Economic miracle, my hairy arse

Yet more societal blowback... from the folks who brought you lead-painted baby toys...

-- SHENYANG, China -- Forget the calls by many Chinese patients for more honest, better-qualified doctors. What this city’s 27 public hospitals really needed, officials decided last month, was police officers.

And not just at the entrance, but as deputy administrators. The goal: to keep disgruntled patients and their relatives from attacking the doctors.

In June alone, a doctor was stabbed to death in Shandong Province by the son of a patient who had died of liver cancer.

Three doctors were severely burned in Shanxi Province when a patient set fire to a hospital office.

A pediatrician in Fujian Province was also injured after leaping out a fifth-floor window to escape angry relatives of a newborn who had died under his care.

Maybe Belleville General Emerg isn't the armpit of the medical world after all.