Medicine and Politics
To the editor:
The well-researched article “For the Young, Gender-Affirming Care Is Scarce” (Nov. 2, front page) raises larger issues regarding health care on Cape Cod. Until recently, patients with certain health-care needs have had to travel long distances to receive treatment.
Only Health Imperatives, a relatively small facility in Hyannis, has overcome obstacles to providing gender-affirming care and abortion services, both of which have divisive political connotations. Other Cape Cod medical providers have balked.
Cape Cod Healthcare refers patients off Cape for both medical services without explanation. An Outer Cape Health Services physician told the Independent’s reporter that OCHS does not offer gender-affirming care because “you don’t want to do something routinely when you don’t have a lot of experience doing it.”
Physicians confronted with medical conditions with which they have little experience can refer patients to an expert for diagnosis and development of a treatment plan. Thereafter, the plan can be carried out by the referring physician in consultation with the specialist. Patients who are diagnosed with rare chronic conditions at the Mayo Clinic do not have to travel to Minnesota to receive appropriate long-term therapy.
It seems clear that the reason why gender-affirming care and abortion services are not provided by physicians at Cape Cod Healthcare and Outer Cape Health Services is not an insurmountable medical issue. The providers’ reticence appears to be based on issues they would rather not discuss.
Ronald A. Gabel, M.D.
Yarmouth Port
The Need for Primary Care
To the editor:
I have been following the saga of Paul Schofield and the J-1 visa students. It is very distressing on many levels.
Having worked with many J-1 students, my heart goes out to them. Housing has always been a challenge, and I have heard some horror stories over the years.
This story touches home because one of the collateral victims was my primary care physician, Andrew Jorgensen. My husband and I are now without a primary care physician for the first time since retiring to Provincetown in October 2016.
It is disturbing that we have heard, through the Independent’s reporting, only one side of the story. I find it surprising that Dr. Jorgensen would have been involved in J-1 student abuse. With approximately 750 patients at Outer Cape Health Services, as reported by the Independent, how could he find the time to be involved with the running of the Prince Albert Guest House and other properties?
Some will ask how he could not have been aware of the ongoing abuse, the unpaid wages, and unpaid relocation costs. Until we hear Dr. Jorgensen’s response, we simply won’t know. The lack of response is probably due to the advice of counsel, given his termination from OCHS.
The end result is that we have lost a valued member of the medical community. He was a great physician, and we will miss him.
In the meantime, we and some 750 other patients await word from OCHS as to who will be our next primary care provider.
Christian Charette
Provincetown
The Turbine and the Tower
To the editor:
Back in 2009, the Wellfleet Energy Committee proposed that a 400-foot-tall industrial wind turbine be constructed on town land near White Crest Beach. The board of selectmen eventually turned down the project because of the noise that would be generated by the rotating blades.
The proposed replica of the Eiffel Tower [Nov. 16, page A5], with an overall height of perhaps 28 feet, at the PB Boulangerie Bistro in South Wellfleet is no big deal. I hope the zoning board of appeals permits it, given that it’s not a sign.
It’s art.
Mike Rice
Wellfleet
Headlines as Infotainment
To the editor:
Re “Headlines Are Hard” [Letter From the Editor, Nov. 9]:
It’s the 50th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act, and I’ve been going back over my effort, 48 years ago, to awaken the press to the serious story behind the endangered snail darter and the case I argued successfully in the Supreme Court, Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill.
Ward Sinclair, a reporter for the Washington Post, understood the case’s significance. But his editors didn’t want him to write the article I’d hoped for, about the complexities that made the fish an economic canary in a coal mine. Sinclair gave me the disappointing news.
“I know your story is important,” he told me, “but I just can’t get the editors to see it. The way I got that last story into the paper was a total fluke. I wrote that your case is starting a pork panic [“pork” meaning massive spending on dubious programs]. When the headline writers saw that, they put it up at the top of the piece: ‘Endangered Species Pork Panic Touched Off on Capitol Hill.’ The managing editor didn’t want to run the story, but with a headline like that, he had to.”
The economics of media news departments had led the fourth estate’s crucial democratic role to descend into infotainment.
Zygmunt J.B. Plater
Provincetown
The writer is professor emeritus at Boston College Law School and author of The Snail Darter and the Dam.
Consider the Pilgrims
To the editor:
Two things struck me about Dennis Minsky’s thoughtful Nov. 16 column, “The Pilgrims Revisited.” First, that he is realistic about the evils of colonization but also touches on some very admirable qualities of the first band of European settlers here. Second, he takes those attributes and leverages them to make a very important point about the complex issues of today’s southern border.
Minsky forces the reader to look at things in a holistic, long-term perspective. Great piece.
R.J. Bardsley
Provincetown
