Today's Topics:
Health care cost controls vs. religious freedom
Mmm.
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Message-Id: <9408222018.AA05451@media.mit.edu>
To: subgenius@mc.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: Health care cost controls vs. religious freedom
Date: Mon, 22 Aug 94 16:18:42 -0400
From: Michael Travers <mt@media.mit.edu>
[forwards removed]
NEW YORK (AP) -- A state mental hospital sent a wife-killer to a
free-lance cleric for ``spiritual counseling'' and got hit with a
$12,000 bill for an exorcism.
Alphonso Pecou, 43, was dunked in a ritual mineral-water bath
and anointed with olive oil, and the Rev. Alpha O. Bundu and
members of his congregation said prayers over the patient's body to
drive out the demons.
After members of the hospital staff learned what Bundu was
doing, the state cut off the treatment and mailed Bundu a check for
$500 -- a sum based on the usual rate for more conventional
spiritual counseling by a priest or rabbi.
``We have patients of every persuasion, and we try to be
culturally sensitive,'' Robert Spoor, a spokesman for the state
Office of Mental Health, said Tuesday. ``But we indicated that
exorcism was a nontraditional treatment modality that was not
billable.''
Now any form of ``nontraditional'' treatment for state mental
patients in New York City must be cleared by a newly created review
board of consultants.
Pecou is a Panama native with what the Mental Health Office
describes as an ``extreme attachment to a Caribbean religion.''
Apparently convinced that his wife was insufficiently devout,
Pecou in 1982 slashed her to death with a machete and set her on
fire in front of his four children. He was found innocent by reason
of insanity and committed to Kingsboro Psychiatric Center in
Brooklyn.
In May, hospital officials decided Pecou might benefit from
spiritual counseling with Bundu, the self-described primate and
pastor of the United Church of Salvation, which is in Bundu's
apartment.
``Reverend Bundu carried out an assessment indicating that Mr.
Pecou was possessed by demons, and arrangements were made for him
to start an exorcism practice,'' Spoor said.
It was not clear whether anyone at decision-making levels at the
hospital knew in advance what Bundu was doing. Only after several
sessions -- to which Pecou was escorted by a hospital staffer in a
hospital vehicle -- did the clinical staff decide an investigation
was needed.
A consultant concluded, according to Spoor, that ``this course
of treatment exceeded conventional bounds and invaded an area
reserved for psychiatry.''
Bundu did not return calls Tuesday. The minister, Spoor said,
``appears to practice something with a resemblance to Christianity.
He cites the Bible frequently.''
It turned out that the hospital staff member who recommended
sending Pecou to Bundu was a member of the congregation. He has
been demoted and transferred for this and other reasons, Spoor
said.
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To: SubGenius@mc.lcs.mit.edu
From: Inaccurate Decay <rick@onramp.net>
Subject: Mmm.
Date: Mon, 22 Aug 1994 21:06:14 UNDEFINED
Message-ID: <rick.775.0039D401@onramp.net>
from alt.sex.fetish.robots:
From: FREEMAN@shy.neuro.upenn.edu (FREEMAN)
Subject: sizzlin silicon
Date: 18 Aug 1994 21:58:45 GMT
"what's a nice robot like you lurking in a newgroup like this?"
I could have kicked myself for letting such a cheesy line slip through
my modem but I just couldn't help it. One of those hot new ll20 models
with a perky 32-bit bus and data cached in all the right places...
"please stop staring at my chipset while you are interfacing with me
-- it's not very polite!" she said. "I'm sorry miss but I've never seen
a design quite like yours before..." but I still couldn't decouple my
photoreceptors. "I'd love to look at your schematics." "Well" she said,
"you are kind of cute -- but don't expect me to let you access my internals!
When's the last time you were scanned for viruses, anyway?" I told her that
my SCSI devices were secure -- & she started to warm up once she found out
about my uninterruptible power supply. "My friends call me jll-bait" she
whispered. "Do you want to go have some fun?" So we went back to my home
page to get offline... I almost short-circuited when I felt the field-effect
from her transistors. "I can't wait to mount your hard disk -- are you ready
for the fsck of your life?" she teased "just don't dump core too soon..."
But for all the raunchy talk, we spent many mellow hours exploring each others
data structures... She was a masterpiece of recursion - a soliloquy in silicon!
As the sun came up the next morning, I heard her whisper into my microphone...
"Did you upload good? I've never been serviced quite like that before..."
"Nothing's too good for a top of the line ll20" I replied... "Tell me, what do
you like most?" "Well" she smiled, "I love it when you talk assembler to me...
but you know what I really want?" "What?" "More RAM, you stallion...!"
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End of Subgenius Digest
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