On Flea

I don't often participate in blogosphere or Internet drama, but I do want to briefly add my comments to the general blogosphere reaction to the outcome of Flea's trial. If for no other reason than Flea was one of my favorite blogs, and its disappearance is a loss for medbloggers and the Internet community at large. I won't pontificate long. My thoughts boil down to this:

It saddens me when a case is settled not on the facts of the case, but rather on issues that are only tangentially related to the matter at hand, at best. That said, perhaps Flea was confident in his anonymity, but probably shouldn't have been. Being nearby, I considered going to the courthouse in Boston and asking a court clerk where and when "the malpractice case of the pediatrician" was being heard, simply because most of my days are free, and I would have liked to observe the trial. I wouldn't have revealed Flea's identity.

Unfortunately, hindsight is 20-20, and things that are obvious after the fact are often not so obvious while they are occurring. We've all done things that were dumb in hindsight — myself especially — so I will refrain from being an armchair jackassexpert and saying that Flea should have known better.

But ultimately we have a legal outcome wasn't about the truth. The truth — whatever it happens to be — is apparently irrelevant. Unimportant, even. I think that alone is poor commentary on our legal system.

[tags]Medical malpractice, malpractice[/tags]