PreMDpilot

I should probably be studying for my upcoming test, but there are much bigger issues that are worrying me right now than some stupid test. We now have the largest, most highly trained, highly funded, ruthless, and ambiguously controlled mercenary army ever assembled running around over in Iraq. We've all heard the name Blackwater USA because it's been circulating around in the press as they get themselves in more and more trouble. My concerns are not so much their goings on in Iraq as much as the idea of having such a mercenary army.

There is a reason that armies have traditionally been composed of idealistic, patriotic, loyal young men and women. These people are the ultimate arbiters of the peace and stability in a country. They are trained to be absolutely deadly and our enemies and criminals all know this, and this ensures that our country is stable and prosperous. We don't have a new dictator seize power every 10 years because these deadly weapons are placed under the control of a democratically elected government. Congress actually despite the President's strenuous insistence that he is the "decider in chief." Now, those democratic controls are starting to erode with a president and vice president who are clutching at more and more power, and we have a deadly mercenary army whose sole motivation right now is money (i.e. power).

These are very ominous ingredients for destabilization of this great country of ours. Right now, the power grabbers and the mercenaries are aligned and occupied in a distant war. But what would happen if these powers decided to make a grab for power here? I know that it sounds ridiculous and I might just be fear mongering, but just imagine the situation for a second. Next year, during this most important of elections, there is some kind of shocking event. Let's say it's a bombing, or some kind of large terrorist attack. Doesn't really matter what it is as long as it creates fear and confusion. Let's say President Bush declares a state of emergency and starts to hire Blackwater mercenaries to "come back and defend the homeland." Now every member of Congress is guarded by Blackwater. The President gives himself vast powers to listen to "terrorists" and postpones the elections.

This would be the pivotal moment. It's not a far step from this point to a position where Dick Cheney makes a backroom deal with Eric Prince for ultimate power and Blackwater is now in the pocket of the Bush family. And whap bam, civil war. But the most deadly and insidious civil war ever visited on a country.

It's a lot of steps, but I've been right on the money about how events would unfold in Iraq and this is a very dangerous situation for our democracy. I really hope I'm wrong. Even if you don't buy my hypothesis, think about what these men are going to do when they get back from Iraq. Are they just going to go back to their day jobs? These men are trained killers and probably have no desire to watch their lavish salaries disappear. Do you think they will really want to be security guards or body guards if they could make a legitimate grab at ultimate power? That's a lot of faith in the honor of mercenaries.

Every doctor must become intimately involved with death. Just by choosing this career they meet death countless times and struggle against his ever-present vigilence. I have personally never been very close to death. I have been fortunate enough to not have too many people who were close to me die. But I am not entirely unaquainted with death. I have felt fear to my bones when I realized that I was almost 500 feet up a rock face and not tied into anything. Or when I heard the engine of our little Cessna sputter as it struggled to climb over the mountains. I've glimpsed his face, but have never actually known death.

Now we are up close and personal. Every medical student must undergo a right of passage called Gross Anatomy. This is where a very special person who donated their body to medical science becomes our personal laboratory to figure out how the most incredible machine ever conceived is put together. Sounds very noble until you take a bone saw to the spinal cord and hack the guy in half.

The everyday experience of anatomy is kind of chilling. Here we are surrounded by 30 dead bodies in a room that smells of formaldehyde and we are indescriminately cutting them open and trying to figure out what goes where. "Oops, sliced through that nerve". If this guy was alive he just lost all feeling in upper shoulder and use of his deltoid...oh well. The class is difficult on multiple levels. First it is difficult to actually dissect. Dissecting is a skill that requires a lot of patience, and a good understanding of where everything is and some technical skill. The class is also difficult by the sheer volume of information we absorb. Imagine trying to learn every bone, muscle, nerve, artery, and vein in the human body in 10 weeks. It's impossible, we're going to forget and miss something. It is also very difficult on a personal level as you are wondering who this person lying in front of you was. What were his dreams? Who were his friends? What did he do for a living? How did he die? Was it painful? It's tough to separate the machine from the man.

I have found that I am able to ignore the dead person in front of me pretty effectively and focus on the anatomy. But I have realized I do have some vestiges of doubt about what we are doing. There are a lot of people in the lab who work on the cadavers without gloves. They do this because gloves are kind of expensive and they don't want to have to change pairs every time they switch cadavers and because they handle the tools more effectively without gloves. I cannot do this. There is just something about touching the inside of a human being without some sort of barrier between me and that body that I can't handle. It's completely illogical, but it exists in my mind and anchors me in the unusualness of what we are doing.

So that's my anatomy experience so far. I'll write again when I start having the zombie nightmares. If you can tell me the nerve that I sliced through that innervates the deltoid, then you get extra points.