shooting, and that makes it a pretty scary crime,” Assistant District Attorney Xochitl Vandiver said in Thursday’s editions of the Galveston County Daily News.

(Emphasis added)

I hope that jihadist beliefs, literature, etc., if any, are thoroughly investigated in this case. Especially in light of this.

This is even nuttier than I thought. Here’s a link to the UTMB website. Here is a link to the bio on a Wameeth Fadhli:

Wameeth Fadhli:

Wameeth was born in Lafayette, IN and attended the University of Houston in Houston, TX with a degree in Biology. From there he attended medical school at St. George’s University in Grenada, West Indies. He is a member of the American Medical Student Association, Surgery Club and Emergency Medicine Club. He has worked as a Special Education Teacher at Robert E. Lee High School; Teaching Assistant at the University of Houston; Tutor at Karen’s Kids Daycare; and Live-in attendant with a quadriplegic student at the Texas Institute of Rehabilitation and Retardation. Wameeth has done volunteer work at St. George’s University monthly health fairs, Hermann Memorial Hospital, and was an Assistant Coach for little league soccer. He is fluent in the Spanish language and conversational in three languages. Upon completion of his core rotations and many electives in medical school, he knew he wanted to work in a primary care setting. He looks forward to working with patients at various points along the continuum of cognitive, physical and emotive development. He is an SSI certified scuba diver, and has a Brown Belt. Wameeth enjoys hiking and camping trips with his wife and children, as well as sailing, soccer and martial arts. He also is interested in cooking, cycling and rea

He’s in pediatrics for goodness sakes.

Also, look at this story which is the same as the above with this addition:

Assistant district attorney Xochitl Vandiver, who recommended the bond after conferring with investigators, said the amount was higher than usual for that charge because of concerns for community safety.

Hmmm…

Today I interviewed the author of The End of Medicine : How Silicon Valley (and Naked Mice) Will Reboot Your Doctor written by Andy Kessler. As I previously announced here I sat in as a guest host for my friend Mychal Massie on his show, Straight Talk, which plays on Right Talk Radio. John, at Right Talk, graciously allowed me to download the show in order to reproduce it here. I thank John and Right Talk for giving me permission to air the show myself.

Andy Kessler does a great job on the show and he has some really good insight and information about trends in medical technology and how it will impact us in the future. I also had the chance to read his book and highly recommend it. It’s informative, easy to read and quite humorous. Here is a really good review of the book from the Wall Street Journal.
So, I urge you to click on the little symbol below and listen to the show. It lasts about an hour and is well worth it.

Last week, I had the honor of guest hosting Mychal Massie’s show, Straight Talk on Right Talk Radio. I had the double honor of interviewing Ramesh Ponnuru and Burke Balch about so-called “futile care” theory. As I stated in this post:

Burke J. Balch, J.D. serves as Director of the Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics which specializes in euthanasia-related issues and is associated with the National Right to Life Committee.

He has worked as Attorney-Advisor for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, helping to write a report on denial of life-saving medical treatment to children with disabilities (“Baby Doe” cases). He was Chief Staff Counsel for the National Legal Center for the Medically Dependent and Disabled, and worked as a lawyer for Americans United for Life Legal Defense Fund.

A law review article he co-authored was repeatedly quoted by the United States Supreme Court in support of its 1997 decision that there is no federal constitutional right to assist suicide. In addition, he has published articles on abortion, on ethical issues related to withholding and withdrawal of food, fluids, and life-saving medical treatment, and on advance directives. His website is here.

Ramesh Ponnuru is senior editor for National Review and has covered politics as a reporter for more than a decade. He has been a fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs in London and a media fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is the author of The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts, and the Disregard for Human Life .

His articles have appeared in numerous publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Newsday, the Washington Times, the Weekly Standard, and Financial Times.

He is also a frequent guest on television including appearances on FOX’s The Big Story with John Gibson, CNN’s Inside Politics, MSNBC’s Scarborough Country, CSPAN’s Washington Journal and HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher.

Ponnuru is a graduate of Princeton University and lives in Washington, DC. His website is here.

The Interview lasts for about an hour and can be accessed by clicking on the little thingy below. John at Right Talk Radio gave me permission to post this. I thank the folks at Right Talk for the privilege and I highly recommend their thoughtful and educational format. They are the graduate school of talk radio.

Later I will post today’s show. This sound uploading thingy takes me awhile, (cross posted at Texas Advance Directives Blog)

As I talked about in this long-winded post, I’m guest-hosting my friend Mychal Massie’s show Straight Talk on Right Talk Radio at 1 pm ET tomorrow. I have a great guest, Andy Kessler who is the author of The End of Medicine, How Silicon Valley (And Naked Mice) Will Reboot your Doctor. The Wall Street journal has a really good review of the book here.

