Medical Malpractice and Human Dignity in China

China is walking toward a new era of self-administrative government power. It is taking the practice to infuse people with a sense of human rights. In the case of a Nanjing man who was facing a mighty bureaucracy after a doctor botched an operation, leading to the removal of his right lung and further surgery to repair his esophagus, his malpractice suit is a test of social justice and an individual's right to basic medical needs. His case was brought before a local court, and he fought the medical power elite. Eventually the medical jurisdiction of Nanjing was overturned by the central Beijing investigative medical board because of the medical error, and compensation followed. The man felt a sense of justice because he had been crawling to steal the detailed medical records of his botched medical procedures. He had to pay $150 to get the botched organ fixed, and he had to borrow $1000 to get the Beijing medical board to examine the records, as he had lost the ability to do labor work. So in China, individuals are fighting for a basic sense of entitlement to dignity, and 1.3 billion lives should not be cheapened just because there are so many of them. Each individual has a basic human right, as the American way such as Thomas Jefferson proclaimed in his famous phrase etched in the Jefferson Memorial, "All men are created equal". Only after each one fights and paves the road to overturn the local medical elite power structure can gradual social reform and respect for each life be gained. Much like the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S., China has gone through slaughter by foreigners, and domestic warlords, and communists, a social movement needs to go through phases to truly put people on an elevated plateau. The laws of a nation should not just be a set of vacant decrees from the government, but laws should be of practical value to the citizens, and be followed and applied fairly, so that the Constitution is not just a piece of paper. The substance of legal protection is earned through each one's efforts. The medical case was reported by Chinese state-run CCTV News, and viewed by Free Mind in Shanghai. Although it is still at an inception stage, the Chinese people's legal consciousness is being developed rapidly as the progression of mimicking the west is ongoing.