Warday

You know, the amazing thing is, when we’ve polled the citizens, we’ve found that they aren’t too interested in having a Presidential election. There just isn’t all that much interest. Concerns telescope when people are having trouble. Somebody who has a sick kid or is facing cancer or NSD, or just living in these times, they don’t care about the Israelis slaughtering the Arabs or the South Africans marching into Zimbabwe or the Poles into the Ukraine. They’re indifferent to world affairs. And about all they remember of the U.S. is the flag and taxes. We still have the flag, so they figure the hell with the taxes.

I just think one thing, though, and it’s the message I want to leave at the end of this tape. Aztlan is a serious problem, and the only way Texas can deal with it is by going in there and establishing strict martial law. If we don’t, Aztlan will get stronger and stronger, and we’ll soon be facing an army. The Legislature has to act on my military bill. That’s the key issue in Texas right now.

Documents on the Triage

Mother, mother, I feel sick,

Send for the doctor, quick, quick, quick.
Doctor, doctor, shall I die?
Yes, my dear, and so shall I.

—Skipping rhyme

FROM THE CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL

The most feared and controversial medical decision of this century has been the CDC’s triage recommendation.

Both Whitley and I have been especially eager to include as much information about the triage as we can, since it affects American life so profoundly.

I don’t have any really good sources at the CDC headquarters in Dallas, so I was very glad for our stopover in Austin. It gave me a chance to visit a friend who works for the CDC here, and who was willing to give me the kind of documents that would be useful.

I wanted information that few people had seen before.

I hit a vein of gold, as it turned out. My friend gave me the three documents reproduced here. For this I thank him and I guarantee his anonymity. It is ironic that more lives have been affected by these three short memoranda than by any number of critically important medical discoveries.

Because of these memos, millions of people have been denied even rudimentary medical care. But the triage has also guaranteed that those who can be helped are given what they need.

During the flu, twenty percent of the population needed emergency help. This occurred against a background of chaotic supply problems, high doctor mortality in affected areas, and a tremendous demand for drugs at a time when the industry was having trouble even maintaining normal production levels.

Perhaps one in ten of the flu victims saw a doctor, one in a hundred entered a hospital.

There is no way to tell if triage saves lives. Not only the triage, but so many other things that we now take for granted—home care for the dying, euthanasia, black market and alternate medicine, the British Relief—came about because the demand for care simply overwhelmed the nation’s medical system.

The existence of the triage means different things to different people. For me it means the constant, niggling fear that my lifedose will creep up and I’ll find myself suddenly denied medicine for some small ailment that will therefore become large and Anally kill. For Whitley, the triage means a shortened life. He cannot legally enter a hospital or consult a licensed physician.

Like so many triaged people, he has learned a great deal of medicine. Doctors who can’t treat a triaged person can and do organize seminars for ten or twenty such individuals at a time. And then there are the underground medicals—the witches and the doctors who practice illegally.

And there is always the balance of hope.

These three short memoranda seem innocent enough. But they are not innocent. They are the foundations of postwar American medicine.

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