Jeffrey Grace and wife Cindy and Elizabeth, now 1 1/2, in this year-old photo. Physican-to-be fought
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff Hell hath no fury like that of a medical student shortchanged. And if Jerry Grace feels shortchanged, he will hang around for months trying to provoke official action. The only problem is that until this week no one was listening to Jeffrey Grace, a U.S. citizen. His story is complex and expensive. Plus he had a number of fellow medical students, mostly from the United States, who feel similarly short-changed but did not stick around to complain. Grace is among 12 students who registered to attend the San Judas Tadeo medical school. Most were recruited from the United States, but one Canadian, on Bahaman and a woman from Trinidad and Tobago also were in the class. Grace and J. Duke Moseley are among those who believe that their $3,000 a month tuition was spent badly. Moseley, who switched to another medical school here a year ago, said Thursday that the class met for a time at nights in the San Judas high school on Avenida 10 in Sabana Este. Later officials of the school moved the class to an apartment in Sabana Oeste and then to Rohrmoser, he said. The basic complaint is that the students expected a three-year, English-language medical program of U.S. quality. Instead, they believe they got something less. Plus they believe that the school is not really qualified as a medical school and any diplomas they might earn would have no value. Moseley said Cuban physicians dominated the faculty, and most did not speak English. They were something less than the U.S. board-certified professors he said he was promised. An anatomy lab was taught by a Tico student a single semester ahead of the class, he said. The school finally managed to bring in a cadaver so the future physicians could have hands-on anatomy training, but when educational officials visited, the bodies were hidden from view, probably because the school lacked the proper permits, he said. Moseley had nothing but good things to say about Grace, who stayed here attempting to get some kind of official action. Finally, this week, Channel 7, Teletica, featured a report about the school and another school, Empresarial University (www.unem.edu) that even now is actively soliciting students from the United States. Said Grace Thursday in an e-mail: "Yes I stuck it out, but to say the doors slammed on me would be inaccurate. Most of the time they never opened. Even from the authorities up in States. I am so disgusted with all of these people." Costa Rica officials are investigating both the San Judas situation and the new medical school at Empresarial University that said it would accept its first class in January. Officials are unable to verify that the university is licensed to run a medical school. Grace said he would go on: "I still intend to continue my medical studies and, thank God for the support I have from a great wife. She has stood by me throughout this whole ordeal." |
Doctors in a number of states in the U.S. are recommending marijuana to their patients. Especially for those who are undergoing debilitating treatment for cancer and other diseases or those with glaucoma and other chronic illnesses and for people who are dying. In a number of states, it is legal to use marijuana for medical reasons. Many years ago when I was being treated for cancer, I smoked pot to help me cope with the side effects of the chemotherapy and the dehumanizing process of radiation. Not only did it minimize the nausea, it helped me mentally and emotionally to handle the situation. I could even laugh with my friends at the ironies of the human condition. I didn’t take what I was going through personally. For a while scientists in the U.S. were trying to isolate the ingredient in marijuana that reduced nausea so that patients could be treated for that without getting high. This says a lot about the American method of medicine: which evidently trains its doctors to treat the symptoms and illness (or the diseased organ) and ignore the whole patient. It calls to mind a telling scene from a movie about the unconventional doctor called Patch. He enters a childrens cancer ward where all of the kids are lying quietly in bed, looking like they are in comas. He begins clowning around and soon the children were sitting up, laughing gleefully. He leaves as a nurse enters and she immediately shushes them all and gets them back to lying down and behaving like proper patients. Now the U.S. federal government, under the religiously inspired leadership of Attorney General John Ashcroft, is going after medical marijuana. They are confiscating supplies, burning the crops and threatening to arrest people. This, in spite of the fact that it is legal in these states. Their argument is that medical marijuana is the first step in an attempt to make it legal. Or that it is an addictive drug with dangerous side effects. I have met more people who were addicted to prescription tranquilizers and painkillers than to marijuana. And if you watch the drug ads on TV, you begin to realize that some of the side effects are worse than the problem the drug is treating. The upshot of continuing to keep marijuana illegal is that it has hampered any real research into its medicinal qualities. It has also made the growing of hemp for other very useful purposes impossible. In spite of the growing sentiment that marijuana is a soft drug, that it is the least dangerous of all drugs, the U.S. war on drugs seems to be centering most of its battles on marijuana. Marijuana is a threat to the American way of life in that it causes people to be laid back and uncompetitive, (and happy as long as they have enough munchies), some very un-American qualities. Now the U.S. government is carrying its war to Costa Rica. It is supposed to be fighting all kinds of drugs, but it is easier to get the pot growers who are, in most cases, poor and defenseless farmers who find a greater return on their labor cultivating pot. I don't know what the current punishment for possession is in Costa Rice, but I do know there are many people in prison in the States for the nonviolent crime of having small amounts of grass. I suppose I could have gone to prison myself. I would like to see Costa Rica decriminalize marijuana, but there are some problems. In this land of peace, pura vida, beautiful scenery and friendly people, not to mention ideal climate (and given the unhappy circumstances in the U.S.), if pot were made legal, too many tourists might never leave. Then we would have overcrowding and all of the problems that come with that. More Jo Stuart:
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A body found Oct. 12 in Punta Uva on the Caribbean coast was that of a missing German professor, the Judicial Investigating Organization said Thursday. The woman, Sonja Klauke, 29, a professor of geology at the Geological and Paleontological Institute at the University of Kiel in northern Germany, vanished Oct. 11. Police began searching after a missing persons report was filed Oct. 18. Using dental records provided by the German Embassy, forensic experts were able to positively identify the woman at the Judicial Morgue, said officials. The body showed no signs of pre-death violence and no projectile wounds were on the body, said investigators. The body was in an advanced state of decomposition and appeared to have been in the ocean, said a spokesman. The case will continue as an open one because pathologists have not been able to establish the cause of death. In such cases, the death is treated as a homicide until officials are able to |
establish the cause of death, a spokesman
said.
However, despite concrete evidence, investigators are leaning to the theory that the woman died from drowning in the Caribbean, which is treacherous in the area where the body was found. The area is known for its undertows. A spokesman said that the woman was wearing a swimsuit, although she also was wearing pants on top of the swimming garment. The spokesman attributed the pants being worn near the beach to the fair skin of the German, which needed the outer garment as protection from the sun. Ms. Klauke came to Costa Rica on the research vessel "Meteoro," which had been traveling in the Pacific along the Costa Rican and the Nicaraguan coast for three weeks. She arrived on the Caribbean coast for a few days of vacation, according to the Judicial Investigating Organization. Other members of the crew took different routes, and Ms. Klauke found lodging by herself in Cahuita, agents said. That town is just north of where the body was found. |
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How to live, invest or find romance in Costa Rica 
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