by Doctor Science
As I write, there is a medical crisis at Antarctica's South Pole Station. Raytheon (the contractor that runs the Station) and the National Science Foundation (which is responsible for it) are refusing to authorize a medevac. Desperate relatives of the patient have created a website to publicize the situation, and are petitioning the White House to over-ride the contractor and agency's decision.
On August 27th Renee-Nicole Douceur, the winter site manager at the South Pole Station, suffered a stroke. The Pole doctors requested that she have an emergency medical evacuation as soon as possible: they have neither the kind of scanning equipment that could tell them what is going on in her brain, nor the kind of medication a true hospital would stock to treat a stroke patient.
The doctor noted on Sept. 3 that the healing is slower at the South Pole and that Renee would benefit from assessment and rehabilitation therapy as soon as possible. She also admitted that she didn’t know how to rehabilitate a stroke victim. Renee has partial vision loss to both eyes, and she also has brain fatigue.(from the SaveRenee FAQ)
Renee (with clipboard) at the ceremony placing the 2011 Geographic Pole marker. Because the ice cap glacier moves about 10 meters over the course of the year, the location of the geographic South Pole seems to move with respect to the Station and has to be re-positioned on the ice cap every year. The Ceremonial Pole is where people usually get their pictures taken, but has no scientific significance.
Raytheon and the NSF claim that there will be absolutely no opportunity for a medevac before the first regularly scheduled flight, toward the end of October. And besides, they say, the stroke is "not an emergency", not worth the considerable trouble and expense of a medevac from the Pole. Even if they could, which they claim they can't.
However, in April 2001 there was a medical evacuation from the Pole, during the polar night. The Sun has now been up for a week:
The Dark Sector Laboratory (DSL) a few days before sunrise, with the main station at the end of the flagline almost a mile away. Photo by J. Dana Hrubes.
Although a medevac earlier than the scheduled transport is almost certainly technically feasible, no flight has been pre-positioned -- so even if weather conditions temporarily improve, Raytheon would not be able to take advantage of it. They clearly do not intend to move Renee earlier than the regular transport, regardless of conditions.
The above is largely summarized from SaveRenee.org; the following are completely my own thoughts and research and not based on anything Renee, her family, or her friends have written, said, or implied.
Why is Raytheon being so hard-nosed about money that they're risking having an employee blinded or brain-damaged, with all the attendant risks of lawsuits, bad publicity, and bad feeling? I notice a few things:
1. This season already saw a medical airdrop at the Pole, in the cold and dark of late August. It was successful, but I assume it was quite expensive.
2. There was also a medevac from McMurdo on June 30, in the very middle of winter. McMurdo is probably an order of magnitude easier to get to than the Pole, but I'm sure this, too, was very expensive.
3. Raytheon's contract for running the Antarctic stations is up -- actually, that's the original 10-year contract plus a one-year extension. Insofar as I understand the process, Raytheon is not one of the finalists for the contract -- as of a year ago, only CH2MHILL, Lockheed Martin, and KBR were still in the running. The contract winner is being decided as I write, and should be announced in November of this year. They say.
So it looks to me a lot as though Raytheon doesn't give a damn about its future in Antarctica, or whether it will get bad publicity, much less any hypothetical human feeling for an employee -- the only consideration is that every extra penny it spends in Antarctica now will come out of its bottom line, instead of being rolled into next year's budget or otherwise cooked into the books. No wonder they're willing to act like a insurance company, playing the "Deny, Delay, Defend" game.
Renee's family is urging people to contact relevant officials at Raytheon and NSF. They also are trying to get 5000 signitures on the White House petition, which is the threshold for the White House to actually take notice. Boost the signal.
Spoolhenge is a unofficial, evolving installation at the South Pole made of industrial-size spools used to hold the miles of wire that connect the scientific sectors. Every year some (or maybe all, I don't know) of the spools are taken away as trash, but others accumulate and Polies build them into the henge. Photo by Anne Noble.
Hermann Cain warned us this would happen under Obamacare, don't you know?
All of us will have to petition unelected gummint bureaucrats in the basement of the White House for access to basic medical procedures.
In fact, under RomneyCare in Massachusetts, did you know that all residents from that state have to petition their health insurers to be flown TO the South Pole, where all the doctors in the State moved to escape regulation, and are routinely denied care in life threatening situations.
Why, Hermann Cain would be dead if Obamacare had been around during his troubles which, come to think of it, would have freed up one of any number of the other murderous lying whackaloons to lead the Republican Presidential primary this week.
I'll bet if Ms Douceur was a terrorist suspect or an undocumented immigrant, she would be whisked forthwith to safety.
Ernest Shackleton could get the woman out.
Lacking nuclear weapons with which to blow up the world, I offer this comment.
