Doctor pulled from United Airlines flight previously convicted of drug crimes

[athena]

45. So what!

As I posted on another thread, this is a mistake any thinking and feeling human being might have made. It's not like the guy is a drug dealer. What he did was not right, and it's good he was disciplined for it, but it's a human mistake. Imagine you're a doctor and have a patient who is addicted to painkillers. They come to you and beg for one more bottle, explaining that they're going through a tough time and promising that this will be their last bottle. Otherwise they can't deal with things and they will throw themselves off a bridge. It's easy to slide into illegal behavior through a situation like this. $174 for a bottle of painkillers is not a huge amount of money; it's probably what the bottle cost Dr. Dao.

In fact, the type of person who would be so moved by a patient's misery that he would illegally supply him with painkillers is precisely the kind of person who would feel so much obligation to the patients he has to see the next morning that he would refuse to get off an airplane when asked to do so. This is someone who feels empathy and compassion to a larger degree than the average. Given different opportunities, he might have been an artist or a poet rather than a physician. Are we going to throw him off a cliff because he does not display the level of heartlessness and sociopathy that we admire so much these days in our leaders and idols?

Life is hard. People get depressed. They get addicted to drugs. They get angry and yell inappropriately. They lie on immigration documents to be able to be near and support their loved ones. We all do our best to make the best of the cards we've been dealt. No one is perfect. If being treated fairly requires perfection, then no one can possibly demand fairness.

This is a sick country, and it will not change until we decide that a lack of empathy for one's fellow beings is despicable and shameful. It is not Dr. Dao who should feel ashamed here; it is all of those people who have been proudly displaying their total and utter lack of empathy for the indignity and physical abuse that a fellow human being has been subjected to. Anyone who responds with so little empathy is not a human being in the full sense of the word.