Sunday, December 6, 2009
Friday, December 4, 2009
My Memories of Betty
by Dee Newman
My memories of Betty will foreverRemain fond, evoking laughter and tears.
There are some memories I will never
Forget, stretching back over sixty years;
Back before we even started school,
When we played together as children,
Shirtless, down in that old wading pool
On the corner of Oak Road and Garden.
From what I have been told, Betty died
As she most certainly lived – with friend
And family members by her side –
Loved and loving them to the very end.
The mysteries of the unknown lie
Not in our fears, but in our love and concern
For others, whether they be foe or ally.
Expecting nothing in return, we learn
How to live and ultimately how to die,
While the living commiserate and cry.
BETTY HATCHER AHRENS of Palmyra, VA went to be with our Lord on Thanksgiving day, November 26, 2009. She died peacefully at home surrounded by immediate family, after a brief but fierce struggle with stage 4 breast cancer. Betty, a member of Immanuel Lutheran Church in Charlottesville, VA, was born in Knoxville, Tennessee on July 26, 1944, with twin brother Billy, to parents, William S. and Hazel G. Hatcher. Betty was raised in Norris, Tennessee with her twin brother, Billy Hatcher and older brother LeRoy Hatcher. She later married Jon Ahrens and raised her family in the Greater Tampa Bay Area of Florida in the Brandon community. She and Jon retired in Palmyra, VA. Betty is survived by her husband, Jonathan Arthur Ahrens, of Palmyra; brothers LeRoy Hatcher and sister-in-law Sandra Hatcher of Knoxville, TN, William S. Hatcher, Jr. and sister-in-law Cris Hatcher of Ponce Inlet, FL; children and grandchildren, daughter Leah Ahrens Billingsley and son-in-law Chris Billingsley of Palmyra, VA parents of Alena and Austen Billingsley, daughter Dana Ahrens Heath of Tampa, FL parent of Ann-Marie, Juliana and Thomas Heath; son, Dean Ahrens and daughter-in-law Jennifer Ahrens of Brandon, FL; son Byron Ahrens and daughter-in-law Tina Ahrens, of McDonough, GA parents of Rachel and Kimberly Ahrens; son, Bert Ahrens and daughter-in-law Madeline of St. Petersburg, FL parent of Annelise Ahrens. Betty, a compassionate Christian caregiver to her children, mother, father and husband has requested that in lieu of flowers donations might be made to the Martha Jefferson Cancer Care Center in Charlottesville, VA where she received incredible compassionate care for her cancer treatment or the charity of your choice. Martha Jefferson Cancer Care Center, 459 Locust Avenue, Charlottesville, VA 22902 (434) 982-8125. A graveside service for friends and family will be held at Norris Memorial Gardens on Thursday, December 3, 2009 at 1 pm. Arrangements by Gentry-Griffey Funeral Chapel.
From Harper's:
Petra Bartosiewicz on the American “Intelligence Factory”
![[Image]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_ui9lJOJZfRR6OM3LLDDqlFe6JgOA_SPJlizrNqkbnnAKlXcB5gO0f0R1gMTXVdcvcYkJLME8_HidJFO6K1dX7uKxbOQKDm5Weec0dYdh-qxvIgseqKGZTy=s0-d)
When I first read the U.S. government’s complaint against Aafia Siddiqui, who is awaiting trial in a Brooklyn detention center on charges of attempting to murder a group of U.S. Army officers and FBI agents in Afghanistan, the case it described was so impossibly convoluted—and yet so absurdly incriminating—that I simply assumed she was innocent.
According to the complaint, on the evening of July 17, 2008, several local policemen discovered Siddiqui and a young boy loitering about a public square in Ghazni. She was carrying instructions for creating “weapons involving biological material,” descriptions of U.S. “military assets,” and numerous unnamed “chemical substances in gel and liquid form that were sealed in bottles and glass jars.”
Siddiqui, an MIT-trained neuroscientist who lived in the United States for eleven years, had vanished from her hometown in Pakistan in 2003, along with all three of her children, two of whom were U.S. citizens. The complaint does not address where she was those five years or why she suddenly decided to emerge into a public square outside Pakistan and far from the United States, nor does it address why she would do so in the company of her American son.