Posted by: Countme-In | October 01, 2011 at 09:45 AM
SIgned.
I was chatrtig with Tea Party guy the other day. He told me that socialism meant "From those who have to those who need". He thought that was a very bad thig. I told him that capitalism was "Maximum return for minimum investment, something for nothing being the ideal". He thought that was a good thing.
He also thinks his ideology is more important than human life.
Has America always had so many morally bankrupt people in it? BTW this guy thinks he is a Christian.
Posted by: Laura Koerbeer | October 01, 2011 at 10:41 AM
Only slightly related:
Posted by: Slartibartfast | October 01, 2011 at 11:22 AM
I wonder if Raytheon and the cash-strapped NSF would except penguin jerky in lieu of chickens in exchange for the woman's safe passage and stroke care.
"BTW, this guy thinks he is a Christian."
I think he is, too.
"Auto-appendectomy in the Antarctic:case report."
And THAT surgeon calls himself a Communist!
Posted by: Countme-In | October 01, 2011 at 02:25 PM
"accept", but maybe the small print in the lady's health plan read "except".
Posted by: Countme-In | October 01, 2011 at 02:55 PM
I signed the petition, I hope others will too.
Posted by: Julian | October 02, 2011 at 12:59 AM
I am at the South Pole right now. While I sympathize with Renee, I must note that there are a number of distortions and inaccuracies at saverenee.org and in the various comments made by Sydney and Veronica on reddit. Without belaboring the point, the weather here is not and has not been good for landing a plane. The temperature is not the obstacle; the winds, horizontal visibility, surface definition, and cloud heights are, and those have been quite poor for most of the recent past. Since a medevac plane would be flying ten+ hours from Rothera (itself in Antarctica and subject to stormy weather), the confluence of good weather there and a lengthy good forecast here is simply not easy to come by.
At this point, even if the powers that be instantly authorized a medevac flight, the chances that it would get here any earlier than the next "scheduled" flight are much less than 50/50. The "scheduled" aircraft will be deploying soon, to make their long journey south from Canada. While the question of whether a medevac should have been authorized and implemented earlier is an open one (about which I have opinions, but this is not the place for them), the issue of initiating a medevac NOW is basically moot, and by spinning all this up, all that's happening is that Renee's anxiety level is increased, to no good, and possible some ill, end.
For what it's worth, yes, both the McMurdo medevac and the South Pole airdrop WERE expensive, but they were both a great deal easier and less risky than a medevac here would be. That they happened indicates to me that money really isn't the issue here, risk assessment and trade-off is the issue here. Also for what it's worth, the McMurdo medevac quite likely saved the patient's life. While I would OF COURSE hate to be wrong, I think the chance that getting Renee out of here AT MOST a few days earlier than would otherwise be the case will have any material impact on her outcome is remote.
Posted by: SPWO2011 | October 02, 2011 at 02:51 AM
This is not without precedent. While I wintered-over at McMurdo 41 years ago, we had someone at Pole Station bleeding internally who had to ride out the winter. Two years before that at Plateau Station at 'the pole of inaccessibility', the whole station went for weeks operating on cobbled-together generators while various mishaps threatened to leave the station in the dark and frozen. In each case the Navy elected not to try to fly in to the rescue. The explanation I heard at the time cited the difficult problems involved in providing search-and-rescue in the event that the winfly airplane itself crashed. (And crashing in Antarctica - especially during the winter - wasn't a trivial probability event.) It's a brutal, nasty environment down there. Folks on the ice have better communications these days, but they are still very far away.
Posted by: WO'70 | October 02, 2011 at 12:42 PM
One thing that isn't clear to me - if the situation is as desperate as SaveRenee.org seems to indicate, why don't they pay for her flight themselves? Even if they think Raytheon should pay for it, if it's a matter of her life, why wouldn't they pony up the cash for a private transport?
Possible answers:
1. It's a matter of principle - Raytheon should pay. I have a hard time believing this, but maybe.
2. It's too expensive.
3. It's too dangerous - this seems most likely to me; private contractors won't make the flight because it is dangerous.
4. They can't for some regulatory reasons (another big possibility)
However I admit I really don't know why they don't do this, but I haven't seen an answer, or even the question asked. Does anyone know why they don't hire a 3rd-party to transport Renee state-side?
Posted by: Michael Stack | October 04, 2011 at 11:58 AM
Michael:
I have no first-hand knowledge, but I do know that permission to land aircraft at the Pole -- or even to fly over it -- is VERY tightly controlled. Even in the more easy-going summer it is no easy matter to get permission to land at McMurdo, much less to go from McMurdo to the Pole and back.
Posted by: Doctor Science | October 04, 2011 at 08:29 PM