John McAdams, Propagandist, to Publish "Critical Thinking" Disinformation

[Ed Jewett]

I got a kick out of the ER doc thesis. Most ER's in that era were not staffed at all with physicians present in the "room" before the patient showed up but when the patient arrived, typically in that era by ambulance or mortician's wagon, the hospital switchboard put the word out primarily to surgeons first, and to general and thoracic surgeons specifically, who among the specialties of that era had the most experience in gunshot wounds, likely from service in Korea or during World War II if not direct experience with the victims of a large urban setting. Most other cases of what today we would consider an emergency did not present to the ER at all, it being opened in most situations in most hospitals only on demand, but to a doctor's office. It was the Vietnam war experience that radically transformed what we know today as emergency medicine or emergency care, with helicopter transfer and paramedic intervention in the field, brought home most notably by an organization of orthopaedic surgeons and transformed into a 40-hour, then 81-hour, then extended course for emergency medical technicians, and cemented in place by national legislation in 1973. From this came, eventually, the development of the specialty field of emergency medicine, a specialty defined solely by its lateral chronological focus rather than its deep specialized focus. At any rate, it would not seem to me to be that difficult a task to gather the names of the individual witnesses in question, do some research on the nature of their specific medical education, and ascertain the medical standard of care and required education for the emergent management of gunshot wounds to the head for 1960.