Various reports had her married to a high-level Al Qaeda operative, running diamonds out of Liberia for Osama bin Laden, and abetting the entry of terrorists into the United States. But those reports were countered by rumors that Siddiqui actually had spent the previous five years in the maw of the U.S. intelligence system—that she was a ghost prisoner, kidnapped by Pakistani spies, held in secret detention at a U.S. military prison, interrogated until she could provide no further intelligence, then spat back into the world in the manner most likely to render her story implausible.
These dueling narratives of terrorist intrigue and imperial overreach were only further confounded when Siddiqui finally appeared before a judge in a Manhattan courtroom on August 5. Now, two weeks after her capture, she was bandaged and doubled over in a wheelchair, barely able to speak, because—somehow—she had been shot in the stomach by one of the very soldiers she stands accused of attempting to murder.
Read the rest of “The Intelligence Factory: How America makes its enemies disappear” for free…
From “The Intelligence Factory: How America makes its enemies disappear,” in the November 2009 Harper’s Magazine
![[Image]](http://harpers.org/media/pages/2009/11/thumb/0001.gif)
When I first read the U.S. government’s complaint against Aafia Siddiqui, who is awaiting trial in a Brooklyn detention center on charges of attempting to murder a group of U.S. Army officers and FBI agents in Afghanistan, the case it described was so impossibly convoluted—and yet so absurdly incriminating—that I simply assumed she was innocent.According to the complaint, on the evening of July 17, 2008, several local policemen discovered Siddiqui and a young boy loitering about a public square in Ghazni. She was carrying instructions for creating “weapons involving biological material,” descriptions of U.S. “military assets,” and numerous unnamed “chemical substances in gel and liquid form that were sealed in bottles and glass jars.”
Siddiqui, an MIT-trained neuroscientist who lived in the United States for eleven years, had vanished from her hometown in Pakistan in 2003, along with all three of her children, two of whom were U.S. citizens. The complaint does not address where she was those five years or why she suddenly decided to emerge into a public square outside Pakistan and far from the United States, nor does it address why she would do so in the company of her American son.
Various reports had her married to a high-level Al Qaeda operative, running diamonds out of Liberia for Osama bin Laden, and abetting the entry of terrorists into the United States. But those reports were countered by rumors that Siddiqui actually had spent the previous five years in the maw of the U.S. intelligence system—that she was a ghost prisoner, kidnapped by Pakistani spies, held in secret detention at a U.S. military prison, interrogated until she could provide no further intelligence, then spat back into the world in the manner most likely to render her story implausible.
These dueling narratives of terrorist intrigue and imperial overreach were only further confounded when Siddiqui finally appeared before a judge in a Manhattan courtroom on August 5. Now, two weeks after her capture, she was bandaged and doubled over in a wheelchair, barely able to speak, because—somehow—she had been shot in the stomach by one of the very soldiers she stands accused of attempting to murder.
Read the rest of “The Intelligence Factory: How America makes its enemies disappear” for free…
Thursday, December 3, 2009
From Huffington Post:
Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals Turned Me Vegan
by Natalie Portman
Jonathan Safran Foer's book Eating Animals changed me from a twenty-year vegetarian to a vegan activist. I've always been shy about being critical of others' choices because I hate when people do that to me. I'm often interrogated about being vegetarian (e.g., "What if you find out that carrots feel pain, too? Then what'll you eat?").I've also been afraid to feel as if I know better than someone else -- a historically dangerous stance (I'm often reminded that "Hitler was a vegetarian, too, you know"). But this book reminded me that some things are just wrong. Perhaps others disagree with me that animals have personalities, but the highly documented torture of animals is unacceptable, and the human cost Foer describes in his book, of which I was previously unaware, is universally compelling.
