{"id":1220,"date":"2008-10-31T07:47:16","date_gmt":"2008-10-31T12:47:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/?p=1220"},"modified":"2022-01-02T07:37:12","modified_gmt":"2022-01-02T12:37:12","slug":"parker-v-parker-a-good-man-is-hard-to-find","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/?p=1220","title":{"rendered":"Parker v. Parker: “A Good Man Is Hard To Find”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The race for the Alabama 5th Congressional District seat being vacated by Rep. Bud Cramer has been one of the nastiest that I’ve witnessed in a long time.<\/a> The two candidates, Republican Wayne Parker and Democrat Parker Griffith, have spent considerably more time and money slinging mud and impugning the other’s character than they have actually talking about themselves, their qualifications and exactly how they plan to help their constituents once they’re in office (Update: please see my correction to this paragraph in the comments section).
\n<\/strong>
\nJust how bad has it been? So bad that even the editorial board at the Huntsville Times<\/em> is fed up and has refused to endorse either candidate<\/a>. And neither will I.<\/p>\n

I don’t know either gentleman, although I know a little more about Wayne Parker since his kid has played soccer against my kid and he’s an elder at a church across the street from mine. Parker Griffith is a retired radiation oncologist who was already out of that profession and into other ventures when I moved to Huntsville in 1993, so I don’t know him at all.<\/p>\n

All I know is what I’ve seen in their ads, and they haven’t really helped me gain more knowledge about their qualifications. So, I’m left with the rather round about way of choosing a candidate by deciding which candidate’s ads offended me the most and then voting against that one–or not voting for either.<\/p>\n

At the center of this campaign has been Wayne Parker’s accusation, based on the release of what were supposed to be sealed, confidential peer reviews of Parker Griffith’s medical charts from the late 1980s, that he was a substandard physician who undertreated cancer patients so that he could make more money. If you haven’t followed this, you can get up to speed here.<\/a><\/p>\n

I’m not here to defend Parker Griffith’s medical care, although many former patients and colleagues have stepped up to do just that. I can only point out that chart reviews only tell part of the story. It sounds like Parker Griffith didn’t keep particularly good notes–you’d be suprised (or maybe you wouldn’t) at how many physicians don’t. A chart review doesn’t include an examination of the patient nor the thoughts that were going on inside the doctor’s head when treatment decisions were being made.<\/p>\n

We were told in school that “if it’s not in the chart, then it didn’t happen.” In other words, if you want to let people know what you were thinking, document, document, document. Yet, many doctors fail to do a good job at that, and it would appear that Parker Griffith’s documentation at times was substandard.<\/p>\n

But that doesn’t necessarily mean his care was. I’ve been involved in a lot of peer review, both as the reviewer and the review-ee, and I know for a fact, because I have seen it happen, that chart review can be used against a doctor in an untoward, “political” fashion by someone holding a grudge. So, on the surface, I find Parker Griffith’s assertion that he was the victim of a politically-motivated hit job by fellow doctors who were put out with him over his opening of a cancer treatment center which would compete directly with Huntsville Hospital to be, at the very least, plausible.<\/p>\n

I’m quite sure that if somebody really wanted to go over my patient charts with a fine tooth comb, cherry pick some questionable entries and then make me look like a bad doctor, they would probably have no trouble doing so.<\/p>\n

What really irks me here is the way Wayne Parker has taken these leaked, 20-year-old confidential documents and flung them out into the public forum where average voters and laypeople for the most part don’t understand the nuance, art and practice of medicine and the clinical and legal issues surrounding it and used them to paint his opponent as a monster who intentionally undertreated cancer patients so that he could make more money.<\/p>\n

Such a conclusion is an overreaching extrapolation of the data in those charts, to say the least. If such a monster actually existed, then Parker Griffith’s peers at Huntsville Hospital during that time would have had an ethical obligation to turn him into the Alabama Medical Board ASAP in order to strip him of his license and to protect the public.<\/p>\n

The fact that that apparently didn’t happen speaks volumes. Yet, this attack has been Wayne Parker’s main argument in this election and it has been effective. Parker Griffith may very well lose the election because of it.<\/p>\n

And then, there was the whole “Islam thing,” too.<\/a><\/p>\n

In a recent televised debate<\/a>, both candidates were asked, “If Jesus were running for Congress, how would he have run his campaign?” (only in the Deep South, right?)<\/p>\n

Wayne Parker responded by saying Jesus was not “meek and mild” but instead a “man’s man” who would “always speak the truth” and call out his opponents for their hypocrisy and misdeeds.<\/p>\n

I took this to mean that if potentially misleading confidential peer reviews had been leaked to Jesus that he wouldn’t have hesitated to use them to smear one of his opponents either.<\/p>\n

Parker Griffith responded by saying that Jesus would have focused more on the struggling masses and then he said this:<\/p>\n

\n

“(Jesus) would probably be ashamed of both of us a little bit.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In the climatic scene in Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man Is Hard To Find,” the Grandmother, who has always lived a selfish and judgmental life, is about to be brutally murdered by an escaped convict, The Misfit. In her final seconds, she has a moment of illumination when she sees herself and The Misfit as who they both truly are–mutually fallen members of the same human family in need of Grace and redemption.<\/p>\n

After she’s dead, The Misfit, who has been startled to his core by this moment of Grace, says, “She would of been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”<\/p>\n

It didn’t appear to me that anybody was holding a gun to Parker Griffith’s head when he spoke those words of truth. Neither Wayne Parker nor Parker Griffith may be truly “good men,” but it may very well be that one is a better man than the other.\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

levitra price<\/a> cialis price<\/a> viagra price<\/a> brand viagra online<\/a> cheap brand viagra<\/a> cheap cialis super active<\/a>buy cialis super active<\/a>order vpxl<\/a>buy vpxl<\/a>order levitra professional<\/a>buy levitra professional<\/a>order levitra<\/a>buy levitra<\/a>order cialis soft tabs<\/a>buy cialis soft tabs<\/a>order viagra soft tabs<\/a> cheap viagra soft tabs<\/a> viagra super active online<\/a> cheap viagra super active<\/a> cheap generic cialis<\/a> generic cialis online<\/a> cheap generic viagra<\/a> generic viagra online<\/a> cheap cialis professional<\/a>buy cialis professional<\/a> cheap viagra professional<\/a> viagra professional online<\/a> cheap cialis<\/a>buy cialis<\/a> cheap viagra<\/a> viagra online<\/a><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The race for the Alabama 5th Congressional District seat being vacated by Rep. Bud Cramer has been one of the nastiest that I’ve witnessed in a long time. The two candidates, Republican Wayne Parker and Democrat…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,23,70,20,27,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity","category-current-events","category-health-care","category-huntsville","category-politics","category-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1220"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9267,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1220\/revisions\/9267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}