New York surgeon: for many 9/11 patients, the attack never ended
New York thoracic surgeon: "For many patients 9/11 is not over"
A thoracic surgeon at Mount Sinai describes treating retired police officers and firefighters who developed cancer years after breathing toxic dust at ground zero. More than 140,000 responders and survivors are enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Program; over 8,000 have died. He argues that for these patients, 9/11 is not a single day but an ongoing medical crisis, and a new moment of silence at the 25th anniversary will honor them.
Because for them, Sept. 11 was not just one day. It has been 25 years. And it is still not over.
- PaulKeeble
Governments and medicine tend to track deaths as the only bad outcome from events like 9/11 or Covid. But typically there are a lot more people injured who suffer for the rest of their lives with the consequences, damage and chronic conditions that these events have left them with. We do need to put a lot more research into understanding and improving the quality of life of those with chronic conditions, Historically they have been ignored and are currently highly stigmatised by governments, the press and the populace.
Diseases that lead to death have had substantially better funding over the past 100s of years and chronic conditions are often rarely diagnosed, properly recognised let alone treated. The disabled is a club almost everyone joins at some point in there life and everyone is one accident or infection away from joining it for the the rest of their life. At the moment societies recognition and treatment of those with these conditions is really bad. The 9/11 survivors will be suffering for the rest of their lives. Medicine is something we all want, but at the moment the amount invested by governments is quite low compared to the upside impact on humanity of finding real answers.
- dbt00
Jon Stewart to his credit has done a tremendous amount of work on this.
- atleastoptimal
I'm sure the cost to give every ground zero worker clean-room level suits with a built in filter would have been 1/100000th the total cost compared to the medical expense of treating them over the next 25 years.
- layer8
- ck2
I guess the key thing to the 9/11 event is it was sudden and instant
1.5 Million people died from Covid, not just died but SUFFERED and died from 2020-2024
there was a 9/11 every other day for years, sometimes every day
there are STILL in 2026 several hundred per month dying from Covid
there are still ten million people or more living the hell of long-covid and will never recover
but because Covid was spread out over years, not a single memorial, it will never be over