Something rotten about lawsuit in fatal boat wreck

Reading the March 21 Packet (“Three weeks after teen killed in Beaufort County boat crash, mother sues bar and others”) automatically transported me to the Shakespearean quote, “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” This is a line from the play “Hamlet,” in which an officer of the palace guard says, “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark” after the ghost of the dead king appears, walking over the palace walls.

First of all, why is the mother of the deceased not suing the owner of the boat, and the yet-to-be-disclosed driver of the boat? Rotten indeed!

Why SC doctors are against medical cannabis

Some state legislators have made it clear they intend to have a marijuana debate as though it were a medical question by making physicians the access point. There is one substantial problem: none of them bothered to ask physicians if we support such measures. We do not.

As physicians, our main concern is medical benefit, which can only be determined after controlled clinical testing on a widespread peer-reviewed basis. For decades the DEA, FDA, and National Institutes of Health have all agreed on this same notion.

There is a method to conduct the testing necessary to understand indication, usage, and dosage for marijuana and its compounds: reschedule marijuana allowing for significant, controlled, and replicable clinical testing. This can only occur on the federal level, through either an act of Congress, which some view as the most expeditious method, or through more cumbersome and time-consuming actions taken by the DEA and FDA.

This safe solution is not the solution sought by marijuana proponents. Their bill would circumvent this process entirely and put patient health at risk in the process.

Sacrificing patient safety on the altar of quick, untested remedies causes me to pause as a physician. While in the midst of an ongoing and deeply tragic opioid crisis, itself full of unintended consequences, we would do well to avoid another crisis of the very same kind, which is exactly what could occur should marijuana proponents in the legislature have their way. We have a chance to stop it.

Don’t call it the ‘Civil War’

Recently I saw a David Lauderdale column where he used the term “Civil War” to describe the war between the United States and the Confederate States of America. The use of this phrase and such phrases as the “American Civil War” have always irked me, and folks like Mr. Lauderdale should know better.

Civil war is defined as “a war between citizens of the same country.” Our war was between two sovereign nations. The United States prosecuted a war of aggression against the Confederate States of America.

I know what the Yankees call it, and they like to call it a civil war because they never really recognized the CSA, but we know better.

In the future, please use a name that is technically accurate. Call it what you will … the War of Northern Aggression, the War Between the States (only because technically there were states involved on both sides), Lincoln’s War, The Late Unpleasantness, or some other name, but it was most certainly not a civil war.

How to fix SC rural water

As a holier-than-thou foreigner (an unassuming, polite Canadian, snowbirding on Hilton Head Island), and having read about drinking water quality in rural South Carolina, I beg to wonder how many taxpayers’ dollars for Donald’s “beautiful wall” might be re-directed locally toward what missionaries and relief agencies pride themselves in providing for Third World countries. Just saying. And as a Canadian, let me apologize for ... well, we apologize for everything.

This story was originally published March 24, 2019 at 6:00 AM.