The human cost of factory farming -- both the compromised welfare of slaughterhouse workers and, even more, the environmental effects of the mass production of animals -- is staggering. Foer details the copious amounts of pig shit sprayed into the air that result in great spikes in human respiratory ailments, the development of new bacterial strains due to overuse of antibiotics on farmed animals, and the origins of the swine flu epidemic, whose story has gripped the nation, in factory farms.
I read the chapter on animal shit aloud to two friends -- one is from Iowa and has asthma and the other is a North Carolinian who couldn't eat fish from her local river because animal waste had been dumped in it as described in the book. They had never truly thought about the connection between their environmental conditions and their food. The story of the mass farming of animals had more impact on them when they realized it had ruined their own backyards.
But what Foer most bravely details is how eating animal pollutes not only our backyards, but also our beliefs. He reminds us that our food is symbolic of what we believe in, and that eating is how we demonstrate to ourselves and to others our beliefs: Catholics take communion -- in which food and drink represent body and blood. Jews use salty water on Passover to remind them of the slaves' bitter tears. And on Thanksgiving, Americans use succotash and slaughter to tell our own creation myth -- how the Pilgrims learned from Native Americans to harvest this land and make it their own.
And as we use food to impart our beliefs to our children, the point from which Foer lifts off, what stories do we want to tell our children through their food?
I remember in college, a professor asked our class to consider what our grandchildren would look back on as being backward behavior or thinking in our generation, the way we are shocked by the kind of misogyny, racism, and sexism we know was commonplace in our grandparents' world. He urged us to use this principle to examine the behaviors in our lives and our societies that we should be a part of changing. Factory farming of animals will be one of the things we look back on as a relic of a less-evolved age.
I say that Foer's ethical charge against animal eating is brave because not only is it unpopular, it has also been characterized as unmanly, inconsiderate, and juvenile. But he reminds us that being a man, and a human, takes more thought than just "This is tasty, and that's why I do it."
He posits that consideration, as promoted by Michael Pollan in The Omnivore's Dilemma, which has more to do with being polite to your tablemates than sticking to your own ideals, would be absurd if applied to any other belief (e.g., I don't believe in rape, but if it's what it takes to please my dinner hosts, then so be it).
But Foer makes his most impactful gesture as a peacemaker, when he unites the two sides of the animal eating debate in their reasoning. Both sides argue: We are not them. Those who refrain from eating animals argue: We don't have to go through what they go through -- we are not them. We are capable of making distinctions between what to eat and what not to eat (Americans eat cow but not dog, Hindus eat chicken but not cow, etc.). We are capable of considering others' minds and others' pain. We are not them. Whereas those who justify eating animals say the same thing: We are not them. They do not merit the same value of being as us. They are not us.
And so Foer shows us, through Eating Animals, that we are all thinking along the same lines: We are not them. But, he urges, how will we define who we are?
No One Should Be Surprised
by Dee Newman
No one should be surprised or shocked by President Obama’s speech Tuesday night, least of all those of us who voted for him. This is precisely the policy we voted for last year. This is the pragmatic president for whom we voted . . . who never once spoke of drawing down our forces in Afghanistan during the campaign, nor has he ever suggested doing so since he took office. In fact, he promised to carefully deliberate the war in Afghanistan, to make decisions based upon reason and reality. Tuesday night we heard the same determination we heard on his stump speeches last year – to repair the Bush Administration’s historic blunders and mistakes in the Afghanistan/Pakistan region and, once accomplished, to withdraw our troops.
Yes, I voted for President Obama. But, like many others, I am extremely reluctant to support his decision to escalate this war, to send 30 thousand more American troops into harm's way in a war that has cost so much already and only promises to keep dragging on indefinitely. History tells me that it could easily cascade into a catastrophe. Nevertheless, to be completely honest, his options were limited, to say the least, between bad and awful.
And besides, morally, can we, once again, abandon the Afghan people, especially their women and children, as we did back in the 80s and allow the Taliban and their fundamentalism to govern and control their lives? Strategically, can we afford to turn our backs on Pakistan, a nuclear state, where al Qaeda and most of the Taliban now reside?
Look, the man wakes up every morning confronted with a dozen or so Cornelian dilemmas, where all his options and choices have equally negative outcomes, and the cost in treasure and lives is enormous.
