Sunday, June 16, 2002

Do It Like The Pros...

Urinalysis as a tool in the so called "war on drugs" -- or in this case the war on alcohol use -- is evidently a bust where medical professionals are concerned.

A bit ironic -- when you consider medical professionals are among the few people for whom drug and alcohol use have a life and death impact on job performance.

What am I writing about?

Well -- buried in the second page of a NY Times magazine article on a small town doctor who lost his license is the almost perfect way to foil a piss quiz:

Lynn Hankes monitors troubled physicians and understands that no one is more blessed with the skill to beat an alcohol or drug test than a doc with a habit. Hankes is the immediate past president of the Federation of State Physician Health Programs and during 20 years in the field has seen doctors outfox the monitors a hundred ways.

Like the alcoholic doc who gets a call to be tested in an hour, at 5 p.m. Before leaving for the test, he goes into his bathroom to urinate. Next he inserts a catheter through his penis to his now-empty bladder and then attaches a funnel to the other end of the rubber tubing. He lies on the floor and, holding the funnel as high as he can, pours in a clean urine sample he has saved for just this moment, which flows down the tube, refilling his bladder. At 5 p.m. in plain view of the monitor, he's urinating clean.

Pretty ingenious, eh?

Much better than other methods I have heard of in the past:

Flushing with a variety of strange and probably bogus substances, synthetic urine, and the real thing -- high grade human pee -- albeit with strange plastic tubing systems for putting it in the cup or maybe a fake penis delivery system.

Nothing as cool or probably as effective as the what is described in the Times.

Although clicking on the links can give you an idea of the business potential in foiling drug testing.

posted by Bohica at 9:55 PM