Pennsylvania Doctors Worry Over Fracking 'Gag Rule'
Pennsylvania Doctors Worry Over Fracking 'Gag Rule'
A new law in Pennsylvania has doctors nervous.
The law grants physicians access to information about trade-secret chemicals used in natural gas drilling. Doctors say they need to know what's in those formulas in order to treat patients who may have been exposed to the chemicals.
But the new law also says that doctors can't tell anyone else — not even other doctors — what's in those formulas. It's being called the "doctor gag rule."
'I Don't Know If It's Due To Exposure'
Plastic surgeon Amy Pare practices in suburban Pittsburgh where she does reconstructive surgeries and deals with a lot of skin issues. She tells me about one case, a family who brought in a boy with strange skin lesions.
"Their son is quite ill — has had lethargy, nosebleeds," Pare says. "He's had liver damage. I don't know if it's due to exposure."
The family lived near natural gas drilling activity, and there was some concern that the boy may have been exposed to some of the chemicals being used. Producing natural gas is a pretty industrial process and gives off a lot of fumes. It uses a lot of chemicals to open wells to get the gas flowing.
Pare's first step was to figure out what chemicals the drillers were using. But that information isn't easy to get. In this case, Pare says, the patient's family had a good lawyer who helped them find out what kind of chemicals the gas company was using.
"If I don't know what (patients) have been exposed to, how do I find the antidote? We're definitely not clairvoyant," she says.
http://www.npr.org/2012/05/17/152268501/pennsylvania-doctors-worry-over-fracking-gag-rule
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Tests need to be developed that detect those specific chemicals that are used in fracking. You know, if a Doctor gets a patient with an illness caused from exposure to those chemicals, and the patient dies, and the family finds about it? Whewey! That'd be malpractice. And they would go after the fracker too. I look for Doctors to rise up about this. 
This sucks. And a report on NPR, no less. That was big of them, huh?