His predecessor left him, left us, caught between Iraq and a hard place, with a military in shambles, an economy bankrupt, our international reputation in ruin, an environment that is collapsing around us . . . and while the list continues to grow, Obama is left to make decisions that will have negative ramification whatever he does for all of us, the entire world, for generations to come.
Now don’t get me wrong, these unprecedented choices and challenges should not be seen as excuses or a defense to protect him from criticism of the difficult decisions he must make and their consequences. Hell, he wanted the damn job and he got it. But, it is important for all us to remember what he inherited and that any decision he makes will have extraordinarily negative consequences.
With that said, we don’t have the resources for nation building, not even for our own, let a lone, a country on the other side of the world . . . a country with a corrupt and failing government that continues to rely on cruel and repressive warlords.
To believe we can transform Afghanistan into a modern functioning state is ludicrous. A year ago we were teetering on the brink of an economic melt down, another Great Depression. Though we may no longer be teetering, we are still too damn close to the edge to try to transform any failing government but our own.
In November of 2004 al Qaeda’s leader, Osama bin Laden, told us that his goal was to “bleed America to the point of bankruptcy.” He went on to say that he had found it easy “to provoke and bait” the Bush administration and that America would suffer major human and economic losses while Bush’s buddies would rake in enormous profits.
“ The real loser is you," he said. "It is the American people and their economy."
As I have said numerous times over the last six years, Osama bin Laden must be laughing his ass off. How sad and depressing it is that the man Bush said he would capture "dead or alive" back in 2002 is still at large, and that it is Osama bin Laden’s words, not Bush's, that ring true, today.
Please, Mr. President, stop the “bleeding!“ It cannot continue unabated, if this nation is to survive. Think about the jobs that will not be created here in the US, think about the money that will be squandered on an un-winnable war and that will never be invested in health care, our children's educations, and rebuilding the infrastructure we need to compete economically in the world.
Your approach will not work. It cannot possibly succeed. Ask the Russians. Ask Genghis Khan. Societies are not changed in two years or even in a single generation. The corruption of the Afghan government, the deaths and suffering of civilians caused by US and NATO forces is too great for us to ever win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people. They will never rally behind the Karzai government or the occupation of their country by our armed forces.
As I said to President Bush – if the war against al Qaeda is truly vital to our national interests and security, then damn-it, implement a draft, and force us all to sacrifice. Stop allowing less than 2 percent of those eligible for military service to do the fighting for us – again and again and again. And for the sake and well being of us all, have the courage to increase our taxes in order to pay for it. Make us all sacrifice. Then and only then, will we truly know what is at stake.
Otherwise, get the hell out!
by Dee Newman
Yes, I voted for President Obama. But, like many others, I am extremely reluctant to support his decision to escalate this war, to send 30 thousand more American troops into harm's way in a war that has cost so much already and only promises to keep dragging on indefinitely. History tells me that it could easily cascade into a catastrophe. Nevertheless, to be completely honest, his options were limited, to say the least, between bad and awful.
And besides, morally, can we, once again, abandon the Afghan people, especially their women and children, as we did back in the 80s and allow the Taliban and their fundamentalism to govern and control their lives? Strategically, can we afford to turn our backs on Pakistan, a nuclear state, where al Qaeda and most of the Taliban now reside?
Look, the man wakes up every morning confronted with a dozen or so Cornelian dilemmas, where all his options and choices have equally negative outcomes, and the cost in treasure and lives is enormous.
His predecessor left him, left us, caught between Iraq and a hard place, with a military in shambles, an economy bankrupt, our international reputation in ruin, an environment that is collapsing around us . . . and while the list continues to grow, Obama is left to make decisions that will have negative ramification whatever he does for all of us, the entire world, for generations to come.
Now don’t get me wrong, these unprecedented choices and challenges should not be seen as excuses or a defense to protect him from criticism of the difficult decisions he must make and their consequences. Hell, he wanted the damn job and he got it. But, it is important for all us to remember what he inherited and that any decision he makes will have extraordinarily negative consequences.
