The National Pressure Ulcer Advisory Panel was formed in order to insure that only treatment of bedsores was deemed appropriate. The cash cow of the "woundcare industry" was bedsores in increasing numbers. Baby boom demographics insured supply and regulatory rules insured the severity of each case. A single stage four pressure sore can cost the health care system more than $25,000 to treat (some cases exceed $100,000) and the beauty of the existing system is that these conditions will recur after successful treatment as long as the person survives.

Now the National Pressure Ulcer Advisory Panel will deny vigorously that this is the purpose of their organization. They have long claimed to be be dedicated to the reduction of the numbers of bedsores. However their existence depends upon funding from the companies that provide the products and devices designed to treat existing bedsores. Medical professionals secured research grants and significant status by being "sponsored" by member firms. Any question that challenges the idea that bedsores are inevitable receives no welcome in this body. If bedsores were preventable by less costly means this entire coalition of health care professionals and industrialists would have no basis for existence.

What happened to the Hippocratic Oath? How did we get to this place where prolonging a persons agony in order to secure a steady income stream or a new clinical specialty was considered acceptable? And what about a public that sees the opinion of doctors and nurses as sacred? In my early life it was the Hippocratic Oath that secured my confidence in the medical profession. In my later life I discovered the very painful truth that this oath has lost its binding property to those whose claim to be practitioners. Something dreadful has happened. The "hollow men" are ascending.