Sunday, June 28, 2009

Obvious Questions

Just as he apparently feared, Michael Jackson has died prematurely. His death at 50 may have resulted from overuse of prescription painkillers, or from a drug interaction involving them. Presently this is only conjecture, but it's not improbable given the incredibly grueling, demanding comeback tour he was planning, his age, and his apparent prior history of painkiller misuse.

Until the autopsy results are in, let us suspend judgement; and after they are in, let us not be too smug in our assumed superiority to the dead Boy King.

Instead, let us ask some obvious questions - the ones few people seem interested in asking.

Question One:
If, as is being assumed, Mr. Jackson did in fact abuse prescription painkillers, and if this abuse did in fact contribute to his death, why is condemnation being directed primarily at him?

Prescription painkillers, after all, must be prescribed.

And those who prescribe them are, theoretically, bound by oath to 'prescribe regimens for the good of [their] patients according to [their] ability and judgement, and never do harm'.
Isn't it odd that the people who misuse these agents - and frequently die for it - are the ones we seem most interested in condemning? Wouldn't it be far more sensible for us to condemn those who prescribe, dispense, and sell prescription drugs to abusers, in the full knowledge that the drugs are being abused and their patients may be killed by them?

Question Two relates more closely to Question One than might at first be apparent.
Not only by report, but by obvious appearances, Mr. Jackson also seems to have inappropriately overused cosmetic surgery. The near-complete removal of his nose - that dear, brown, flared, snubbed, African nose! - cannot have been accomplished without his consent. Apparently it was a deliberate objective.

This type of surgically assisted self-disfigurement is not uncommon; Googling search strings such as 'celebrity plastic surgery' brings up photographs that will keep you sleep-deprived for weeks. I'm not going to link to any of them here, because I'm still having waking nightmares myself. But again:

Misuse/overuse of plastic surgery is not something that a person does 'all by themselves'. Much, much money is paid. Nurses and anesthesiologists and surgeons and hospital facilities are involved. So why is it, again, that we point and gabble at the patient, and never as much as frown at the 'doctor' - or any other component of this highly lucrative industry?
In other words:

This man, now dead, has been mocked and scorned for most of his adult life, at least in part for having enough money to pay licensed medical practitioners to mutilate and, possibly [pending the results of his autopsy] to poison him.

Shouldn't we instead have scorned and mocked his poisoners and mutilators?


Just a little?

For starters?

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