Catherine Britell

Catherine W. Britell, M.D.   I do not like the idea or practice of abortion. Ever since, as a medical student, I saw little tiny arms and legs in a suction jar, I realized I could never perform them.   However.... Here’s my experience. When I was a medical student at LA County-USC Medical Center, I would often spend evenings in the ER, helping and learning. In 1969-72, a big part of our job was trying to save girls who had been mutilated by self-induced or back-alley abortions. I remember six girls that we could not save, whose hands I held as they died. Young girls; who had drunk a little too much on a date one night. Or ended up in the back seat of a car, planning on some kisses and cuddling, but ending up as the victim of date rape. And missed a period. And then another. And then there was nowhere to go and panic ensued; until a “friend” told them about “a guy downtown”. We know that making abortion illegal does not decrease its incidence, it only makes...

The Catch-22 of Work Requirements for Public Assistance and Medicaid Catherine W. Britell, M.D.   Meaningful work that pays for housing, food, clothing, transportation and health care is something almost everyone wants for themselves and every society wants for as many as possible of its members. For the past 30 years, my job has been to identify and address the health and rehabilitation issues of individuals of differing abilities, some of whom would be considered “disabled” under Social Security standards; but most of whom would be considered to be “able-bodied” by our politicians. Most are living in poverty and some are homeless. As part of interdisciplinary teams that enable these individuals to achieve independent living and self-supporting employment, I have had an opportunity that few other physicians or others in the community have — to understand what it takes for a person to become successfully employed. So — what does it take? Good health. You can’t w...

Is it new?  Is it true?  Who cares? Can art save the world? Catherine W. Britell, M.D.    When you spend your life doing applied and/or experimental science, it’s easy to assume that everyone accepts Science as the best way of getting to Truth, and that we all understand the steps necessary to make valid scientific conclusions. We make an observation, develop a question about our observation, do background research, develop an hypothesis, devise an experiment to test the hypothesis, collect results and analyze them using appropriate statistical methods, and then make a conclusion. It seems pretty straightforward. Of course, not everybody feels this way. Maybe it’s due to failure of our educational system to ensure that a basic level of scientific knowledge and competence is attained by everyone. But perhaps more important is an American free spirit/cultural distrust of “academe” and the conviction that one doesn’t need a lot of education to be “smart” a...