I’m sure you’ve heard of Americans who need health care but don’t have insurance or aren’t qualified for whatever programs are offered by the government going to Canada or some other country to take advantage of their universal health care programs. Or maybe somebody who has joined the military to get benefits.
But what about the person who robbed a bank – with the full intention of getting caught and going to prison so he could have healthcare. Read more on Going To Prison For Healthcare…
Filed under medicine, News by on Jul 1st, 2011. Comment. 
How much time did it take people to figure out that treating something will prevent its spread? About 30 years for AIDS, according to our major news media.
DUH! We have already figured out demographically that treating influenza prevents its spread. Our friends at the CDC have the flu nicely codified. A nice list of things we can do to prevent it. One of them is, of course, using those lovely new antiviral drugs. Yes, you can treat it, and clearly, that is a good thing, for not only does the patient get better (sometimes they are actually grateful), but it does stop the disease from spreading. Read more on AIDS Treatment=Prevention…
Filed under medicine, News by on Jul 5th, 2011. Comment.
While taking my psychiatric training at the University of Kansas, Wichita – the so-called “Buckle of the Bible Belt,” I often saw patients who told me freely they did not think I could help them because I was of Jewish origin.
Most could deduce because of my name, and most were not shy about asking point-blank. I had nothing to hide and was not ashamed.
They would quiz me about my belief in Christ, and despite my protestations that a prescription pad looked pretty much non-sectarian to me, some would request/demand to see someone who was at least marginally a Christian. Read more on What About The Brain Of The Born-Again?…
This is the quotation that was next to my picture, smiling and cuddling an electron microscope, in my high school yearbook: “Seek truth and do not part with it…” Yeah, I can’t be the first person who had that idea in mind at least a little bit when considering a research career.
There is a truth about the universe that is being revealed slowly. It takes us a while to get things right. I remember telling some people who thought religion and science were at odds with each other that perhaps whatever deity you believe in will only reveal what people will understand.
If an apple falling on Isaac Newton’s head was God’s way of revealing the laws of gravity to him, it was probably because the work of Galileo had already paved the way for this knowledge to be revealed. For the TRUTH to be revealed. Yet Newton was not ready for genetic recombination. Now, most scientists I know would accept that as universal truth. But, as Jack Nicholson said to Tom Cruise in “A Few Good Men,” — ” You can’t handle the truth…” (from the script by Aaron Sorkin). Read more on There Is Science and Then There is Military Science…
Filed under News, Research, Science by on Jul 12th, 2011. Comment.
Why can’t science be fun?
I mean, sure – I’d love to see cancer cures, and schizophrenia cures and even more on the promising telomeric theory of living forever. But sometimes, we learn a lot of things that seem – if not useless, then inconsequential –and they prove invaluable later on in ways we can never predict.
Would you like to know in advance if a pop song is going to be a big hit? I’m sure some people would. Believe it or not, that has been the topic of recent research. Okay, so it is a small study. Who would fund further research on this one? There is a certain part of the tender adolescent brain (remember, our brains don’t get completely myelinated until age 28. That means we do not have all the fatty-insulation around the nerves to conduct impulses) that reacts in a very interesting way to music. Based mostly on animal studies, the ventral striatum seems to be associated with emotions that generate behavior. This differentiates it from the dorsal striatum, which has mostly sensorimotor control. Makes sense. Although they are similar, these two different types of behavior are slightly different. Sometimes we decide what we want to do by what we feel physically. If it is too cold, we go for a jacket. The sensory input probably goes through at least a couple of brain centers, like thermoregulation. Read more on Using Science To Predict Pop Music Hits…
Filed under Brain, Research, Science by on Jul 13th, 2011. Comment.
One of the most popular posts in this blog recently was about the so called “fountain of youth” research into teleomeres.
Well, if you just can’t get enough and want to keep up on the latest developments on longevity research — I mean real science research rather than “try-to-sell-you-a-supplement” research — you should subscribe to my free newsletter.
I send this directly to subscribers and it contains information that does not appear in this public blog. You have to be one of the few, the proud, the well-informed.
