Larry Nassar gets 175 years.....

Meadmaker said:
I know I get wrapped up in minutiae sometimes, but I still marvel that the subject matter of a thread about a guy who took advantage of hundreds of girls and young women, and used his reputation to cover it up, turns to the question of how his sentence is calculated, and whether or not he will be raped in prison.


Oh, well. Different people are interested in different things I suppose. For my part, I'm more interested in what this says about how we trust doctors, "experts", and authority figures, what price we are willing to pay for fame and success, and what impact this might have on some very prominent programs.
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I initially thought this too, but went in a different direction. The athletes were predominately very young, and we do tell children to trust authority to some extent. I'm sure a young woman is shocked at her first gynecological treatment. Young guys in the States, when getting a physical to participate in high school sports, have a doctor cup their testicles while they cough (I remember thinking the doc must have lost a bet with his buddies to get that gig). At an unusually high level of training and performance, unusual treatments might be expected, and some of Nassar's 'treatments' were done in the presence of the parents.

I think the issue is less of deference to authority and more of accepting the status quo/doing as the Romans do. Shades of Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery'. I think it likely that in some of the early reports of abuse, the athlete may have had family in the medical field who recognized that something wasn't right with such treatments.

Regarding the price of fame, I would give the athletes a pass again. It's not like they were sleeping their way onto the team or knowingly being abused. It was reported that a 2015 FBI investigation cleared him of abuse charges, so I assume his treatments were recognized at some level within the medical community (obviously without knowing Nassar's variations and the extent that he abused others). If the higher-ups had suspicions that were covered up, and they had the medical expertise to back it up, then the price-of-success problem kicks in. I hope this was not the case.

What impact might this have? Well, we still take our shoes off at the airport. I could foresee an independent professional witness being required at some medical treatments, especially for minors. Transparent logs produced of specific treatments, their frequency, and whatnot. I dunno. Really hoping this was a perfect storm of conditions that allowed a predator with a medical degree to have access to victims that rarely could occur otherwise.
 
Thermal said:
I initially thought this too, but went in a different direction. The athletes were predominately very young, and we do tell children to trust authority to some extent. I'm sure a young woman is shocked at her first gynecological treatment. Young guys in the States, when getting a physical to participate in high school sports, have a doctor cup their testicles while they cough (I remember thinking the doc must have lost a bet with his buddies to get that gig).

...snip...
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Really? :jaw-dropp
 
Darat said:
Really? :jaw-dropp
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Played school sports for 6 years in high school, had a physical every year. I've had physicals as well now that I am older.

Never once have I been told to turn my head and cough.

It's a stereotype of a physical, but I don't know how much it actually occurs in reality.
 
pgwenthold said:
Played school sports for 6 years in high school, had a physical every year. I've had physicals as well now that I am older.

Never once have I been told to turn my head and cough.

It's a stereotype of a physical, but I don't know how much it actually occurs in reality.
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In NJ USA, 1980's, we had to do it every year. I'll ask my kids if the guys still have to do it now.
 
pgwenthold said:
Played school sports for 6 years in high school, had a physical every year. I've had physicals as well now that I am older.

Never once have I been told to turn my head and cough.

It's a stereotype of a physical, but I don't know how much it actually occurs in reality.
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Freshman year of high school physical. 1976.
 
Belz... said:
It's not just a claim. Coughing often causes hernias in that area to expand or move and the doc can detect that. It's pretty much the easiest way to spot them.
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Oh, I don't doubt them. I've been ISF trained to dump qualifiers on with abandon.

Always found it odd though that hernias were a big issue for physicals, pretty much excluding most other aspects of actual physical conditioning
 
pgwenthold said:
Played school sports for 6 years in high school, had a physical every year. I've had physicals as well now that I am older.

Never once have I been told to turn my head and cough.

It's a stereotype of a physical, but I don't know how much it actually occurs in reality.
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Now that I think of it, my daughter has her physical certified by her pediatrician and presented to the school. I was pulled out of class to have the schools contracted doc do it. Maybe the state used to run it, but done privately now, and hernia testing up to doc's discretion?
 
