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July 30, 2005 January 2028: A doctor walks in to a hospital room. He frowns and looks at his patient. The patient is a great deal of pain. He acknowledges the doctors presence with a slight nod. “Mr. Coal, we have talked about the options before. We can continue the chemotherapy and hope that the cancer is taken care of but I have to be honest with you that I do not think your chances are good.” “Doctor I know people survive liver cancer. I don’t want to die. Tell me something. Anything. I want to live. I want to continue playing with my grandchildren. I want to live long enough to see my great-grandchildren!” The doctor looks around checking to see if he will be overheard. “There is nothing legally that I can do for you other than offer more chemotherapy.” The patient, Mr. Coal, looks down dejectedly. “But if you can go someplace else there might be certain, other options.” “What place? What options?” “You have to understand, Mr. Coal.” The doctor looks over his shoulder again. “You must tell no one that I have mentioned this to you.” “What is it already?” Mr. Coal understands the doctor’s trepidation. This society is not an open society, the society of the United States of America in 2028. “Understand that I travel every year to other countries and I learn about the state of medicine there. There are certain procedures that are legal in most other countries that are illegal here. Very few people die of liver cancer in the United Kingdom, the European Union in general, China or Korea. Korea might be the cheapest for the kind of therapy you need to survive.” The doctor felt badly that people who were not rich enough to fly to other countries and pay for the procedures were being denied life as a simple matter of economics. Mr. Coal was a retired professional and had money – there was a chance that he could survive the liver cancer… “What therapy?” “Stem cell therapy. Among other things it keeps the British with perfect teeth until their 80’s. They remove the unhealthy portions of your liver. Then they take a piece of healthy liver and culture it with stem cells. It grows the rest of your liver and then they place it in your body. If you go cheap you can do it in Korea, but that may be taking your life in your hands. Well, it is all taking your life in your hands. The longer you wait the less healthy liver tissue you will have left and the less likely it would be …” Footsteps enter the room. The sound of a metal object being removed from a leather holster fills the silence. “Doctor, you will have to come with me. You have violated numerous Federal codes for the dissemination of information about medical practices in other countries.” “Ah, yes.” Frightened, the understanding grows in his mind that one of his other patients has told the government of his advice. “I’ll come quietly.” He follows the detective out of the room and then pushes the detective in to a wall. “My job is to save lives. I took an oath to do that. My job is not to go around telling people you have to die when that is not the only option.” He screamed out as he ran for the elevator. Narrator: They will catch him soon. He will lose his medical license. The anti-terrorist rules implemented indicate mandatory prison sentence for resisting an officer in an arrest and further jail time for the original charges of suggesting stem cell therapy to a patient. There are many reasons for the decline in health care in the United States of America during the 2020’s. Chief among them were the inability to offer treatment to patients because of laws restricting the practice of medicine. There were other reasons; however, many doctors could not survive the increasingly litigious society and some doctors couldn’t face the fact that paralyzed patients could walk again – if they simply left the country. Medical doctors flocked to the United States in the 1990’s to have the medical freedom to save lives using extraordinary technology. Now they flocked to the European Union and China pursuing both the technology to help people as well as the feeling that they could truly make a difference by applying their abilities in those regions. In 2035 the exodus of doctors caused the life expectances for many people to plunge below that of many so-called third world nations. New laws were created to prevent people from leaving the country to have medical procedures performed. Medical exams were required of anyone returning from international travel. People who left the country for medical procedures were not allowed to return. This in turn resulted in a poorer economy for the United States of America as people who wanted to visit their relatives took advantage of vacations to visit their relatives instead of visiting and bringing their tourist dollars to intra-continental U.S. locations. Mr. Coal survived until February 2029. ------------ About the author Alexander Flynn: I am currently a Senior Consultant who writes ABAP code in SAP and .NET code in Visual Studio.NET in New Jersey. Email: rhadamygg@hotmail.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. Please link to this article rather than copying and pasting it onto your site (which would be unauthorized and illegal). |
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