Confidential File

Careful, Doctor, With That 'Trash'

Doctor, we've met before.

Under slightly strained circumstances, if you'll remember.

I called you into my consultation room to tell you how to run your business. That was more than three years ago.

I
tried to be tactful. But, I'll admit, a reporter's telling a doctor
what's best for the health and safety of the public is a breach of
professional etiquette in itself.

That's like a doctor telling a reporter how to cover a story. Bad manners.

My complaint — as you may recall — was that you were becoming absent-minded. Careless. Just plain negligent.

You
had gone to the post office to pick up your mail. And in it were a
bunch of little packages — the "free-sample" kind that pharmaceutical
houses are continually flooding you with.

They were drugs, doctor. Each packet bore the warning: "Caution: Federal law prohibits dispensing without prescription."

Yet
you dispensed them without prescription — right into the post office
trash can, where anyone with no knowledge of medicine could reach in
and lift them out.

And that's what happened. Fortunately, the
person who removed them was a responsible adult. She turned them over
to the authorities.

At the time, I noted that many of the pills were very attractive and colorful — not dissimilar in size and shape to candy.

And I asked you: "What would happen if a curious child noticed these samples in a trash can and decided to try a few of them?"

Now,
because one of your colleagues had the same mental lapse that you
suffered, doctor, I'm going to have to answer my own questions.

A
few days ago an 8-year-old boy was walking around his neighborhood
passing out "candy" to his friends. Prescription drug "candy."

 Some
of it resembled M&M drops, some, wrapped in cellophane paper,
looked like the soda-pop tablets that so many kids are buying these
days.

The 8-year-old walked up to a 2 1/2-years old boy on a tricycle, oped his box of multicolored pills, and offered: "Want some?"

The little boy stuck his hand into the box.

But the little boy's father happened to be in the front yard at the time.

"No candy now," he told his on. "It's too close to lunch time."

Then, for a reason the man still can't explain, he just happened to walk over to the bigger boy and glance into the box.

Today, he's a thankful man that he did.

In addition to the drugs, there were more than a dozen hypodermic needles.

The man began asking questions and, without hesitation, the boy led him to his source of supply.

Behind Doctor's Office

Yes,
doctor, it was a trash barrel. In an alley that all the kids in the
neighborhood used to go to the store. The trash barrel was directly
behind a doctor's office.

The parent, still a bit shaken, confiscated the box and called the police.

Two
officers came and fished some more hypo needles and syringes out of the
trash. But they informed the nervous mothers in the neighborhood that
— to their knowledge — there was no law to prevent a doctor from
tossing his medicines and used needles into the reach of small children.

I'm aware that most doctors are exceedingly careful in how they dispose of their unwanted drugs and hypodermic equipment.

But let's face it, doctor. All it takes is one little lapse of memory by one doctor to invite a tragedy.