One part of the book that really caught my attention is discussed in the above review:

In one hilarious sequence, Mr. Kessler recounts trying to draw his own blood sample, in the hope of checking his cholesterol. But clinics won’t draw blood without a doctor’s orders. Drugstores think you want the syringe to shoot heroin. Unless you want to just gouge your own finger, you’re in the clutches of organized medicine. Imagine how tightly it grips something a bit more sophisticated

(Emphasis Added)

The emphasized part is very relevant to my opposition to “futile care theory.”

So tune in tomorrow. Andy’s book is extremely humorous and informative. I think that his interview will be too.

As some of you may know, I have been volunteering my time to represent patients and their families in situations where physicians, hospitals and hospital ethics committees have made unilateral decisions to withdraw life-sustaining treatments based on subjective opinions about “quality of life”. This is called “futile care theory” and it is protected and enabled by a Texas statute allowing providers what is called “safe harbor” (protection from liability) if they follow the procedure set out in the statute before withdrawing treatment.

As part of my volunteer work, I have participated in a group that is reviewing the law with the goal of making recommendations to the legislature. This is the same group that wrote and got the present law passed.

During the first meeting, after my group’s position against futile care theory became apparent, one of the hospital people came running up expressing the hope that we would support the single-payor system since we didn’t want treatment withdrawn from people based on economics. I bit my tongue and quickly walked away making an excuse.

At the last meeting, I pointed out that I thought that providers should be constrained from making such unilateral decisions, in part, because of the inherent structural aspects of the health care system that severely limit the patients ability to choose treatments, facilities and those who would give them the treatments—such as licensing laws, Medicare/Medicaid regulations and insurance contractual provisions.

I said that I think that medical care is a commodity—but that the system prevents it from being treated like other commodities. For instance, if Walmart doesn’t believe that it is ethical to sell adult entertainment and refuses to sell such material to you—you can go to a store that sells such products and buy them.

But, if some doctor decides that you are in a Persistent Vegetative State and that, in his view, it’s unethical to continue to feed and hydrate you or provide you with air through a respirator—where else can you get such products? You will be limited from finding other placement by funding issues—and perhaps licensure issues if other doctor’s don’t want to be seen as giving treatment somebody else has decided is inappropriate. It’s pretty much like the Blue Wall of Silence. Sort of the White Coat Wall of “We’re Doctors and We Know Better than You” Intransigence.

After I argued this, a lady ran up to me and informed me that “they” don’t consider healthcare a commodity. They consider it a “right”—and didn’t I agree?

Because she was a gentle and caring sort—I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying: “What kind of “right” is health care when your doctors and hospital adminstrators have to power tell somebody that they can’t have the health care they want and that they should just die already?”

Besides, I’ve never seen that particular right in the Constitution.

So here I am , in a conundrum. I want to stop hospitals from removing respirators and hydration and nutrition against the will of patients and their families, while saying that patients don’t have a constitutional right to health care.

I resolve it by going back to what I pointed out before. Consumers of health care are prevented from accessing health care to the extent they can other products and services, in part, because of legal and regulatory structures that don’t exist in other markets.

Those of us who decry the present materialistic and utilitarian state of medical ethics can fight like hell, but in the end I believe that the economics behind the present system will ultimately defeat us. Those of us fighting futile care theory need examine to what extent the present system for funding healthcare is degrading its ethics.

Our health care system—even without Hillarycare—is essentially socialistic. Remember what P.J. O’Rourke said about socialisam. He said it provides “the rations of slavery— hay and a barn for human cattle.”

Somehow, doctors and hospitals decided that, for that one very final event, they have the sole right to sort the cows.

(more…)

I will be guest-hosting my friend Mychal Massie’s show Straight Talk on Right Talk Radio tomorrow, Tuesday, July 18. It will air at 1 pm ET (12 pm CT) My guests will be Burke Balch—who will be on the air the first segment and Ramesh Ponneru will appear the during the 2nd segment and 3rd segment.

Burke J. Balch, J.D. serves as Director of the Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics which specializes in euthanasia-related issues and is associated with the National Right to Life Committee.

He has worked as Attorney-Advisor for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, helping to write a report on denial of life-saving medical treatment to children with disabilities (“Baby Doe” cases). He was Chief Staff Counsel for the National Legal Center for the Medically Dependent and Disabled, and worked as a lawyer for Americans United for Life Legal Defense Fund.

