Mr. President, patriots always wash their hands

Dear President Bush,

You were so responsive to my last letter that I am writing again, this time to suggest you direct the snooping ability of American spy agencies away from our cell phones and toward an activity that might really save some lives, that being washing our darn hands. If that nifty National Security Agency can listen to whoever is plotting evil, it can probably figure out who is potty evil, meaning who is not washing their hands after they have done their business (only about 80 percent of us do after we do, if you know what I mean).

Now I know that being a potty policeman is not nearly as glamorous as being a global policeman, and that it is harder to look like a tough guy chasing down E. coli than when chasing down al-Qaida. But here is the thing, Mr. President; infectious bad bugs on our hands kill a lot more Americans than terrorist bad guys in our lands. In fact, infections preventable by simple hand washing kill many thousands of Americans every year. On top of that, those infections are wasting a ton of our money, which could be better spent as tax breaks for oil companies.

You being The Man and all, have the right stuff to save many lives each year by convincing us that real patriots wash their hands frequently. It would be slicker than a well-heeled lobbyist on Vaseline if you stood up before the cameras and said that good Americans frequently wash their hands, and that it is our duty to do so in order to save lives and money. Look us right in the eye, sir, and tell us hand washing is one way all of us can do the right thing for our country, because it is.

Now I bet you think most of us don’t need help doing what our mamas told us, but we do. Surveys on rates of hand washing by Americans show that we need all of the help you can give us on this point; only about 75 percent of men and 90 percent of women wash their hands after using the bathroom (which is another good reason for the ladies to avoid touching the TV remote – just let us dirty guys have it). Only about 75 percent of us wash our hands after changing the baby’s diaper, and about 40 percent wash our hands after patting the dog. And this, sir, is just mucous mayhem; only about one-third of us washes after coughing or sneezing into our hands! The sad truth is that if cleanliness is next to godliness, many of us are not that close to the Lord.

What’s the result of all this pestilence on our pointers and pinkies? Plagues, sir, plagues caused by little bits of gross, yucky stuff hidden on our hands. It all adds up to more disease than you can imagine, and more misery than al-Qaida is ever likely to bring down on our ears (which are also dirty, but not as bad as hands).

Flu kills more than 30,000 Americans every year, and a great deal of it is passed into our bodies by getting it on our hands, then absorbing virus through mucous membranes when we touch our mouths, noses and eyes with those dirty digits. In hospitals, inadequate hand washing is a major cause of the estimated 1.5 million hospital-acquired infections in patients admitted for other illnesses. Those so-called nosocomial infections are estimated to kill as many as 30,000 hospitalized patients each year, and cost us billions of health care dollars.

Now, unlike that little problem you had with weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, sir, you don’t have to find anything to prove that hand washing pays big benefits. For example, at least one study has shown children who wash their hands even four times a day are significantly less likely to catch colds and stomach bugs. Study after study has shown that if we wash our hands – before we prepare food and eat, and after we blow, pick, sneeze, cough,

Numbers 1 or 2, pat the pet (more than 100 disease-causing bacteria can inhabit pet spit, Mr. President, so the Secret Service needs to be keeping an eye on that dog of yours), wrastle some ranch critters for branding, and other manly stuff, etc. – we can be a lot healthier. In fact, if we all made a date with a bar of soap after doing all those things some of us could live a lot longer, and we could save a pant load of money in the process.

In the rest of the world, some 3.5 million children die each year of diarrheal illness or pneumonias, half of which could probably be prevented by good hand washing. Much of the world does not need our jet fighters and tanks, Mr. President; they just need soap and sewers.

The infections we spread on our lovely hands are not just the usual stuff, either, Mr. President. Influenza and Rhinovirus are bad enough, but inadequate hand washing is spreading mean, resistant bacteria such as Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus and Clostridium difficile. These bugs are downright nasty, the kind you would want to send to prison on a Caribbean island without a trial.

Now, being in Washington these days you are surrounded by people having trouble with dirty money, and some of them can wash all day and their hands will not be coming clean, if you know what I mean. But money can pass on disease, too, since bacteria and viruses can survive on money and surfaces such as public phones for up to two hours. (In fact, you want to be sure that you wash up after you return the $6,000 campaign contribution from that recently convicted Washington lobbyist.)

Money is an example of why we all should be doing a lot more hand washing when we are touching things that other people have been touching, especially this time of year. Colds and flu and other plagues are coughed out of one person onto their hands, then those hands spread the little critters to things other people touch. The bugs sit around on those surfaces just looking for some other person’s hands to attach to, and bingo, there’s a new body to call home.

Now, Mr. President, I know you are thinking that you don’t know beans about bugs, but that never stopped you from saying the FEMA director was doing a good job with Hurricane Katrina, and you should not let it stop you from campaigning for a cleaner America. Just tell our good people to wash their hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds after putting those hands in places of pestilence, tell them it’s the patriotic thing to do. You can tell them those alcohol hand cleansers are effective, too, and can be used instead of soap if their hands are not visibly dirty. (“If you can see the scum you need the soap,” is my motto.) Or, people can go on Mr. Al Gore’s Internet and find hand-washing information at www.washup.org, or www.cdc.gov. Do all of that and call it good, then head down to the ranch.

Well, Mr. President, I sure appreciate your attention to this important issue. I am guessing you will go for this idea because you want to protect us from evil, and can help do so by making America less safe for bugs on our hands. You can also make taking ownership of our dirty hands part of the ownership society campaign.

Besides, a campaign for more patriotically pristine American paws might be just the ticket for your approval ratings, and make it a lot safer for you to be out there shaking our hands.

Erik Steele, D.O., a physician in Bangor, is chief medical officer of Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems and is on the staff of several hospital emergency rooms in the region.