RECENTLY I WAS INVITED TO LIKE THE GEAUGA REPUBLICANS FACEBOOK PAGE. THIS WAS MY RESPONSE: Dear Mr. Carson, I have delayed responding to your invitation because I wanted to gather my thoughts and quell my emotions in order to give you a cogent answer. I regret that, after 40 years as an independent voter who often split her ticket between Democrats, Republicans, and Greens, I no longer can vote for any Republican for any office. You see, I worked for almost 20 years in clinical and research medical laboratories in the United States and Germany: e.g., Clinical Humoral Immunology Laboratory of Ohio State University Hospital, Columbus, Ohio; Medizinische Universitaetsklinik der Eberhard-Karls-Universitaet, Tuebingen, Germany; Department of Microbiology & Immunology of the University of Illinois at Chicago, Illinois; Clinical Transplant Laboratory of the University of Chicago Medical Center, Chicago, Illinois; and the Coroners Toxicology Laboratory, Lake County, Illinois. From everyday hospital admission serology screenings for syphilis to tissue crossmatches for solid organ transplantation (kidney, liver, pancreas) and bone marrow transplantation for leukemia patients, I worked in REAL laboratories for REAL doctors treating REAL patients with REAL maladies. Those REAL doctors and REAL research scientists knew what they were doing. Those REAL doctors and REAL scientists understood their own limitations personally and professionally. Every one of my bosses had compassion for other human beings and was driven to learn about how disease worked and what we (someday?) could do to cure it or at least control it. Every one of my bosses was steeped in the ethic of peer review and disciplined by decades of rigorous training and hard work in scientific method and evidence-based medicine. They knew what they knew. It was finding the answers to what they didnt yet know that kept them going despite the sometimes horrific suffering they wanted to alleviate but had to witness helplessly. Oh, they had their quirks and their temperaments and their moods, but I never saw one of them lie to a patient, betray a patients trust, or offer anything but the best standard of care that was available to evidence-based medicine teased out through painstaking research compiled over decades. I had good bosses, and I am sorry to say that I am relieved that none of them are practising medicine in Ohio today given the ongoing threat to the patient-physician relationship in Ohio at the hands of the Republican Party. Today the pleas and warnings of REAL doctors fall on deaf ears in the Republican Party across Ohio and across the United States. Be it for crass political gain or sectarian bigotry that recognizes no religion but ones own or due to abysmal ignorance or gender bigotry, the majority caucus of 129th and 130th General Assemblies and Governor John Kasich have presumed to think they know how to practise medicine better than REAL doctors. In the process of passing harebrained TRAP laws and craven budget amendments, Ohio Republicans have put Ohio women and girls at gratuitous risk. Then they have the gall to stand up in public and hoodoo the mainstream media that they are doing some gods work. What god? The god of idiocy? The god of deceit? The god of misogyny? The god of deliberate medical malpractice with malice aforethought? It is a lousy Republican Party that knowingly and wilfully destroys REAL medicine in Ohio. Spare me the unctions of clerics from any religion that coerces acts of faith from unknowing and unwilling patients by keeping them ignorant of, and barred from, the medical care that they and the REAL doctors decide that the patients, not the clerics, need. Acts of faith must be given as an act of free will with full knowledge of the ramifications, not extorted from a patient kept ignorant, to be genuine. Clerics and politicians that must know this but still force doctors to withhold truly ethical medical care from women and girls are beneath contempt. They will get my vote and my prayers when hell freezes over. Yes, there are sane, moral Republicans left in this world, but theyre not running the Republican Party these days. Years ago, I voted for Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL) when he first ran to succeed his former boss in the U.S. House of Representatives. Senator Kirk proved to be a good choice over the years, e.g., the 2008 Barry Goldwater Award given to him by Planned Parenthood. I can work with decent Republicans about the best way to get to common goals for different reasons. I never will vote for any politician that treats women as subhuman and didnt have the guts to answer his own ceremonial statehouse office door when we women knocked on that door to deliver 17,000 letters addressed to him from Ohio citizens. Not one Republican Congressman from Ohio is worth his salt when it comes to womens reproductive human rights today. Only one Ohio statehouse Republican has a record on womens issues that she can defend. She has my utmost respect for standing up for what is truly decent when all around her must be making life difficult for her, but I dont live in her district to vote for her. My dear Mr. Carson, I wish you the best of luck in taking back the Republican Party from reactionary rightwing ideologues, but I fear that you are too little too late. In the meantime, Ohio women need REAL medical care at the hands of REAL doctors working in accordance with REAL medical ethics. I must cast my ballot to help them, and I urge every other voter in this state to do the same. Its the only decent thing to do, and it would be dishonest of me to tell you that I think and feel otherwise. Thank you for your kind invitation to like Geauga Republicans facebook page, but I must decline it. Regards, Charlotte Miller Registered Voter
Posted on: Wed, 08 Oct 2014 21:23:47 +0000
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