Dr Kermit Gosnell – The Silence of The Mainstream Media

Human beings seem to have a fascination with what might be called ‘the edges of humanity’.

Observed behaviours in the animal kingdom generate theories of how we came to be as we are: we are intrigued by stories or theories about Neanderthals or Bigfoot, and we are often invited to consider that animals are ‘just like us’. Many in the animal rights movement want to blur the distinction between the human and non-human, even to the extent of conferring legal rights upon other creatures of varying degrees of sentience.

There is a similar darker fascination at the other end of the spectrum.

We devour stories about inhuman ‘monsters’ like the Moors Murderers, Jeffrey Dahmer and Dr Joseph Mengele. And when there is insufficient news of the known, we are attracted to speculative accounts of Jack the Ripper, or fictionalise human depravity, thrilling ourselves with characters like Hannibal Lecter.

With such widespread appetite and market for the cruel, the bestial, the chilling and the macabre, it is all the more remarkable that the mainstream media in both the USA and the United Kingdom have passed up on one of the most horrifying criminal cases in recent history. It is the Philadelphia trial of Dr Kermit Gosnell.

It is a story more gruesome than that of Dr Harold Shipman or Mick Philpott, and has so many aspects of shock and horror that it seems almost inconceivable that it has not attracted the attention of the tabloid press which normally falls into a feeding-frenzy when offered such widespread evidence of greed, professional malpractice, illegality, exploitation, ghoulishness and moral vacuity.

According to the Grand Jury Report in The Atlantic the doctor earned over $1.5 million a year running a clinic whose hygienic standards would shame that of a third world slum doctor.

When the FBI entered the premises in 2010, they were shocked to find it had cat faeces on the floor, blood stains on the operating couches and unsterile instruments. He routinely infected patients during operations, some with venereal disease, because he used the same instruments on multiple patients without sterilising them between operations.

There was no tested oxygen machine, the key to the emergency exit had been lost, and the resuscitation equipment did not function.

The unqualified staff he employed have given first-hand evidence of how he set them work with inadequate training to anaesthetise his patients while he wasn’t present. His drugs were often out-of-date and his staff, some as young as 15, had to manage with poor or no supervision. One of his staff described the way in which she delivered drugs and anaesthetic on a trial-and-error basis.

One of his patients died and over the years emergency treatment was needed as a result of errors that should not be made by any competent doctor. He had perforated bowels, bladders and wombs with his dirty instruments, leading to serious infection and complications. Despite a steady stream of grossly damaged women to the local hospitals, there appears to have been a conspiracy of silence among medical professionals, public health officials and, now, journalists in print and broadcast media alike.

His clinic had not been visited by health regulators for 17 years. Had they done so, his ‘house of horror’ would have been discovered earlier.

He segregated his waiting rooms, so that the white patients were marginally better managed. That, in today’s world, would normally guarantee front-page news.

He photographed his women patients’ genitals on his camera phone, ostensibly for ‘research purposes’ which he never published, and for which he had not received authorisation. He had a particular interest in third-world women who had suffered female genital mutilation: his staff heard him admiring the skill of those whose who had stitched the women’s labia together. That kind of thing normally excites the sub-editors, but even that did not have sufficient news-value to bring Dr Gosnell into the mainstream press.

Not even his cavalier management of medical waste shocked the mainstream media. Human tissue was found sealed in plastic bags, refrigerators and jars for no medical or scientific reason.

His staff were corrupted by his standards and callousness. Employee abuse would ordinarily excite some media interest, comment, and inquiry as to how ordinary citizens can be drawn into the kind of blind compliance and moral degeneracy that was once seen in places like Auschwitz and Dachau.

Yet, knowing the facts which were coming in a steady stream of matter-of-fact evidence – much of it admitted by the defendant – the news rooms of America and Britain looked the other way. All of them, including our own national broadcaster, have consistently failed to do their job of reporting the facts and exploring the issues surrounding this case.

Journalists are charged with reporting such stories and then considering what questions of importance arise from them. Sadly, the victims were not celebrities, but mainly poor people of ethnic minority; people of no importance; voiceless because the media refuses to give them a voice.

The greatest victims were babies: 47 human foetuses were found in his clinic stored in refrigerators and household containers in vary stages of decomposition, together with a bizarre collection of babies’ feet.

Dr Gosnell’s specialism explains completely the reason for the media silence: he is an abortionist, and this fact alone accounts for why he enjoyed immunity on both sides of the Atlantic from press attention for much of his trial.

In the news rooms of the western world, the staff have become as indifferent to killing babies as Dr Gosnell’s de-sensitised workers and the Kapos of Belsen. They have been recruited into a culture shaped by the ‘woman’s right to choose’, so that now they never see an abortion they don’t like.

As US commentator Ann Coulter has pointed out, abortion is the one constitutional right that ‘can never’ be shown on national television. We have seen actual executions, and sexual intercourse graphically depicted. Postmortems have been shown, and become the central event of programmes like Silent Witness. Often the malefactors will be deranged Christians.

The pro-abortion lobby has so closed the minds of the shapers of our culture to the facts of abortion that they are utterly incurious when cases like this occur. The BBC is less competent at its job than Dr Gosnell was at his – and he has a collection of babies’ feet to prove it.

Fortunately, largely thanks to Twitter, the matter came to the attention of US Congress men and the matter has begun to emerge.

Brother Ivo has read the distressing material so you don’t have to, but if you wish to study it, the Grand Jury Report should be found HERE. (Unaccountably this link does not always work). The first British newspaper report came out last Friday in the Daily Telegraph.

Five weeks into the trial the BBC has yet to broadcast on the subject, although on 15 April 2013 an anodyne report appeared on its website.

This low-key response is almost certainly because Dr Gosnell’s case takes us to the question of what it means to be human and humane, and this is why it is so important. What he was doing crossed a fundamental line in law and morality between abortion and infanticide.

WARNING: THE FULL REPORT CONTAINS DISTURBING IMAGES

Continue reading…

Why the Media is Afraid of Dr. Gosnell

The Media After Gosnell

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