I kind of like ABC news, since they at least reported the news about azithromycin and a lot of other folks didn’t.
For more information, here is the original article, and here is the FDA safety announcement (this link leads to a PDF which will load in a separate window, but you must have the Adobe Acrobat reader – free – installed). Read more on Azithromycin Scare…
Filed under Alternative Medicine, FDA, Government, medicine, News, prescription drugs by on Jul 22nd, 2013. Comment. 
Wait a sec … there are more women applying to college than men, and more women in college than men, so we have to attract more men and women have tougher admissions standards, and nobody seems very worried about this?
I think sometimes anonymity is a damned good idea, especially when you are selecting for intelligence, which is not a terribly bad idea in higher education.
When I was in medical school in France, everyone was assigned a “code number” for anonymity, and there was a ceremony for the “raising of anonymity” when the French medical school at Amiens (now known as “Jules Verne University”) found out that #38 out of 650 students in the “elimination examination,” (as there were only 110 places for clinical students in the hospital) was myself, and they were lovely about all of this even though they were stuck with me for all of seven years. Read more on Gender Bias in University Admissions…
Filed under Doctors, Education, News by on Jul 25th, 2013. Comment.
I remember the first time I saw a young patient with older person’s diseases. I was in a public clinic, not far from the industrial waterfront in California. She was 24 years old, weighed 380 pounds, had already had what she claimed was a “slight” heart attack. She had type 2 diabetes which I thought was virtually impossible to get at such a tender age. She was able to do little other than to shrug her shoulders. She said something about health problems having been in her family. Me, the only thing I could think of was that I was only through 3 years of so of a seven year medical school at her age. I was quite overweight, but if I had been struck with her degree of obesity or her medical problems, I don’t think I would have had the stamina to get by. Sure enough, she was neither working nor going to school. When you are an adolescent, you think you are going to be strong and healthy forever. I remember looking at patients and never thinking I would be as ill as they were. I remember seeing patients in intensive care in comas, never thinking for a moment that I would have three of them in my life before I was able to figure out the hereditary metabolic that had caused them. Read more on Patients Avoiding Hospitals and Doctors…
This story does not start with “I was minding my own business, surfing the internet.”
I was seeing a deeply suffering patient with terminal cancer and I was sneezing. I have a bunch of seasonal allergies and I treat them naturally with Quercetin and related compounds, a bioflavonoid, unpatentable, because I would have to eat a lot of oranges to get enough. Still, I will admit to the occasional sneeze, followed by the use of a tissue. She stroked my arm. “I hope you take good care of yourself, you are such a sweet lady. Maybe you need some Tamiflu or something.” I promised her I would look into it, taking her concern for my well being as a sign that she liked me. When people like me that much, it gratifies me and tells me I am doing the job of doctor pretty well, or at least better than the generally non-emotional most, and I am happy. Out of sheer curiosity, I actually checked into Tamiflu. Read more on Why I Have Not and Will Not Take Tamiflu…
Filed under Government, medicine, News, prescription drugs by on Jul 31st, 2013. Comment.