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May 18, 2010
More on the Critical Distinction between "Clinical" and "Legal"
The often misunderstood term clinical implies interaction between a physician and a patient, a relationship similar to other protected professional relationships; those between investigative reporters and their sources or lawyers and their clients for example. Historically, government representatives, particularly in law enforcement, have tended to see such protections as interfering with their jobs. Although nominally required to obtain search warrants, they sometimes resort to illegal searches, which, if discovered, can have far-reaching consequences.Two famous recent examples have been the Watergate break-in and the one that preceded it, an equally illegal search of the office of the psychiatrist who treated Daniel Ellsberg following his unauthorized 1971 release of the Pentagon Papers. The purpose of both warrantless searches was the same: to look for material that would discredit perceived political enemies of a sitting president, at that time one of the most powerful men in the world
Perhaps the most ironic aspect of the unlikely chain of events is that it began with what was unquestionably a crime and ended in the expulsion of Richard Nixon from the White House, a result neither Ellsberg nor Anthony Russo, his Rand Corporation associate could possibly have have predicted while they were laboriously xeroxing some 7600 pages of classified documents in 1971. Both men clearly understood the risks; they also believed they had a moral obligation to disclose the truths they had uncovered: how the malfeasance of four separate US administrations had involved the nation in an Asian quagmire.
Ironically, it was the decision of Nixon’s “plumbers,” many of them ex-law enforcement agents, to break into the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist in an effort to smear him, that ultimately led to Nixon's downfall.
Additional ironies, from my point of view, are legion. Most importantly, the modern drug war, as articulated by the First Nixon Administration, is still not only the law of the land in the United States, but also World’s drug policy. It’s also the lineal descendant of judicial decisions authorizing the police to arrest physicians they disagreed with, and were later expanded- also without scientific evidence- to permit arrest of any citizen for mere possession of forbidden drugs as defined by the spurious criteria listed in the Controlled Substances Act.
In essence,legal has trumped clinical through a series of judicial fiats issued since 1914. Until those errors are recognized and corrected, the world will continue to be burdened with a policy of proven failure, the consequences of which are increasingly difficult to recognize and have long been beyond correction for a majority of its victims.
Doctor Tom
Posted by tjeffo at May 18, 2010 04:44 PM