Would the New York Times Print a Poorly Written and Judgmental Essay About People With Kidney Disease?

Dr. Sally Satel is at it again in the New York Times, this time writing an essay that conflates intentional behavior with both circumstances someone is born into and illness someone does not choose to acquire.  She rails that we should not say that drug and alcohol addiction does not discriminate because some ethnic groups are more prone to it and because children who are sexual abused are more prone to it as adults and because people with co-occuring mental illness have a harder time recovering from it.  And then she rails about the many bad decisons made by those who relapse in their drug and alcohol addiction and how it is really their fault, they missed or purposely ignored the signs of a relapse coming on, they made bad choices, they are at fault, it is not a disease.  Okay then, why is she as a medical doctor treating these people if it is not a disease one could reasonably ask?  And why if she despises her patients so much does she not get another job, go into another field of medicine?  Or even another branch of psychiatry? 

Would the New York Times print such a badly written and researched and logically inconsistent essay by a nephrologist judging his patients with kidney disease and pointing out the reality and true fact that kidney failure does discriminate, it is not an equal opportunity disease.  Poor people and ethnic minorities are more likely to develop chronic kidney disease.  Behavior plays an enormous role in the development and progression of kidney failure in many patients, diabetics who do not take care of their diabetes, folks with diagnosed high blood pressure who do not take care of their hypertension, folks who have been prescribed nephrotoxic drugs at some point in their lives and never check to see if there has been damage to their kidneys until they are in full renal failure as Dr. Satel herself has admitted caused her own kidney failure.  Now I’m of a mind not to judge her on that one.  I bet no one warned her of the possible dangers to her kidneys just as no one warned me.  And I think it is very difficult for people who inherit type I diabetes as children to keep to the rigid diet and blood testing required to stay healthy and I know even when folks do everything right they can still end up with kidney failure.  I am not prepared to say that the only folks who should not be judged for their kidney failure are those who have PKD and those whose kidneys were injured by malpractice or medical accident.  In fact I have no interest in judging anyone with kidney failure for the fact that they have kidney failure.  Nor in saying because certain groups are more likely to get it we should downplay the possibility that anyone could get it and decrease the chance that kidney disease research might get decent funding some day.  In fact the whole idea that certain groups are more likely to get a disease as relevant to what we do about them is repugnant to me.  Can you imagine an essay in the New  York Times about sickle cell anemia only affecting certain groups?  I can’t. 

Is there really no other right wing psychiatrist the New York Times can find to write essays for them?  There is no shortage of which I am aware and many psychiatrists write and reason quite well even if I disagree with many of them.  Is it too much to ask for a well written, non-prejudicing, well reasonsed essay in the New York Times?

Welcome to My World Sally Satel–NKF is Just Like NAMI

Sally Satel is “puzzled” at the National Kidney Foundations fight against financial incentives for deceased organ donor’s surviving families.  Guess she never thought to do some research on where the NKF gets their money.  Here’s a hint Sally:  Look at where NAMI gets their major corporate contributions but substitute providers and manufacturers of dialysis services and equipment and add in big Pharma and you’ll figure it out, I know you will, even if you are a disgruntled kidney patient. (I feel free to call Sally that since she called me and a colleague “disgruntled mental patients” in a major conservative weekly without ever having met or talked to or communicated with either of us. Fair’s fair <grin>.)

NKF is an astroturf organization Sally.  Look it up.  Astroturf.  Not the stuff on the playing fields, but the adjective.

And by the way, you never did go on dialysis ever, so what gives you the right to speak for all of us who have been on dialysis as if you know what we want and need?  You don’t, so be quiet already.  It was bad enough when you were just attacking the consumer/survivor/ex-patient movement in your book and on TV in your usual ignorant and uninformed/unresearched manner, couldn’t you leave kidney advocacy to people who actually know what they are talking about?  Please.

Anti-Feminist Psychiatrist Also Supports Forced Treatment

httpl://www.batteredmen.com/satel.htm is a classic by Dr. Sally Satel, a leading proponent of forced drugging of folks with psychiatric labels and a leading opponent of psychotherapy for anyone as well as a proponent of allowing patients to buy kidneys from living donors.  When folks fail to make the connection between women’s rights and the rights of women and men with psychiatric diagnoses, I always think of this classic piece in which Satel essentially blames feminists for domestic violence in this country. 

Sally Satel Does Not Speak for Me Nor Most Kidney Patients

Sally Satel is at it again, making enemies for people who need kidneys and putting us all in a bad light with her ignorant and entitled view of the shortage of kidneys for donation, this time in the Wall Street Journal.  Sally is a sort of psychiatrist, she works part time at a drug abuse clinic and full time at the American Enterprise Institute where she is willing to opine on any subject whether she knows anything about it or not.  She called me a disgruntled patient without knowing anything about me in the Weekly Standard last year so I feel no need to pull my punches about how much I wish Sally would just shut up already about the organ shortage.   Her kind of thinking and writing is what puts people off from becoming an organ donor after their death by signing their organ donor card.  She makes us all look like greedy, entitled and uncaring people who would do anything to get off dialysis.  Interestingly enough, Sally has never actually been on dialysis herself, nor has she ever revealed which drug caused her kidney damage.  But don’t let that stop her from opining in the Wall Street Journal as if she speaks for anyone but herself and her friends.  Just be quiet Sally.