You gotta read this: "US immigration cavity search ends in agony"

[NV1962]

The Register has an article that'll make your tooth filling pop out in empathy.

I guess it could just as well have gone into the E&O Articles section, but I'm seeing more of a political angle here. Or rather, its clamoring absence. Maybe it's an idea to insist on our good Congressional representatives to look into what appears as the umpteenth case of dunceheads ascending above and beyond the level of their own incompetence... It's short enough to not be able to chop off any bits without butchering comprehension, yet then again short enough to warrant hardship, so...

Here goes - and brace yourself:

US immigration cavity search ends in agony

Official pulled 'very hard'

By Chris Williams → More by this author
Published Monday 5th February 2007 15:21 GMT

US immigration officials insisted the sufferer of an anal infection remove a small piece of medical thread which was being used by doctors to treat the condition. The man required treatment under general anaesthetic as a result.

The man had an anal fistula, which is a painful channel that can develop deep into the anus, caused by infection or digestive conditions such as Crohn's disease. More details, if absolutely necessary, from NHS Direct here.

Arriving on holiday in New York in August last year, the unnamed 48-year-old was interrogated and searched by immigration officers, according to a letter appearing in medical journal The Lancet. The rectal examination discovered a device called a seton, which doctors in the UK had inserted into the fistula to help control long-term infection.

The seton was made of a blue braided medical suture material knotted and passed into the hole where the fistula surfaced. After one baffled immigration officer pulled "very hard" on the seton, the patient was given the choice by the baffled immigration officers of either getting on the next plane home, or submitting himself to a procedure to have it removed.

Happily, as The Lancet's correspondent notes, the curious immigration officer yanking the seton did not damage "the anal sphincter muscles encircled by it".

The seton was duly removed by an airport doctor, who claimed to have no idea what it was. The man now requires treatment under general anaesthetic to have a replacement inserted.


Read the wince-inducing letter here (free registration required).®

(source)

Let the incantations of the spirits of outrage howl... Again.

Oh yeah, somewhat marginal observation: again The Lancet doing "real" journalists' work (can you say "post-invasion excess deaths in Iraq", or do we still not do foreign body counts?)
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[NV1962]

1. I mean, FFS... they used a DOCTOR to "shield" their incompetence!

(No, can't help myself... Steaming here.)

So now the Flughafen Sicherheidsdienst has Doctors who do things without having a clue of what they're doing - apparently without making a serious objecting to the procedure.

Count the ways of what went wrong here.

[liberal N proud]

2. Four words: cavity search; ends; agony

When you have a cavity search, it usually involves the ends and almost always is in agony

That whole affair sounds agonizing before you throw in the incompetent Immigration official

[NV1962]

3. Thing is

if it were only dealing with one incompetent immigration official -- although I strongly suspect we're dealing with the plural here -- and to top off the farce, they tapped an incompetent Doctor, reneging on his Hippocratic Oath (do no harm - hello!) who apparently saw fit to, oh lookie here at this curious thing, let's do a procedure in the blind, yet the purpose of which we have ABSOLUTELY NO CLUE!

It's waaaaaaaaay beyond man bites dog. This is seriously troubling, that Volk und Vaterland apparently trumps, uh watchacallit: oh yeah - morality!

[greenissexy]

4. criminals

> The seton was duly removed by an airport doctor, who claimed to have no idea what it was.

That's the real criminal. The doctor intentionally hurts a patient then lies about it. Of course what else would we expect from a member of the medical cartel who seem to live only for hurting as many people as they can to create more income for themselves and other members of the cartel. I can understand immigration wanting to do what they percieve as their job, but a doctor willing to participate in their attacks on the public is a new one.

[AndyTiedye]

5. This "Doctor" Probably Has to Work for THEM to be Shielded from MALPRACTICE Suits!!

[yurbud]

6. headline should be "Bush inquisition disembowels visitor to US"