With that said, we don’t have the resources for nation building, not even for our own, let a lone, a country on the other side of the world . . . a country with a corrupt and failing government that continues to rely on cruel and repressive warlords.
To believe we can transform Afghanistan into a modern functioning state is ludicrous. A year ago we were teetering on the brink of an economic melt down, another Great Depression. Though we may no longer be teetering, we are still too damn close to the edge to try to transform any failing government but our own.
In November of 2004 al Qaeda’s leader, Osama bin Laden, told us that his goal was to “bleed America to the point of bankruptcy.” He went on to say that he had found it easy “to provoke and bait” the Bush administration and that America would suffer major human and economic losses while Bush’s buddies would rake in enormous profits.
“ The real loser is you," he said. "It is the American people and their economy."
As I have said numerous times over the last six years, Osama bin Laden must be laughing his ass off. How sad and depressing it is that the man Bush said he would capture "dead or alive" back in 2002 is still at large, and that it is Osama bin Laden’s words, not Bush's, that ring true, today.
Please, Mr. President, stop the “bleeding!“ It cannot continue unabated, if this nation is to survive. Think about the jobs that will not be created here in the US, think about the money that will be squandered on an un-winnable war and that will never be invested in health care, our children's educations, and rebuilding the infrastructure we need to compete economically in the world.
Your approach will not work. It cannot possibly succeed. Ask the Russians. Ask Genghis Khan. Societies are not changed in two years or even in a single generation. The corruption of the Afghan government, the deaths and suffering of civilians caused by US and NATO forces is too great for us to ever win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people. They will never rally behind the Karzai government or the occupation of their country by our armed forces.
As I said to President Bush – if the war against al Qaeda is truly vital to our national interests and security, then damn-it, implement a draft, and force us all to sacrifice. Stop allowing less than 2 percent of those eligible for military service to do the fighting for us – again and again and again. And for the sake and well being of us all, have the courage to increase our taxes in order to pay for it. Make us all sacrifice. Then and only then, will we truly know what is at stake.
Otherwise, get the hell out!
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
From the Daily Beast:
Palin's Bus Hoax
by Joe McGinniss
Sara D. Davis / Getty ImageAs much of her entourage, including HarperCollins publicist Tina Andreadis, risked a collective case of White Line Fever, covering more than 3,000 road miles during the book tour’s first week, Sarah Palin herself seems to have remained above it all, apparently cosseted in the luxury of a Gulfstream II 12-passenger jet rented from Universal Jet Aviation of Boca Raton, Florida, at a cost of more than $4,000 per hour.More than two weeks ago, quoting Andreadis, USA Today reported that Palin would be “making two and sometimes three stops a day, traveling in a bus painted with the cover of her book.” And just before the tour started, Palin herself said on her Facebook page: “I’ll post our progress from the road.” To further the illusion, the populist heroine gave televised interviews from the bus, including one to Greta Van Susteren en route to Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
To further the illusion, the populist heroine gave televised interviews from the bus, including one to Greta Van Susteren en route to Fort Bragg.
Last week I was in The Villages, the fantastical Back to the Future-style retirement enclave north of Orlando, when Palin popped out the front door of the bus to greet the thousand or so worshipers gathered outside Barnes & Noble. I thought she sure looked good for someone who had been riding a bus for a week, changing diapers—as she said—all the way. Publicist Andreadis, by contrast, had the worn and harried look of someone who had been earning an honest living by riding a bus for a week.It seems now that Palin hasn’t been on the bus, except for short hops between local airports and hotels and book-signing sites. Instead, as first reported by the Alaskan blog Palingates, she’s apparently been aboard UJT750, the Gulfstream American twin-jet that she first boarded at Westchester County airport shortly after noon on November 18, bound for Grand Rapids, Michigan, and the first stop on her tour.
The full activity log for UJT750 can be found here. The bottom line is that the plane’s goings and comings track Palin’s tour perfectly: from Grand Rapids to Washington, Pa. and then to Rochester, N.Y., Roanoke, Va., Fayetteville, N.C., Birmingham, Ala., and Jacksonville and Orlando.
