Septicemia and Infectious Disease
Claudewell S. Thomas, MD, MPH, DLFAPA, is an established psychiatrist who is currently retired ,, He received his medical degree in 1956 at SUNY Downstate College of Medicine and specializes in social psychiatry, public health psychiatry, and forensic psychiatry. Dr. Thomas was board certified by the American Board of Psychiatry... more
As has been mentioned, Torrance Memorial Hospital sent out an excellent discussion of septicemia in its Advantage newsletter. It is clear that the management of this entity in which the body's mechanisms turn against the body, requires hospital care in specially trained and equipped units. It follows, logically that this capability costs a pretty penny. Whether the etiologic agent is viral as in measles or Ebola, or bacterial as in strep pneumonia or tuberculosis, once sepsis advances to turn the body's defenses against itself, the survival odds drop drastically.
If, as has been declared by environmentalists, human geneticists, climatologists, etc. worldwide, the limit for human occupancy of the earth is about eight billion persons, we are just about at it. Birth control is not about to be adopted universally by Homo sapiens in the face of religious, nationalist, and other oppositions, so it is up to the two great forces that have been operational since the beginning of life on earth to effect the necessary changes. Those forces are global warming causing climate change and evolutionary change to preserve life. We have seen how endemic disease changes to epidemic disease and how changing vectors and climate can change epidemic illnesses to pandemics. These changes will define the size, shape and cost of our medical and societal defense systems. Time is running out on us.
Interagency cooperation is essential on the local, county and state levels. Blending of private and state and county resources will be necessary. Regardless of factionalism, it should be the role of the Federal Government to orchestrate and model while struggling to participate in cross-national planning and initializing. This is not an academic or a tea time or cocktail party discussion issue. Let your congress people know it!
