From the first mention of the medical emergency on Crew-11 until well after the splash down, there was a ton of speculation about who the crew member was. From what I've read, both in comments here and on other sites, the most common speculation was that the only woman on the crew, Zena Cardman, was pregnant.
If you'll recall, when the issue first showed up, Zena Cardman and crew mate Mike Fincke were scheduled for a spacewalk on January 8th when the medical emergency was revealed. From my article when the story first went public:
The story broke in the last 24 hours that first, a scheduled spacewalk for this morning (Jan. 8 at 8AM EST) with two astronauts from Crew-11 was being cancelled due to a medical issue with one of the two. Today, NASA decided to do an evacuation of the crew from the ISS while being careful to say it was not a medical emergency.
One of the aspects rarely mentioned was that with Cardman and Fincke cancelling the spacewalk, it seemed pretty obvious that one of those two was the one with the medical emergency.
The rumors turned out to be flipped. Today, NASA revealed the Mike Fincke was the one with the emergency. Mike was the Crew-11 pilot and commander of the ISS' Expedition 74. He requested that NASA identify him, which removes the HIPAA concerns, and posted this to X:
You'll note that at no place does he actually say what the medical condition was or is. I'm not going to imply that he was pregnant, but it was something he doesn't feel comfortable talking about.
The exact nature of his ailment remains undisclosed, but Fincke's statement clarified that the issue, while not considered an emergency, required "advanced medical imaging not available on the space station." As a result, Fincke and his crewmates — NASA astronaut Zena Cardman, Japanese space agency astronaut Kimiya Yui and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov — returned to Earth aboard the Crew Dragon "Endeavour" on Jan. 15, about a month earlier than originally planned.
If I missed work due to something like an inguinal hernia, I probably wouldn't care if it was widely known, but that's as close as I'll get to speculating about what happened. I just wish him the best in healing and getting back to life as normal.
Hmmmm. Very interesting. Hope he recovered well. Needing more imaging than what was on the ISS, which means an MRI or CT with contrast, as the ISS does have a modern digital X-ray system.
ReplyDeleteCould be circulatory issues or something like that.
How do the ER patients always phrase it? "I was floating around in zero G, I tripped and fell and got impaled on this: [advanced medical imaging]"
ReplyDeleteI was wrong; I thought it was a pregnancy. Good practice for everyone. Glad it is at least stabilized.
ReplyDeleteCan you BELIEVE this?
ReplyDeleteOr is it an attempt to get one to "look away" from the real issue?
Not that any astronaut would try to "take one" for a fellow astronaut...
That only happens in the military.
Does an Air Force veteran qualify as anyone who has been in the military to you? Because he's one. Do you prefer the rumors about Zena Cardman over this? Remember, she would only be half of the story. It takes two to tango. If she was the real story, he's taking one for two people, not one.
DeleteAs for the main question, I believe it as much as anything that I can't prove with rigorous experimentation.
While I understand that individuals have a right to keep their medical issues private an astronaut isn't really a "private" job and to create such an extreme emergency situation needs some explanation. So it is difficult to understand what could be so bad, so personal, so taboo that we can't simply say it. In the absence of fact and in the obvious case of a coverup for whatever reason it seems quite reasonable that we think the worse.
ReplyDeleteWell then, why are YOU commenting under "anonymous"? Don't we deserve to know who YOU are?
DeleteButt out. You don't "need to know".
HIPAA is HIPAA. For ALL US citizens. Regardless of whether they are employed by the government or not. It is a violation of federal law to release that info without the patient's specific agreement. And while many federal laws are ignored if they are inconvenient...
DeleteHIPAA does not apply to everyone only to those in the medical field. IF somehow I knew of someone's illness as a free citizen I could reveal it because HIPAA doesn't apply to me.
DeleteBut all that aside the public, the tax payers need to know what caused this multi-million dollar scuttle of a tax payer funded program. If just anybody can scuttle it for just any reason than maybe we should stop wasting tax payers money on this crap. Which brings us to the coverup. Why cover it up? Why is it taboo? Maybe THAT is more important than who was ill and what was the illness.
Sorry I post as anonymous so I will tell you my real name is Igor.
FWIW, you're absolutely right about HIPAA only applying to people who were entrusted with that information as part of their job. FWIW, I think ending the mission early probably saved money rather than costing. They were coming home in a month anyway, all the hardware was there they just got less done and used fewer supplies. Everything that they did for the crew was standard or planned for contingency.
DeleteAs for wasting tax payer's money, they probably wasted less than usual. I'm sure it would be less waste than an SLS launch.
Many years ago, 50 years or so, I was talking with a lady who was stationed at a remote site with perhaps 30 men. She was complaining that they were constantly pestering her for a "date". Well she was pretty open about the issue so I asked "how many of the 30 did you have sex with" her answer was all of them multiple times. Not judging but this seems to be more or less the norm for women who are "remote" with multiple men.
ReplyDelete