On November 25, the plane carried Palin, her parents, her two youngest children and her Aunt Katie to Pasco, Washington, for Thanksgiving. And there it sat, at Tri-Cities Airport in Pasco, for four full days, which is a lot of inactivity for a plane that rents for more than $4,000 an hour. But it was Thanksgiving weekend and the Pasco-Richland area was where Palin wanted to be.
Palin apparently returned to New York Sunday night. At least UJT750 was scheduled to take off from Tri-Cities at 6:55 p.m. EST with an 11:30 p.m. arrival at Teterboro, N.J., anticipated. Her next signing is not until Thursday, in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Presumably, she’ll fly to Fayetteville and then board her bus again for the short ride to the local Sam’s Club. Presumably, she’ll also fly over the much greater distances that separate the stops on the western half of her tour, which stretches from Dallas to Minneapolis. Will she continue to pretend she’s riding the bus?
I emailed Tina Andreadis and Jonathan Burnham, HarperCollins’s publisher, yesterday to ask:
--How much is Universal Jet Aviation charging?
--Is HarperCollins paying?
--Will Sarah continue to fly throughout the second half of the tour?
--Does anyone else ever ride on the plane with her?
--Can you give me a list of where she actually stayed overnight from Nov. 18 until her arrival in Tri-Cities?
--I assume she did not use her own name checking in: Can you comment on my information that she used "Sheeran," her mother's maiden name?
--In regard to the other plane used on Nov. 19-20 in Ohio and Indiana, was that supplied by [Billy Graham’s son] Franklin Graham?
Burnham did not reply. Andreadis wrote back: “Harper has no comment on the logistics of its tours.”
Oddly, Palin herself let the mask slip a couple of times on Twitter. At 9:48 p.m. on Nov. 21, she wrote, “Just got off flt.” A few hours later, she wrote, “Landed in VA.” Other than that, except for the side trip to Asheville, N.C., for dinner with Billy Graham—aircraft provided by Billy’s son, Franklin, and his evangelical organization Samaritan’s Purse—Palin has played along with the charade. Indeed, she may have insisted on the charade.
There is, of course, nothing the least bit inappropriate about flying from place to place on a book tour. Back in the day when publishers still sent non-celebrity authors out in public, I flew on all of mine. It’s the only sensible approach. And if someone will spring for an executive jet, all the better. On the other hand, nobody tried to pretend I was riding a bus.
What’s wrong in this instance is the apparent fakery created and sustained for the sake of building pseudo-populist appeal—and selling books. Sarah Palin and HarperCollins have consciously tried to give the impression that she is doing her book tour by bus when the evidence suggests she is not. At every stop, she’s been filmed getting off Big Blue looking rested and radiant. She dazzles onlookers and interviewers with her seemingly bottomless reserves of energy. And no one suspects she may secretly be hopping on and off her main means of transport, UJT750, and resting up in hotels.
Both Palin and the publishing house that has invested so many millions of dollars in her seem to have felt it would send the wrong message to let the “common-sense conservative” be seen winging her away across the country just like any other good old-fashioned Republican CEO.
The people with whom I spent 18 hours in The Villages last week, waiting for Palin, would not begrudge her the luxury jet. But they’re not going to like hearing they’ve been had.
Joe McGinniss is the bestselling author of The Selling of the President, Fatal Vision and Never Enough, among others. His next book, tentatively titled Sarah Palin’s Year of Living Dangerously, will be published by Broadway Books in 2011.
Medicare For All
Speak out for REAL health care reform at http://millionfaxmarch.com, to send a fax to all your members of Congress calling for them to forget about any other bill and pass economical and efficient Medicare for All (HR 676) NOW!!
X-RAYS NOT LAW-REQUIRED FOR TEETH CLEANING
by Jack Reeves
While a New Smyrna Beach dentist was repairing some caries, we discussed teeth cleaning; a proposed treatment plan was prepared and appointment made.
Later, I noted that in addition to cleaning there were five more services for $285, which included 'intraoral complete series' (X-rays) $104.
