In time, even the best intentioned of the worker bees in a society of drones gets the message, and when that happens in American medicine, we will see Asclepius Shrugged.
Asclepius is the Greek god of medicine. Even in the mythology of the Greeks, healing was a business fraught with danger by the practitioner. Zeus, legend goes, was angered because Asclepius did his job too well, and punished him accordingly. In some cultures – China is a good example – the physician treating a patient was liable if the patient died, no matter what the reason. American tort lawyers seem to believe that any imperfect medical procedure must be malpractice, and juries seem to nod along in agreement.
