Man compelled by police to undergo surgical procedure to "search for drugs" | Hacker News Reader

Man compelled by police to undergo surgical procedure to "search for drugs"

kob.com

53 pointswhiddershins33 comments

Whoa, the colonoscopy, which is hardly a simple or safe procedure, really crosses the line of "first, do no harm" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primum_non_nocere). Echoing jlgreco, all the "doctors" involved should lose their licenses to practice and be barred from ever gaining one in the US in the future. Ditto the equivalent for nurses.

Of course, I know there are efforts to change the Hippocratic Oath et. al. to put "the good of society" before that of your patient, so maybe I'm just being old fashioned.

Wow, those providers need to lose their jobs. Performing a surgical procedure without getting consent from the patient in a non-life threatening situation? Seriously messed up.

I am actually so naive, I would have thought no amount of probable cause could force any sort of medical procedure whatsoever. Under any circumstances. No matter what.

Yes, I too thought there was no such thing as a court-ordered colonoscopy.

There might be, but I don't see a court being involved here. Looks like the cops shopped around for compliant doctors.

They apparently got a warrant, but the "searches" were performed in the wrong jurisdiction and after the warrant was expired.

That a warrant could be issued for such a thing is a problem in itself; the judge that saw fit to sign that should be thrown out and any law that might permit such a thing needs to be rectified.

Oh, I misread that! Anyway, I think anal searches should be allowed, and getting a warrant is probably the right way to go about it.

Probably?

Well, if a cop sees a guy put a knife up there to hide it, maybe a warrant shouldn't be required. I think that's already covered by current law though.

On the other hand, the court is supposed to provide oversight, and clearly failed in this example. The warrant was overly broad, and may have been issued on bad information (we don't know what the cop told the judge to get the warrant). Either the court is not really keeping an eye on these cops, or the court itself needs supervision to stop it from issuing overbroad warrants.

Well, if the cops got a "warrant", then they can do "searches" - a valid search warrant still in any way doesn't allow a doctor to harm a patient.

This is so outrageous that for a second I thought the article may be an Onion-type hoax. I hope that man sues the county and the police force. They need to be taken to task.

How can appearing to clench one's buttocks constitute probable cause for a search warrant?

When we allow fear to consume us, when we embrace and encourage fear instead of being ashamed of cowardice, then this is the sort of thing that becomes justifiable. The shear magnitude of the irrational fear of drugs is dumfounding, and creates a climate that nurtures shit like this.

"The shear magnitude of the irrational fear of drugs is dumfounding"

Who says it has anything to do with that at this point?

The police-judicial system have a good thing going, now that real violent crime rates have overall precipitously dropped. Without pulling this sort of shit, if you'll pardon the topical expression, there would have to be layoffs in many police departments and courthouses, and that wouldn't do.

(For more on this theme, about how the police-judicial system (my words of art) need a steady diet of "the clueless", read Arrest-Proof Yourself: An Ex-Cop Reveals How Easy It Is for Anyone to Get Arrested, How Even a Single Arrest Could Ruin Your Life, and What to Do If the Police Get in Your Face (http://www.amazon.com/Arrest-Proof-Yourself-Ex-Cop-Reveals-A...)

The People have traditionally accepted/embraced police state tactics and brutality to fight "the war on drugs" because they fear drugs. Without that embrace of irrational fear, we would have never given the police the tools and leeway they have today.

Which doesn't address my point at all. E.g. if you'd said "create[d] a climate that nurtures shit like this." we'd be in closer alignment.

I've seen that totally irrational fear in well educated, nominally rational parents, where I get them to accept that The War on Drugs is creating a police state for their children to live in, and they still prefer it.

But I believe we're way past that point, and if I'm right, if it's now institutionalized in a way where such fear has become irrelevant to its perpetuation, then you might want to listen to me if you're searching for solutions.

> The sheer magnitude of the irrational fear of drugs is dumbfounding.

I definitely agree with you there. I would love to see the country move away from it's paralyzing fear of drugs.

After a routine traffic stop.

Because he "appeared to be clenching his buttocks".

There should be criminal charges for everyone involved in doing this to this man, including the doctors at the second hospital they went to. The doctors at the first hospital rightly refused to participate, demonstrating that the doctors at the second could have as well. Instead they repeatedly raped him after an x-ray showed that there were no drugs.

and they try to collect the money for the procedures from the victim.

The cops and medical professionals should be quickly shown the location of the unemployment line. When you read the things that were done, at least two digital anal examinations and three enemas, you can tell this was just to harass the victim. I don't think any rational person in society thinks such procedures should be made available to beat cops because someone clenched their butt cheeks.

In America "peace officers" are now responsible for disturbing the peace, not for keeping it.

If anyone is going to go down, it will be the doctors. The cops that went out of their way to anally violate a suspect will walk away, and absurd search warrants will continue to be issued on a flimsy notions.

The same search warrants that end up with your dog getting shot and possibly anyone else who might raise the slightest suspicion of being a threat to them in their midnight raid of your home.

I don't think a colonoscopy counts as surgery. As bad as this is, we don't need hyperbole.

General anesthesia, typically used for colonoscopies, has a mortality rate. It isn't common in hospitals, but it does happen and isn't dismissible when you are considering that the procedure was done without consent and without a medical justification. I see no reason to call this hyperbole.

Not to mention the danger of the probe breaking through the intestinal walls; per Wikipedia:

"The most serious complication generally is the gastrointestinal perforation, which is life-threatening and requires immediate major surgery for repair."

Besides the critical damage to the intestines, it dumps all sorts of bacteria into a nominally sterile area. And if you read further, don't just score the resultant deaths, there's a lot of pain, recuperation, I'm sure adhesions are a possibility, etc. etc.

I can't imagine the hospital's administrators would be happy with what happened ... who's on the hook for complications?

ADDED: consent is in my experience a big think in the world of medicine; I have to wonder how many insurance companies, that is for doctors and hospitals, would not exclude coverage for this sort of thing.

The complication rate for colonoscopies seems to be lower when they aren't in there to cauterize/cut stuff, but you are right, there are still inherent risks with the procedure itself. It is absolutely mind-boggling that anybody thought this was acceptable.

  ...it dumps all sorts of bacteria into a nominally sterile area.

I hope you were specifically referring to bowel perforations, because normal, uncomplicated colonoscopies are not conducted in a "nominally sterile area."

Per Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_intestine#Bacterial_flora

"The large intestine houses over 700 species of bacteria that perform a variety of functions."

I think you did mean "a bowel perforation dumps", when you said "it dumps", but it felt a little vague to me.

Until I switched to talking about the hospital administrators my comment was entirely focused on bowel perforations.

And, yeah, I do know the gut has lots 'o bacteria. The first piece of real science I did was in 1977 using E. Coli, and my lab used the "tame" K-12 strain and pipetted with our mouths. On the off chance you screwed up, we just spit it out and washed our mouths out a bit (this horrified a biologist friend I mentioned it to in the late '80s, but our PI was a microbiologist and knew his stuff). All the way to my nowadays taking a probiotic with 5 beneficial bacteria, which along with a few other things seems to keep my gut pretty happy.

I thought it counted as a "surgical procedure" if not surgery. It involves sedation/anesthetic and invasion of the body by medical equipment. I don't know, I am happy to change the title if you like.

Note that in a normal cancer screening one, the probe is used to snip off suspect pre- or cancerous polyps.

I'd keep surgery in the title.

Hm, I guess the invasiveness makes sense. It doesn't matter, an admin will probably change the title anyway.

Perhaps you'd think otherwise after you've had a few. Ditto endoscopy.

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