Doctors violate code of ethics?

Where's the code of ethics?

The International Code of Medical Ethics provides that a doctor has the duty to use great caution in publishing discoveries.

This code of ethics sworn with the help of God during the oath-taking are not always carefully exercised and followed.

Dr Romeo Quijano released an unfounded allegation that Residents of Sitio Camocaan in Davao del Sur are “are sick and dying due to the aerial spraying of pesticide, said the residents.
Justice pays, for this has earned for Dr. Quijano a libel rap from Lapanday, a member of the Pilipino Banana Growers and Exporters Association.

Another tenuous claim was released – the lie this time came from Dr. Alan Dionisio.
Pilipino Banana Growers and Exporters Association (PBGEA) spokesperson Anthony Sasin said that Dr. Dionisio and his co-investigators undertook the research with strong bias against pesticide, used environmental samples of questionable integrity and fabricated illnesses among residents. This conclusion was arrived at after painstaking investigation which finally established Dr. Dionisio guilty beyond reasonable doubt

He said that PBGEA have already provided the top-level Inter-Agency Committee on Environmental Health (IACEH) a copy of their findings including the videotaped testimonies of witnesses, among them a barangay health worker, who said that they were left alone by one of the investigators, Engr. Ana Francisco Rivera, to gather water and soil samples.
Rivera, in an open forum June 3, 2009 during the People's Inquiry on said study said that she gathered water from a fishpond and from an irrigation canal. Mrs. Adela Amado, the barangay health worker, pinpointed the exact site where she took the water sample: in a mangrove pond some distance form the village where water from two newly-developed fishponds accumulate. On page 21 of the DOH study, said samples were cited as drinking water.

Mrs. Amado also testified that she gathered soil sample not from undisturbed soil but from a pile of sweepings which experts find grossly unscientific especially for a health risk assessment study. "Engr. Rivera just sat in the shade while were gathering these samples," said Mrs. Amado which made apparent that Engr. Rivera does not have personal knowledge of the integrity of the environmental samples.

It was also found out that Dionisio's team used an HPLC to analyze air samples of which four out of six samples proved negative for pesticide residue, one with an allowable level and one with residues slightly above the acceptable level. Experts say that these samples should have been confirmed by mass spectrometry since the samples were not actually sprayed with fungicides. A fungicide was also analyzed by a non-selective detector (electron capture) so this should have been confirmed also..

The very same haphazard sampling was done in Sitio Baliwaga where Mrs. Nara Ventura, a barangay health worker in the area since 1986, testified that a soil sample was taken in a mud alley to Purok Dagsa. Said purok was not mentioned in the study. Mrs. Ventura also said that majority of the residents whom they invited for a free check-up, free meals and hauled to the barangay center were from said Purok Dagsa where the households use fishpond water for laundry. This was also not cited in the study and buried under the sweeping statement that "the residents have dermatologic ailments probably due to pesticides used in a nearby mango plantation." Said mango plantation is actually a good two kilometers away from coastal Baliwaga.

The municipal health officer of Hagonoy, Dr. Patricio Hernane and of Sta. Cruz, Dr. Lorraine Ana Lindong, were both quoted a week ago saying that until now, they have not received the list of people that Dionisio claimed to be sick due to aerial spraying so that they can be attended to. Dionisio promised to give said list last June 3, 2009.

"It has been three years and several months since they made the study. How long will we wait?" asked Rowelito Tigao of Camocaan. He said that he and his daughter were among those who submitted to Dionisio's free check-up but until now was not informed whether he or his daughter is sick. He said he works in a banana plantation and is regularly exposed to pesticides.

A local health official who requested anonymity said that they now understand why Dionisio and company hid the study for three years, did not open it for peer review, allowed it to be used as a prop in a television show, held a very low-profile public discussion on said study mostly with militants and resist contrary findings, an attitude that is un-scientific. She disclosed that the first time they heard of the study was when she received a text message from Dr. Dionisio on the day that the pesticide issue will be aired on TV. Dionisio urged them to see the show so that they will be able to handle queries from the media.

"Our track record the past thirty years proved that low-dose fungicide poses no risk to people's health and environment. It is milder than table salt, coffee, nizoral shampoo or of the obnoxious and deleterious carbon monoxide which people from all walks of life are exposed daily or of the acetaldehydes, chloromethanes, dioxane, phosphates and alkylbenzene sulfonic acid in laundry soaps and detergents used daily by millions of households in the country" Sasin said.

"No amount of theatrics can cover-up their wrong premises, false postulates and falsified attestations," said Sasin as he expressed optimism that the DOH, despite Engr. Ana Francisco Rivera sitting as chairperson of IACEH's Secretariat, will still be able to appraise Dionisio's study with scientific objectivity and finally bring out the truth that whatever raw risk that they tried to establish against aerial spraying is purely anecdotal and non-existent.