My most recent newsletter has an update on teleomere research. You don’t have to miss out. Just go sign up — or as we say in the dot-com world “opt-in” — and you’ll start getting this regularly.
Best of all, you don’t have to miss out on what has been printed earlier. I have an archive of all my past newsletters available — just a click away.
I hope you sign up so we can keep in touch even better.
Take care and be happy!
Estelle Toby Goldstein, MD
The Renegade Doctor
Filed under Aging by on Jul 15th, 2011. Comment.
Several conversations fly into my mind, separated widely in time and space, about what college is supposed to mean and do. I remember one of the few social outings of my college years, a cocktail party with other advanced chemistry students and a few professors, where mostly everyone but me was drunk. We were at the house of a chemistry professor of Kiwi (New Zealand) origin, who was probably the drunkest of the lot.
Another chemistry professor asked me why I was in college. I told him, with sober placidity, that I was simply doing the things I had to do before I got to medical school — medicine being my passion. He launched into a tirade about how I was in college in order to learn. I should learn all I could about anything I could because this would be the last chance in my life to do so, before I went into that sickly-overblown trade school that is medical school, where I would be restricted to learning things that would make me more money. During my childhood, my father rhapsodized about his Harvard experience and how he wanted me to have one equally fulfilling — hopefully at Harvard. Growing up in Harvard it is not hard to generate negative feelings about perceived elitism, more financial than intellectual, dominated by a heavy veneer of snobbery, which my father joyously promulgated.
I was busy spending most of youth being overweight and thus largely a social pariah. Unfortunately, I got little recognition for these twin achievements – unlike the deliciously funny portrait of “Overweight Achievers” in Woody Allen’s film “Celebrity.” Read more on Is College A Waste of Time?…
Filed under Doctors, Education, News by on Jul 19th, 2011. Comment.
I recently initiated what I call “The Renegade Doctor’s Massive Weight Loss” support group for people who must lose 100 lbs or more for health reasons.
Registration is free and I will be sending regular messages by email about how I achieved my 160-lb weight loss withough diet, exercise, drugs or surgery, as well as recent research, myth-busting facts, nutritional supplement news,and general encouragement and support for those who are undertaking a major weight loss.
Most diet articles, books and programs are for people who want to lose ten or twenty or maybe as much as 50 lbs. However, the majority of obese Americans are well over that. Carrying around 100 lbs or more of extra weight is often called “The American Disease,” and foreigners make jokes about fat Americans and their cheeseburger-culture of overeating and obesity.
It’s terrible to be shamed and made to feel guilty because of your weight. It’s not only cruel strangers, but family members and even doctors who perpetrate such behavior.
Nothing is simple if you do it alone, and massive weight loss is a difficult project. In fact, it’s generally considered hopeless and overweight people are advised to get surgery or take drugs that have harmful side effects.
I’m making my support group available to anyone who is interested, and to make sure that you aren’t getting spammed, I’m making it by subscription only.
Of course, like my subscription newsletter, it is free to sign-up and you can discontinue at any time.
With so much focus on weight and body image in our culture, it is no wonder that people who are heavy get depressed and develop all kinds of physical and emotional symptoms.
Here is the web page where you can read what the support group is all about and sign up for the mailing list.
There will also be free phone conferences, brochures and other support material to help you.
I know how difficult it is — I know how painful living as an obese person can be. And I know the solution.
Take care and be happy — and healthy.
Estelle Toby Goldstein, MD
The Renegade Doctor
Filed under weight by on Jul 20th, 2011. 1 Comment.
Once my husband found one of those funny videos that is called “Viral” because of the way it spreads across the internet like wildfire. This one was an episode of a 1950s game show.
Like many shows of the era, it had a sponsor’s name and logo prominently displayed in every camera shot – the backdrop of the set where the panel sat and I think even the desk fronts of the panelists. The sponsor was Raleigh cigarettes.
The show had made the rounds of the video sites because it was so hilariously biased. The simple quiz format always yielded the same answer –
“What is the capital of North Carolina?” Read more on Infiltrating Medical School and Continuing Education…
Filed under big pharma by on Jul 20th, 2011. Comment.