Tammy Stoner, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, provides presentations, coaching and counseling services. As the developer of the Teddy Bear Technique® Toolkit she demonstrates fast and fun ways to engage in storytelling for adults and children, and quickly reach the hard to reach. As author, presenter and coach, services are guaranteed to create breakthrough results!
Rush to Judgement in Wrestler's Death
Today the physician and friend of Chris Bennoit, the professional wrestler, was released from jail and placed on house arrest at his mother’s home. Do a quick search on the internet and you will find many supporters of Dr. Astin. There are some patients who state he treated them without insurance, he had great bedside manner and he was an excellent physician. So how do we explain the categorically positive statements by patients about this physician, to an arrest of the physician, leading to jail time and a closing of his practice?
Dr. Phil Astin is a victim of our apparent need to find blame for that which we do not understand. We have no answers as to why this wrestler murdered his family so we blame the physician and friend of the wrestler. We have done it before in our rush to find solutions, find answers and explain the unexplainable.
Recent memory brings to mind Richard Jewell, the security officer dragged through the mud and intense investigation, because he “identified the Olympic bomber.” Only later we learned it was Eric Rudolph who planted the bomb. For nearly a year the focus was on Richard Jewell, while we ignored other clues leading elsewhere.
Then we saw it again when Howard Stern was accused of “killing Anna Nicole Smith with drugs.” Again, the death was unexplainable and we rushed to judgment, blaming the closest person to her at the time of death, Howard Stern. Later we learned the autopsy left many unanswered questions.
Then we watched it again with the Duke lacross players accused of rape, only to learn that the entire story was made up by a mentally ill woman and exacerbated, by a prosecuting attorney seeking to capitalize on the crime to get reelected.
When we don’t understand, we seek to make sense of the unexplainable and we do that by placing blame on somebody, anybody. Today we are blaming the physician for prescribing drugs, however there is no indication the physician prescribed steroids to the wrestler and we don’t know what medication was prescribed on the day of the attack.
Dr. Astin’s office is raided and his records confiscated and the news reports that he was arrested for over prescribing medication to other patients unrelated to the wrestler. What in the world is going on here?
I have no idea of whether or not Dr. Astin prescribed an inappropriate medication to the wrestler, Chris Bennoit, but Dr. Astin does not need to be arrested for doing what he is paid to do, be a doctor. He did not kill the wrestler nor the wrestler's family. He prescribed medication to his patients. That’s what a doctor is paid to do.
If we want to place blame perhaps it should rest on the drug manufacturers, the sales representatives selling the drugs to the doctors. Perhaps we should see what the autopsy reveals before we rush to judgment and learn to accept that we don’t have all of the answers. Sometimes we just don’t know what happened. We don’t know, what we don’t know.
We are putting the cart in front of the horse in this case. We need to slow down, and learn the cause of death before rushing to “explain, what we can’t explain.” It is a tragedy to the American justice system that we continually blame somebody for that which we don’t understand. Get off the doctors back and let the facts of the case unfold first. The facts of the case will be revealed soon enough. Wait for them before rushing to judgement.
Reprint permission granted in part or whole when the following credit appears: Reprinted with permission from Tammy Stoner LCSW at
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