| | Intrigued, I bought a copy of this book at the bookstore.
Searching for the quote first (I do that sometimes), I started reading the chapter -- Two Beer Bottles for your I.V. -- in which it is found.
It is located 4 pages into the chapter, but -- on my first attempt -- I couldn't make it to the quote.
The hold-up occurred in the middle of page 106, which reads as follows:
As part of a three-doctor team, she would visit schools and apartment compounds. Each block of homes had its own hygiene unit, which worked together with the inminban.
"The doctors are here! The doctors are here!," the shouts would echo across the courtyards. People would start queuing up by the hygiene office, pushing crying toddlers forward in the line, ready to show off a sore hand or a rash they had been nursing for weeks in anticipation of the doctors' visit.
I don't know what came over me, but on the moment of my reading this, my eyes welled up with tears and I got a lump in my throat and I immediately closed the book and turned it over and pushed it far away from me. I do realize that human suffering occurs on scales much larger than this (e.g., genocide in Rwanda), but its the institutionalization of unnecessary human suffering which has really got me feeling down.
It's heart-breaking.
Ed
p.s. I will pick up the book again. It is important as a tool to use in order to fight collectivism and the unneccessary human suffereing it entails.
|
|
"North Korean doctors are expected to serve the people selflessly. Because of a shortage of X-ray machines, they often must use crude fluoroscopy machines that expose them to high levels of radiation; many older North Korean doctors now suffer from cataracts as a result. They not only donate their own blood, but also small bits of skin to provide grafts for burn victims ... with anesthesia in short supply, acupuncture would be used for simpler surgeries ... patients would be strapped to the operating table to prevent them from flailing about ... the right to 'universal free medical service ... to improve working people's health' was in fact written into the North Korean constitution."