CORed said:
I'm curious. Is there even one peer reviewed article that suggests that pain can be relieved by fingers being put in a girl's or woman's vagina? It's not something I had ever heard of before this case came up, and the fact that he also had child pornography in his possession certainly supports the notion that pain relief was not his only motivation, if it figured into his motivation at all.

I really don't by his claims, and even if there was any therapeutic value to what he was doing, the way he was doing it was very wrong, but I am curious as to whether there is any trace of medical justification, such that he may have somehow convinced himself that he was doing therapy rather than just molesting girls under the cover of medical treatment.
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He claimed to have been treating "Pelvic Floor" injuries. Which is a real sort of injury - but an odd one for teenage girls to get. When I served in the Peace Corps my coworkers who were nurses saw pelvic floor injuries commonly, usually prolapses caused by doing hard manual labor, while squatting, too soon after childbirth. Spoiled and out for the squeamish:
Large intestine prolapse into the vagina,
often with a tear. Poop comes out the wrong hole, with all the accompanying smell and hygiene and infection issues one might expect from pooping into the vagina.
They might have to live with that sort of thing for months before they could get it fixed.
There are other kinds of pelvic floor injuries as well, but I think there are all somewhat similar to a female version of a hernia.

The treatment was a minor surgery, pretty similar to hernia surgery. There were American, European and Japanese Doctors that would visit Nepal once a year or so and do tours, showing up in a village or town and doing perhaps a dozen of these surgery and (and other minor reproductive health type surgeries) in a single day. They would be accompanied by Nepali and Indian doctors who were being trained on the procedures. Some of the PC nurses were allowed to "scrub in" and observe but could not actively participate, but they were instrumental in scheduling and promoting the events.

If competition-level gymnastics is causing that in young girls who have not had children, the training must be extreme. And, realistically, it is extreme.

I think that is part of the problem - the competition is so extreme that abnormal behavior get accepted. It ceases to matter that nobody else is doing it, because nobody else is competing at that level, either.
 
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Maybe we need a different thread for a discussion of sentencing and prisons in general, since it has compltly derailed the topic this thread was started to discuss.
 
Thermal said:
In NJ USA, 1980's, we had to do it every year. I'll ask my kids if the guys still have to do it now.
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When I applied to join the Air Force, I had that happen in my entrance medical exam. My dad even pre-warned me it would happen. I was in the mob for 20 years, and we had an annual physical. That technique was used many but not every time.
 
smartcooky said:
When I applied to join the Air Force, I had that happen in my entrance medical exam. My dad even pre-warned me it would happen. I was in the mob for 20 years, and we had an annual physical. That technique was used many but not every time.
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Are you calling the Air Force "the mob?" That's interesting. How come?
 
Bob001 said:
Are you calling the Air Force "the mob?" That's interesting. How come?
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Common terminology, I just use it without thinking about it.

I think it comes from "mobilisation". When an airman, soldier or sailor leaves the service, he/she is often said to have "demobbed"

Have a look through this forum page and search the word "mob" and you'll see how its used

http://rnzaf.proboards.com/thread/17262?page=4
 
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pgwenthold said:
Played school sports for 6 years in high school, had a physical every year. I've had physicals as well now that I am older.

Never once have I been told to turn my head and cough.

It's a stereotype of a physical, but I don't know how much it actually occurs in reality.
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It's how my hernia was discovered my freshman year in high school, 1982.
 
smartcooky said:
Common terminology, I just use it without thinking about it.

I think it comes from "mobilisation". When an airman, soldier or sailor leaves the service, he/she is often said to have "demobbed"

Have a look through this forum page and search the word "mob" and you'll see how its used
http://rnzaf.proboards.com/thread/17262?page=4
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Thanks. I failed to note which AF you served with. It's not a common (or even uncommon) usage in the U.S. Here, "the mob" are the large guys with bulges under their jackets who come to your bar around closing and say things like "Nice little business you got here. Be a shame if it burned to the ground with your kids inside." It is often said, with evidence, that Trump had "mob" connections as a NYC builder in the '70s and '80s. Etc.
 
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