Was Ariel Sharon the victim of malpractice?

Health Day News reported:

The blood thinner given to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon after his mini-stroke in December may have backfired.

In Sharon's case, the medication might have contributed to the massive stroke he suffered on Wednesday, in what experts say is a classic illustration of this seeming paradox in stroke treatment.

After Sharon was stricken when a small clot traveled from his heart to his brain on Dec. 18, doctors immediately put him on blood thinners, which may have been a factor in the far more devastating "bleeding" stroke he suffered on Wednesday.

When King Hussein of Jordan died of lymphoma in 1999 after being treated at the Mayo Clinic, I asked my oncologist, who had (knock on wood) cured me of lymphoma in 1997 and was one of the top lymphatic cancer men in the country, about the King's treatment. He shook his head in disgust, then said he wasn't going to publicly comment on something that would give Arabs another reason to be angry at America.

Meanwhile, Diana Moon asks why almost no one has mentioned "Sharon's serious problems with corruption. These are major, state-related issues which, in a normal state, would at least merit a mention." She wonders whether Jack Abramoff had any contact with the Sharon family. I haven't heard of any links, but it would hardly be implausible since Abramoff was a big financial supporter of hardline settlers in the West Bank, funding, for instance, a sniper school to train them in shooting Palestineans.

One close historical analog to Sharon is the Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, the most brilliant cavalry commander of his generation, a man dogged by allegations of massacres of prisoners, and one of the founders of the Ku Klux Klan after the war.

Although I've criticized Sharon, I must say that by the end of his career, his views had moved a long ways in the direction of mine: that Israel should secure its own safety by buying Jewish settlers out of the occupied territories and fencing off Palestinian land. Of course, I'm sure that I will be denounced as an anti-Semite by the Podhoretzes for holding similar views to those of Ariel Sharon, but that's a burden I will have to put up with.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer