Dr. Starr at North Broward Medical Center --Simply AWFUL, rude, obnoxious, unprofessional

When I was hospitalized for a dental abscess some years ago, a doctor I had never met before, a Dr. Starr who had hospital privileges at North Broward Medical Center, showed up uninvited and unannounced in my hospital room.

After a perfunctory "How are you?" his next question was "Do you work?" !!!!! His next question was "Do you drink?"  The question after that was "What medications do you take?" 

HE NEVER ASKED AT ALL ABOUT THE DENTAL ABSCESS, WHICH WAS THE REASON I WAS IN THE HOSPITAL. HE OFFERED ME NO TREATMENT, NO ADVICE, AND NO MEDICATION.

I was not abusing any drugs and have never been hospitalized for any sort of drug or alcohol problem.  By the way, all this information should have been available on my chart. I had health insurance from an employer and had reported all use of medicines during an intake interview. If he wasn't treating me, this was none of his business and if he really wanted to know, he didn't have to barge into my hospital room and interrogate me when I was sick and in pain. He could have simply read the chart.

There is no justification whatsoever for asking a patient so many personal questions if no treatment is offered.


I believe the reason is that I was involved in a nasty legal dispute with one of his relatives. This led to a lot of threats of law suits, etc.  I won every step of the way, however.  Barging into a sick woman's room when she is alone and asking prying questions in order to find out information that is completely unrelated to the reason I was in the hospital is the height of audacity.


I thought he was rude, obnoxious, and unprofessional. He was worse than useless. In my judgment, he was also highly unethical.

Interesting Books on the Middle East

Baruch Kimmerling, the late Israeli professor of sociology at the Hebrew University, was a complex and, on the surface, contradictory man. He loved Israel but criticized the occupation and the treatment of the Palestinians and was an early opponent of the war on Iraq.

He was able to penetrate to the heart of a text better than anyone I have ever met. This ability enabled him to read vast amounts of material and develop highly original interpretations.

Nowhere is this ability more evident than in his books about the crisis in the Middle East. These books go beyond propaganda, apologetics, and clichés and present insights that are both original and profound. If you have an interest in the Middle East, your knowledge will be deepened by reading his work.

I am proud to say that I helped him prepare the manuscript of Politicide. Although a stunningly brilliant man, he never mastered English and I untangled his sentence structure for him before he sent it to the publisher for real editing.