Texting and Walking: Who’s the Clown Now?
The dangers of texting combined with driving was driven home to me again yesterday morning, literally. A cab blew a red light and smashed into the rear of my car in Manhattan, and I’d bet a lot of money that the driver was on the phone, as so many cab drivers are while on duty. (You’ve had the experience: sitting down in the back seat, hearing the cabbie’s voice, thinking he’s saying something to you, only to realize he’s on the phone.) So much for the new law prohibiting hand-held cell phone use while driving. Clearly, whether a driver is using “hands free” technology or not, it is the act of being involved in a phone conversation that causes the distraction. But you don’t have to be driving a car to be distracted.
Back in September of last year, some friends and colleagues thought I had gone too far by addressing what I perceived to be the dangers of texting and walking. But guess what? I have been vindicated!
An article that has garnered lots of buzz in this weekend’s New York Times is chock full of examples of people, particularly young people, walking into (or falling onto) things while using cell phones. If they are lucky, they are only embarrassed. But some have injured themselves, too. And in one of the more disturbing findings, people using their cell phones while walking often failed to notice a clown riding a unicycle, right in front of their noses.
While I’m heartened to see the dangers to these pedestrian cell phone users taken seriously, I’m disappointed that the article failed to address the obvious related problem: injuries to others as a result of distracted walkers. That’s happening too. You’ll see. One day, there’ll be an article about it….
Shared Your Genital Herpes?Prepare To Give Blood.
I don’t have to remind you that it’s not nice to have sex with your partner while experiencing a flare up of your genital herpes–especially when you stay silent on the subject in the darkness of your love romp.
But for any of you that fail to abide by such niceties, there is now case law from the Appellate Division, First Dept., that may persuade you to change your ways. In Felter v. Feigenbaum, NY Slip Op 00012 (1st Dept. 2010), plaintiff sued defendant for negligent transmittal of genital herpes simplex II. Following discovery-related motion practice, the First Dept. held that defendant must submit to a blood test that would be determinative of whether or not he has the virus.
Though defendant attempted to evade the test by claiming that undergoing it, and delivering the results to plaintiff, would violate the physician-patient privilege, the Court dismissed such reasoning out of hand, since the test “was ordered in conjunction with the litigation.”
Moreover, the Court noted that even if the privilege were to apply, defendant waived it when he asserted the affirmative defense that he was asymptomatic.
But you didn’t need this decision to get you to do the right thing, right?
Did FDR’s Doctors Commit Medical Malpractice?
In today’s NY Times there is an intriguing article on the cause of FDR’s death–something that has never been clear due to the shroud of secrecy maintained over the health problems of presidents of the time. The article’s author, Dr. Lawrence K. Altman, asks if FDR had a melanoma above his left eyebrow, and if so, did its unchecked progression cause the stroke that ultimately took the 32nd president’s life? Look carefully at the changes in the spot in the photos featured in the article, which show progression of the spot between 1936 and 1939, followed by its absence in 1944.
Among the interesting asides within the article is that at the time (the 1930s and 1940s) doctors “paid far less attention than they do now to moles suspected of being melanomas.” Maybe so. But given how long this changing mole was present on the most visible bodily part of a president of the U.S., could F.D.R.’s physicians have been guilty of medical malpractice?
Given the times, that would probably be a stretch. But Dr. Altman makes an excellent point in closing.
“All presidents and their doctors should make full disclosures about their health. As long as crucial facts are kept secret, theories, conspiracies and hype may tarnish their image and long outlive them.”