American medicine — literally killing people with untested bags of shit?

© 2019 Peter Free

 

17 June 2019

 

 

Caveat — what follows will mean more to medically knowledgeable people

 

Especially to those aware of the immense medical risks that being immunocompromised carries with it.

 

However, everyone should take home the message that supposedly "do no harm" medical professionals in America often are not.

 

Meaning that they neither "do no harm" nor are "professional".

 

 

Has medical common sense died in the United States? — a metaphor

 

Read this symbolically revealing societal indicator and scratch your head:

 

 

Two immunocompromised adults who received investigational FMT [fecal microbiota transplant] developed invasive infections caused by extended-spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL)-producing Escherichia coli (E.coli) [see what that is, here].

 

One of the individuals died.

 

FMT used in these two individuals were prepared from stool obtained from the same donor.

 

The donor stool and resulting FMT used in these two individuals were not tested for ESBL-producing gram-negative organisms prior to use.

 

After these adverse events occurred, stored preparations of FMT from this stool donor were tested and found to be positive for ESBL-producing E. coli identical to the organisms isolated from the two patients.

 

© 2019 Food and Drug Administration, Safety Communication: Fecal Microbiota for Transplantation: Safety Communication- Risk of Serious Adverse Reactions Due to Transmission of Multi-Drug Resistant Organisms, fda.gov (13 June 2019)

 

 

Then, get this (!) — it was, by implication, the patient's fault

 

The same FDA alert continues:

 

 

Patients considering FMT to treat C. difficile infection should speak to their health care provider to understand the potential risks associated with the product’s use.

 

Healthcare providers must obtain adequate consent for the use of FMT from the patient or his or her legally authorized representative. The consent should include, at a minimum, a statement that the use of FMT to treat C. difficile is investigational and a discussion of its potential risks.

 

© 2019 Food andDrug Administration, Safety Communication: Fecal Microbiota for Transplantation: Safety Communication- Risk of Serious Adverse Reactions Due to Transmission of Multi-Drug Resistant Organisms, fda.gov (13 June 2019)

 

 

A couple of basics — regarding medical sense

 

First — from a common sense perspective — no medical provider in his and her right mind should be "injecting" untested fecal material into immunocompromised patients.

 

Second, how are deathly ill patients to be aware and knowledgeable enough to:

 

 

prompt a conversation about risks regarding procedures they probably have not heard of

 

and

 

know no biological details about?

 

 

The moral? — the FDA release's implicit attempt to shield the physician(s) involved from slam-dunk malpractice is laughably irresponsible

 

But that is entrepreneurial medical capitalism and deregulation in these great United States.

 

We are now at the stage of societal decline in which we are killing each other with bags of shit.

 

I could not have come up with a better metaphor than this one, just delivered by the New American Reality.