A law review article he co-authored was repeatedly quoted by the United States Supreme Court in support of its 1997 decision that there is no federal constitutional right to assist suicide. In addition, he has published articles on abortion, on ethical issues related to withholding and withdrawal of food, fluids, and life-saving medical treatment, and on advance directives. His website is here.

Ramesh Ponnuru is senior editor for National Review and has covered politics as a reporter for more than a decade. He has been a fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs in London and a media fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is the author of The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts, and the Disregard for Human Life .

His articles have appeared in numerous publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Newsday, the Washington Times, the Weekly Standard, and Financial Times.

He is also a frequent guest on television including appearances on FOX’s The Big Story with John Gibson, CNN’s Inside Politics, MSNBC’s Scarborough Country, CSPAN’s Washington Journal and HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher.

Ponnuru is a graduate of Princeton University and lives in Washington, DC. His website is here.

In part, we will be discussing futile care theory and what is going on in Texas.

Right Talk Radio streams across the internet. You may listen by clicking here. Then, precisely at 1 pm ET, click on the button that says Straight Talk and you will be able to listen.

Feel free to call in with questions or comments at this number: 1-866-884-8255 (TALK)

If you miss it, the show will replay every hour on the hour for the rest of the day.

The Federal government is one big hog. Look at this article about how it has 8 million acres in western states tied up for owls.

Let me tell you something about owls. But first, you might be wondering why I posted a picture of a hammock on a screened-in porch. That’s a Mayan hammock and that’s where I sleep. I started sleeping in it two months ago.

Since then, I have had no neck stiffness, no shoulder pain, no sciatica and no sleep wrinkles on my face. I sleep like a baby and I wake up totally refreshed over an hour earlier than when I slept in my bed.

Now about the owls. It seems that owls can and do live in neighborhoods. Every night one wakes me up right outside the screened-in porch. I have to look around to make sure my cats are on the porch and not being stalked by the owl.

So don’t try justifying taking 8 million acres away from the people of these states.

A Forensic Analyst, Dr. Gerald Tedesco, raises similar questions to mine about Terri’s autopsy report in an article at the North Country Gazette. (Hat Tip Terri’s Fight) Questions about:

• Sampling (I discuss and link to materials about that here)




• The relatively intact frontal lobes (I discuss here, here, here, and here.

He also discusses the possible events that could have caused Terri’s condition. He talks about the mechanisms of injury:

Mechanisms of injury: These can occur by intention or accidentally during a struggle to restrain another person by applying chokeholds, headlocks, Traumatic compression (when a larger individual uses his body weight to restrain a smaller person on the floor for example – restricting chest expansion and respiration. Remember, there was evidence Terri did sustain posterior rib fractures, and sexual edge play (erotic asphyxia).

I talked about non-traumatic asphyxia here.

• Also, Dr. Tedesco talks about the role dehydration plays in brain shrinkage:

Drs. Thogmartin and Nelson claimed Terri’s brain weighed 615 grams (about 50% weight). But, Dr. Thogmartin also stated this was the worst case of dehydration he had ever seen. Her body cavities were completely dry. I would bet that some of the loss in brain weight was due to the dehydration (the brain is 75% water). This is supported by research studies conducted on brain volume and dehydration.

“An article on one such study was published by the American Academy of Neurology. This is a brief excerpt: “Dehydration confounds the assessment of brain atrophy” by T. Duning, MD, S. Kloska, MD, O. Steinsträter, PhD, H. Kugel, PhD, W. Heindel, MD and S. Knecht, MD. From the Departments of Neurology and Clinical Radiology, University of Münster, Germany. Computerized brain volumetry has potential value for diagnosis and the follow-up evaluation of degenerative disorders. A potential pitfall of this method is the extent of physiologic variations in brain volume. The authors show that dehydration and rehydration can significantly change brain volume: lack of fluid intake for 16 hours decreased brain volume by 0.55% (SD, ±0.69), and after rehydration total cerebral volume increased by 0.72% (SD, ±0.21).”

He is citing to the same article I cited to here. (scroll down to the bottom)

Like I said, I had many of the same kinds of questions that Dr. Tedesco addresses in the article. I’m not a doctor. If I can read an autopsy report word for word and look things up on the internet and figure out questions—why couldn’t the journalists covering the story of the autopsy?

Furthermore, the facts Dr. Tedesco raises about what it takes to diagnose PVS are very germaine to what is going on in so-called “futile care” cases here in Texas. Like this one that I am working on.

I’ve had a severe case of blogger’s block lately. So, I’ve spent my free time reading and helping my friend Kathy on her ranch. We’ve spent the last month putting in a new water line.

Over the holiday, we went to a party where they were having a calf sorting contest, worked on the trench for the waterline and had fun at the creek. Click on the little bell thingy for the accompanying music.