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Anonymous User wrote:I take a deep breath and say, “through our greed comes our greatest demise.” The look on my classmate’s faces was that of utter perplexity. Not a single hand was raised, a disappointing surprise considering how eager my peers were to discuss the meaning of the other quotes recited for our 6th grade English assignment. I don’t blame them. It’s hard for an 11 year old with their brevity of experience to grasp the true depth of that quote. In fact, I now realize that my own understanding was limited. Through my experiences though, I am beginning to realize the true meaning and profundity of the quote that I coined for our 6th grade English assignment, and with that understanding, I have largely redefined my goals.

Heart-set on a career in the healthcare industry and eager to get my feet wet, I began working as a pharmacy technician and volunteering at various doctor’s offices. During my tenure at the pharmacy, I witnessed a troubling phenomenon. Month after month, seemingly healthy patients would come in with scripts prescriptions for the highest allowable quantity/dosage of Schedule II narcotics from South Florida pain clinics, largely regarded as ground zero for pill mills. The practice became so common that there were weeks where I would fill three opiod prescriptions for every non-opiod. Anyone who is not a pharmacist will not know if this is out of the ordinary. You should say this more directly, rather than via comparison. For all anyone knew, one of those scripts would end up in the hands of a pregnant mother with an insatiable addiction. I decided it was best to part ways with the store. A few months later, that same pharmacy was under DEA investigation, leading to the arrest of two technicians and a pharmacist.

After leaving the pharmacy, I continued shadowing various medical professionals, one of which was a practicing urologist, a decision that to this day bewilders me considering my indifference towards the discipline. In hindsight that arbitrary decision I don't think mentioning the arbitrariness of this decision really adds anything to your story. I would cut out that aspect of it. was—in conjunction with my experience at the pharmacy—one of the key events that stimulated my interest in the legal profession. Towards the end of my internship, we had a conversation concerning some of the emerging trends in the healthcare industry. We discussed the paradigm shift away from the ineffective treatment modalities of the past. Recent disruptive technologies such as Genomic Health’s Oncotype DX assay This is too detailed. You could say what this technology does without actually naming it, as the actual naming doesn't really add anything substantive. have allowed doctors to gather more data about a patient’s disease state in order to ensure they receive the best course of action, which in many cases is no action at all, to the dismay of many of urologists who viewed the now-unnecessary treatments as revenue drivers. The doctor went on to discuss the various malpractice suits his peers were involved in where they insisted that their patients receive unnecessary, ineffective, harsh treatments that left them with countless issues including infertility, feminization, among others.

These experiences have compelled me to revamp my career goals. My desire to become a clinician has been replaced by an interest in medical law and a desire to pursue a career in the niche at the intersection of healthcare, bioethics and the law. I believe that there is a necessity for strict compliance to ethical obligations in the healthcare system, and the absence of this compliance leads to widespread repercussions. I was raised to always strive for a positive-sum scenario, one where aggregate gains and losses are greater than 0, and I believe that the adoption of no ideology is more beneficial when it comes to our health care system. A doctor’s willingness to sacrifice the well being of his patients for a larger profit leaves our society with a net loss, such as in the case of the man who underwent chemotherapy and irradiation in order to treat a slow-growing form of prostate cancer. Similarly, the widespread negative effects of filling a prescription of Oxycontin far outweigh the measly $15 profit. With the accumulation of such losses the healthcare system progressively decays, and with that decay comes unneeded, avoidable suffering to the system's constituents. While greed may not necessarily lead to the literal demise of the system, our greed (or more appropriately those of a few bad apples) can inhibit the achievement of an institution's purpose. I hope to leverage my science background and future legal education in order to address ethical issues that arise in the every day setting and represent clients who have fallen victim to the repercussions of misconduct influenced by greed. [the remainder was school-specific and omitted] That last part is controversial. I don't think you really need to state your opinions in such a way. You should elaborate on the importance of the intersection that you mentioned at the beginning without taking such a strong stance on what you think is good/bad within the medical industry.