medicine
ejohnson | August 5, 2009
A recent post by Megan McArdle on her Atlantic blog about the heritability of obesity prompted a discussion on ScienceBlogs about the often confused meaning of heritability. As Razib explains on Gene Expression, "Heritability is the proportion of trait variance within the population explainable by variance of genes." The more an environment is able to effect differences between individual expressions of a trait in a single population, the lower the heritability of that trait. In the case of the US obesity epidemic, generational differences in obesity levels do not mean that obesity is not…
palmd | August 5, 2009Note: I've been informed by one or two experts whom I trust that my plan sucks. My basic plan is based on a Weight Watchers model, but I take experts with evidence very seriously, so there may be some serious modifications to this post. --PalMD
Obesity is a bad thing. This isn't a moral judgment. If one of your values is long life and good health, then obesity is a bad thing. In general, I think it's a bad idea for me to write about my personal health issues, but I'd like to try an experiment. I suffer from one of the most common and fasting-growing (!) health problems in the U.S.---…
tqa | August 5, 2009
"Decisions are made by those who show up."
Around the country, right-wing activists, backed by well-funded groups working for the insurance industry, are showing up at the town hall events that Congresscritters are having in their districts during the recess. They're showing up and making their position known very clearly - in at least some cases at the expense of anyone else who wants to hear actual discussion about the issue. The GOP leadership is happier than they've been for the last two election cycles.
Over at Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall almost asks the right question:…
oracknows | August 5, 2009Did you know that acupuncture is very much related to astrology?
No, it's not just because both of woo. Rather, it's likely true that the whole concept of "meridians," those invisible "channels" through which our life energy (a.k.a. qi) allegedly flow were indirectly based on astrological signs, which had been used to guide points used by ancient healers for bloodletting. Indeed, far from being "ancient wisdom," by the middle of the second century, needling had been mostly abandoned and even banned by the Imperial Medical Academy in China and prohibited in Japan, only to be resurrected by…
palmd | August 4, 2009Morning report is a daily conference for medical residents. It is done differently at different institutions, but normally a case is presented, often by the post-call team, and discussed by the senior residents and an attending physician. --PalMD
A 35 year old man was brought to the Emergency Department(ED) after being found unconscious on a sidewalk. On initial evaluation by emergency personnel, he was otherwise medically stable, with normal vital signs, a clear airway which he was guarding well, and no obvious evidence of trauma. On arrival at the ED, a CT of the brain and X-rays of the…
oracknows | August 4, 2009During the month of June on this blog, I got annoyed not once, but twice. First, I got annoyed at Sharon Begley for a truly annoying and evidence-free (other than cherry-picked anecdotes) broadside against the NIH for its "culture of caution" that, according to her, is largely responsible for the "lack of progress" against cancer over the last 38 years since President Richard Nixon declared "war on cancer." In essence, Begley blamed the need scientists have for publishing in the highest impact journals they can get their manuscripts into for "delaying" cures or, as I put it, "keeping teh…
clock | August 4, 2009Ginny Barbour, Part 5: Open Access, Achievements and Looking Forward from PLoS on Vimeo.
oracknows | August 3, 2009Due to annoying stuff at work and good stuff personally, I didn't have time to grind out my usual bit of Insolence, either Respectful or not-so-Respectful, today. Fortunately, there is a long history on this blog, full of good stuff that I can repost. So, as I did when I went to TAM7, I'm picking a couple of posts for today that originally appeared in August. This one happens to have first appeared in August 2006; so if you haven't been reading at least three years, it's new to you (and if you have, I hope you enjoy it a second time).
I'll be back tomorrow.
Via Pure Pedantry, I've become…
oracknows | August 3, 2009Due to annoying stuff at work and good stuff personally, I didn't have time to grind out my usual bit of Insolence, either Respectful or not-so-Respectful, today. Fortunately, there is a long history on this blog, full of good stuff that I can repost. So, as I did when I went to TAM7, I'm picking a couple of posts for today that originally appeared in August. This one happens to have first appeared in August 2006; so if you haven't been reading at least three years, it's new to you (and if you have, I hope you enjoy it a second time).
