Dialogue: Heartbreak legacy of medicine's gods

By GARTH GEORGE

All of us are, to a greater or lesser extent, victims of our past. It must be a rare man or woman who is free of some recollection of a personal embarrassment, a missed opportunity, an injury, a wrong done or sffered which they wish had never happened.

But I wonder if "victim" is the right word, for it is one much overused these days as many of us, young and old, strive to explain or defend our actions and their consequences, and even the state of our lives, by blaming someone or something else.

Perhaps it is more accurate to say that we are all shaped by our past, from birth up to whatever age we might be now.

All of us have had life-changing experiences - from the first solid food and first faltering steps to the realisation that the body is wearing out, and the mind too, and that we are not nearly as physically capable or as sharp as we used to be.

But some of us have had life-changing experiences that are so wonderful, or awful, that they forever represent in the mind landmarks of life that never grow dim, experiences that didn't just change life but turned it upside-down.

Those who served in World War II, Korea or Vietnam will know what I mean. No man or woman who has been in the bloody horror of war returns the same.

Those who have suffered crippling injuries, debilitating illnesses, shattering accidents, earthquakes, fires and floods will know what I mean.

So will those who have, either by force of will, the goodness of others or even by divine intervention, overcome and recovered from the depredations of child abuse, poverty, mental illness, alcohol and drug addiction, immorality or whatever else life's lottery has thrown at them.

But I cannot conceive of a life-changing event as difficult to bear as the loss of a child. What suffering, what courage, what faith, what perseverance, what patience, what time it must take for parents to recover from that.

What emptiness must be left when, having exercised in love their God-given privilege of creating another human being in their own image and likeness (and his, too), they are deprived of that child in hours, days, weeks, months or even years.

It happens to hundreds of parents every year, although not nearly as often as it once did. And they expend vast emotional, mental and physical resources in coping with the tragedy, putting it behind them - although never out of reach - and getting on with their lives.

And then, suddenly, right out of the blue a front-page story drops in a newspaper, soon picked up by radio and television, and hundreds of parents are hurled right back to that traumatic time when their little loved one was taken from them.

That, surely, has to be the most dreadful result of the Green Lane Hospital babies' hearts scandal.

It had to come out - that was inevitable - and when the pain of it to the parents and the shame of it to those responsible subsides, I suspect everyone concerned will be relieved that it did.

But in the meantime, the suffering implicit in the reopening of old (and not so old) emotional wounds which has been inflicted on so many parents - and they could be relatives, friends, neighbours or workmates of any one of us - is not only incomprehensible but verges on the unforgivable.

But I do hope that the parents - or at least most of them - will find it in their hearts to forgive those doctors who perpetrated this grossly inhuman business.

It started 50 years ago, and some of us will remember the medical profession of those days and for some decades after. We saw physicians and surgeons as being one step down from God, and general practitioners two steps down.

They were wealthy, superbly dressed and dignified, lived in big houses and drove big, shiny cars. They listened to us gravely, told us nothing, wrote their prescriptions in Latin, and we took what they did to us, or prescribed for us, as if they were operating under holy writ.

They weren't, of course. They were, and still are, simply the plumbers, drainlayers, electricians, fumigators, alterations specialists and cleaners of our bodies, whose apprenticeships were served in medical schools and hospital internships.

But they saw themselves as superior beings, above the common herd, and the last thing that would have occurred to most of them would be that they should ask our permission before pursuing any activity that they saw as beneficial to us.

There are still a few of their ilk in both medicine and science.

It behoves us to keep a close eye on them and to make sure we don't let them get away with such unacceptable behaviour again.

* garth_george@nzherald.co.nz