Deseret News                    Opinion         

      Monday, March 11, 2002

      Stand behind Weitzel

            I was outraged by the plight of Dr. Robert Allen Weitzel, as 
      reported in Sunday's "60 Minutes" program. It is unfathomable that a 
      district attorney would attack a physician on such an outrageous charge as 
      murder, with the evidence the D.A. apparently did not have!
            Further, it is embarrassing to me, a medical professional, that the 
      assistant D.A., supposedly a former nurse, would claim on national 
      television that old people don't really feel pain. That is the most absurd 
      pronouncement I have heard in some time.
            I feel very strongly that the state medical association should be 
      110 percent behind Dr. Weitzel and wonder where it was, in the "60 
      Minutes" program. As aptly noted by the reporter, doctors in Utah, and in 
      the country generally, are going to second guess themselves on this matter 
      from now on, to the terrible detriment of our senior citizens. And as a 
      card-carrying member of AARP, I can tell you it makes me a bit leery of 
      trusting the medical establishment (not to mention the legal system) as I 
      get older.
            I trust that the Utah Medical Association is taking more than just 
      an interest in this ongoing drama, and that it will get behind Dr. 
      Weitzel, because he is a physician — and because he is right!

      Joseph Pastorek, M.D.
      Metairie, La.
         
© 2002 Deseret News Publishing Company

<<Back to Home Page