I telephoned that I could not afford such, that I just wanted cleaning, no X-rays. I was told that Florida law requires examination and X-rays, or cleaning us prohibited. I said, "Forget it," and pressed the End button.
I called another office. "Why is it when I want my car washed, a motor diagnostic is required?" I asked in exasperation.
"It's Florida law," I was told.
I called another, one with which I'd encountered the X-ray imperative a year ago. The scheduler asked my name and accessed my record. "I see that you hung up on us," she said. Revelatory.
"As I recall, you hung up on me," I said.
It was explained to me, again, that "Florida law requires X-rays."
A few years ago, I was told similarly by a Georgia dentist: "It's Georgia law.
I handed him the bib and walked out. The Georgia Dental Association informed me there is no such law. I wrote a newspaper column about the matter.
When one thinks about it--that a law can dictate a required medical procedure--the legal unlikeliness is evident. But we don't think about it.
I contacted the Florida Dental Association (FDA) which replied: "I’m looking into getting a response for you from one of our members."
In other words, the matter baffled the FDA--or the inquiry required a reply from the higher up.
I replied that I found the answer, published last month in the Orlando Sentinel's 'Ask a Lawyer' :
"Although there is no law requiring X-rays for patients seeking a dental cleaning, a state regulation requires a dentist to conduct an oral exam within 13 months before a cleaning." Period.
http://articles.
Some dentists deceptively piggy-back X-rays as part of the law-specified examination. X-rays are not Florida law. But the dentist makes money by demanding them or our teeth will not be cleaned.
X-rays may be desirable, but this is not the issue--honesty.
As a senior citizen on Social Security, I suspect there are many who want to care for their teeth. Such practices deter it. They are immoral and violate the American Dental Association's code of ethics, i.e, "dentists should consider...ethical principles [and] patient's needs and interests...."
Jack Reeves, JD (Juris Doctor)
New Smyrna Beach
by Jack Reeves
While a New Smyrna Beach dentist was repairing some caries, we discussed teeth cleaning; a proposed treatment plan was prepared and appointment made.
Later, I noted that in addition to cleaning there were five more services for $285, which included 'intraoral complete series' (X-rays) $104.
I telephoned that I could not afford such, that I just wanted cleaning, no X-rays. I was told that Florida law requires examination and X-rays, or cleaning us prohibited. I said, "Forget it," and pressed the End button.
I called another office. "Why is it when I want my car washed, a motor diagnostic is required?" I asked in exasperation.
"It's Florida law," I was told.
I called another, one with which I'd encountered the X-ray imperative a year ago. The scheduler asked my name and accessed my record. "I see that you hung up on us," she said. Revelatory.
"As I recall, you hung up on me," I said.
It was explained to me, again, that "Florida law requires X-rays."
A few years ago, I was told similarly by a Georgia dentist: "It's Georgia law.
I handed him the bib and walked out. The Georgia Dental Association informed me there is no such law. I wrote a newspaper column about the matter.
When one thinks about it--that a law can dictate a required medical procedure--the legal unlikeliness is evident. But we don't think about it.
I contacted the Florida Dental Association (FDA) which replied: "I’m looking into getting a response for you from one of our members."
In other words, the matter baffled the FDA--or the inquiry required a reply from the higher up.
I replied that I found the answer, published last month in the Orlando Sentinel's 'Ask a Lawyer' :
"Although there is no law requiring X-rays for patients seeking a dental cleaning, a state regulation requires a dentist to conduct an oral exam within 13 months before a cleaning." Period.
http://articles.
Some dentists deceptively piggy-back X-rays as part of the law-specified examination. X-rays are not Florida law. But the dentist makes money by demanding them or our teeth will not be cleaned.
X-rays may be desirable, but this is not the issue--honesty.
As a senior citizen on Social Security, I suspect there are many who want to care for their teeth. Such practices deter it. They are immoral and violate the American Dental Association's code of ethics, i.e, "dentists should consider...ethical principles [and] patient's needs and interests...."
Jack Reeves, JD (Juris Doctor)
New Smyrna Beach
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