I'll be back tomorrow.
I debated for a while about whether…
clock | August 3, 2009Ginny Barbour, Part 4: PLoS Medicine's Fifth Anniversary and Future Plans from PLoS on Vimeo.
oracknows | August 2, 2009Due to annoying stuff at work and good stuff personally, I didn't have time to grind out my usual bit of Insolence, either Respectful or not-so-Respectful, today. Fortunately, there is a long history on this blog, full of good stuff that I can repost. So, as I did when I went to TAM7, I'm picking a couple of posts for today that originally appeared in August. This one happens to have first appeared in August 2006; so if you haven't been reading at least three years, it's new to you (and if you have, I hope you enjoy it a second time).
I'll be back tomorrow.
So, after nearly two weeks of…
clock | August 2, 2009Ginny Barbour, Part 3: PLoS Medicine Open Access to Health Information from PLoS on Vimeo.
grrlscientist | August 1, 2009tags: humor, funny, plastic surgery, ONN, Onion News Network, streaming video
In this hilarious video, Rep. Lynn Merriweather says HR7652 will protect the millions of Americans who just want to appear as young as they feel on the inside, that's all [2:01]
oracknows | July 31, 2009You may remember a couple of months ago, I took Dr. Bob Sears to task. Dr. Bob, as you may recall, wrote a book that has become the bane of pediatricians everywhere, namely The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Decision for Your Child. In this book, Dr. Bob, while oh-so-piously proclaiming that he is "not anti-vaccine," lays down in his discussion of childhood vaccines a credulous treatment of many anti-vaccine canards in a sort of "I don't believe vaccines cause autism, but..." sort of fashion. When last we saw him on this blog, Dr. Sears had decided to let his anti-vaccine freak flag high and…
oracknows | July 31, 2009One of the advantages of having been a blogger for nearly five years is that you gain a sense of perspective after having written about various issues over and over for a long time. True, the disadvantage is that it sometimes becomes difficult to think of something new to say about longstanding issues. Even so, it's still quite useful, every so often, to take a look back over a longstanding issue of interest to the blog (more like a festering sore that keeps getting worse), and a new article in Salon.com gives me a perfect excuse to do just that. The topic has been a frequent topic on this…
oracknows | July 30, 2009It's that time yet again, time for another meeting of the Skeptics' Circle. This time around, Beyond the Short Coat hosts a nightmare. No, really, a nightmare. Remember Mitchell and Web's vision of what a Homeopathic A & E would look like? The 116th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle goes way, way beyond that. Here's hoping I don't get injured or sick or injured any time soon.
Next up is Ionian Enchantment on August 13. Help purge this horrific vision of the future of medicine by lining up posts now.
palmd | July 30, 2009You can count on the Wall Street Journal for pretty good reporting and for extremist right-wing wackaloonery on the OpEd page. Today, they deliver the latter, with bonus fear-mongering at no extra charge.
The piece is entitled, "GovermentCare's Assault on Seniors" and that pretty much sums up the content of the article. Unfortunately (at least, for the moral health of the author), there is little below the headline to justify the inflammatory headline.
Setting aside the oxymoronic tone that simultaneously lauds Medicare and condemns government involvement, the piece is one big mendacious…
palmd | July 30, 2009OK, in parts I and II we talked about health care problems specific to patients and to medical science. Now, on to the providers themselves. Before you start whining about how doctors need to suck it up, remember that you are entrusting your lives to us, and that you should want good people to go into medicine and stay there.
Physician-related problems
Medical education: It is long and very costly. In the U.S., we do not follow a vocational model as many other countries do. Here you must complete a four-year university degree, a four-year medical degree, and a residency program (at…
palmd | July 30, 2009I've been a terrible netizen. I haven't been keeping up with my blog carnivals, especially my favorite, the Skeptics' Circle.
Well, it's up now at Beyond the Short Coat. Go and read!