Even a 6-year old can understand the futility of gun proliferation in halting crime. I especially admire his use of sarcasm at this age to get his point across.
Somebody was quoted as saying that gun buyback programs are like trying to empty the Pacific Ocean with a bucket. Yes, this is nuts, and stupid. Most of all, this is the showy crest of a wall of anti-intellectualism that threatens to down our previously mighty country.
People are very excited about gun buyback programs right now. Me, I never owned a gun. Although, some people have told me I should given the dangerous situations I too often turn up in. As I say this, I look down at a scar on the inner aspect of my left elbow. A scar I sustained when a drunk in a northern French emergency room attacked me with a piece of broken glass. It is, of course, paler and harder to find than when a young surgeon colleague came from home to close it with tiny little faerie-like stitches. No guns around, of course. I learned before that scar, early in my French training, that if you owned a gun — and especially if you didn’t feel very secure with it — it was likely to be turned about and used on you. Me. The owner. The “good guy.” Read more on The Cockeyed Logic of Gun Buybacks…
Filed under Government by on Jan 3rd, 2013. Comment. 
Like most folks who have not only hung around in academics but venerated scholarship, I am a little circumspect about applied scientists. I wonder if they do not get bored, repeating the same procedures. I will admit the closest I have gotten to forensic science is television shows about crime scene investigations. And I mean the rare times that I watch.
There’s an evolving story out there about an analyst in a state drug lab in Massachusetts who knowingly mishandled evidence in tens of thousands of cases. And this thing is only going to get deeper. I remember in the fall, when the story hit. It made no sense to me and I cannot imagine it would to anyone else. A young woman falsifies evidence that would put people in jail and let people out of jail and nobody knows why or how. All she says on the record is that she “messed up.”
This case intrigues me mainly because I know that falsifications of results, at least in research science, are at an all time high. This has been correlated with the horrible pressures in research careers with obtaining funding, maybe even with some sense of competition for success. In reviewing that data, I did not find a single female perpetrator. Read more on Why Would a Forensic Scientist Run Amok?…
Filed under News, Science by on Jan 2nd, 2013. Comment.
Turns out, while most veterans appreciate a stranger saying “thank you” for their service, it can also be a bit uncomfortable. I wonder how these same guys feel about the “Have you thanked a veteran today?” bumper stickers.
I’ve been thanking veterans for a long time. Sometimes, not as consistently as I’d like to because this doctor gig really means that I have to remember a large number of things. Since I began working in the medical marijuana field, where the veterans I meet are paying for a
Filed under military by on Dec 28th, 2012. Comment.
I was poking around, looking for what is brewing in psychopharmacology; a field I am no longer particularly proud I spent a lot of time studying and working in. Strange, or maybe not so strange, that I’ve met both of the principals allegedly involved in this pharmacological ghostwriting scandal.
I saw Dr. Schatzberg when he led various sessions at a large professional meeting on the coast. My main memory of him is that he looked tired, maybe even a bit depressed. I was told I had to write a lot of articles and do a lot of research projects, so maybe someday when I grew up I could do this kind of work. I was told, often and a lot, that I had plenty enough neurons, so it would only take work, and a lot of it. Dr. Nemeroff actually came to Kansas between visits to the coasts. He was friends with my preceptor in psychopharmacology. He came to speak at our grand rounds, where we were awe struck by the large amount of patients seen, as well as the large amount of numbers and lovely statistics.
Filed under big pharma by on Dec 27th, 2012. Comment.
Do some people become doctors just to earn a lot of money? Yes.
Do some of them find out that it’s not as lucrative as portrayed in the media (based upon stereotypes at least 40 years out of date)? Hell Yes!
Psychiatrists are not normally schizophrenic — however there are two types. One is the media stereotype “Talk Therapy” doctor. These are nearly extinct. They exist mainly in Woody Allen movies and old TV series. In fact, most of those are psychologists — not psychiatrists (but who knows the difference and who cares?).
The other type is what you chiefly find today — Pill Pushers. Insurance and
Filed under Psychiatrists by on Dec 26th, 2012. Comment.
Well, it turns out there aren’t really gators in Gatorade. The drink was named as such because a University of Florida coach – team name Gators – worked with a researcher to find a way to replenish fluids in his heat exhausted, wilting athletes. And Gatorade was born. Read more on What’s In Gatorade? Gators?…
Filed under News, Research, Sports, Stimulants by on Dec 24th, 2012. Comment.
Perusing the internet, I am overwhelmed with people doing “weird” things. But how do we define what is weird, when it is weird, and why it is weird?
I remember seeing the movie Fiddler on the Roof when I was quite young. I shuddered when I heard the song “Tradition,” because it was evident, even then, that descriptions of the way people should or should not be caused a whole lot of pain. The particular tradition that drove poor Tevye to hell and back was getting three daughters married off and being Jewish, which required dowries and Jewish grooms.
My parents attempted to receive my husband — who at that time called himself “the goy next door” and was willing to wear a yamelke and articulate a few words of yiddish he had learned from Mad Magazine. But you could tell that this was a problem for them. An eventuality I found just excellent in my life and which I credit with an uncommon level of happiness. I can say now that my marriage is happier than theirs ever was, at least from all that I saw. Part of this comes from my willingness to ignore a tradition they took as dogma. Read more on The Rights of Individuals to Punish Each Other…
Filed under Family by on Dec 15th, 2012. Comment.
Doctors at a hospital chain in Los Angeles have complained about pressure to make unnecessary hospital admissions. It takes a lot to make doctors complain. These sorts of actions are rare enough that my gut reaction is to believe that where there is smoke, there is probably fire.
A long time ago, a preceptor, or teaching doctor, in psychopharmacology told me to read business newspapers like the Wall Street Journal if I really wanted to know what was going on in drug development. I never seemed to have the time, but he certainly did. He had a nice family and a fairly large home. A little more recently, my husband told me if I was ever approached by Mike Wallace, then the star reporter of “60 Minutes” on CBS, with a microphone and a camera, I should probably run like hell.
I am delighted this group of doctors complained. The health care company has denied the allegations. They say the data, collected by a third party, does not support the allegations. They don’t provide a link to the data, and I can’t locate it anywhere, so I guess I’ll just have to take their word for it. Cute, huh? One thing I have learned about all allegedly scientific data, whether it is a result of pouring things in test-tubes or a lot of people counting numbers, is not to judge the results until I know who paid for them. This hospital apparently paid someone to check if their admissions were appropriate. Can anybody possibly trust this data, especially knowing it is unavailable and its collection was paid for — if not supervised — by the hospital in question? Read more on Did Anyone Actually Believe That Medical Care Companies Were Honest or Ethical?…
Filed under Healthcare reform by on Dec 14th, 2012. Comment.
I’ve got to admit, I must have already been living in the world of alternative medicine by the time the FDA approved Xyrem. As far as I can figure, it’s exactly the same as the street drug GHB. Us pharmacology types call this gamma hydroxybutyric acid. In a stable salt form that people can take as a prescription drug, it can also be called sodium oxybate. Among other sets of cognoscenti with whom I would usually not hang out — read “on the street” — it is known as various other things that those initials can stand for such as “Georgia Home Boy” or “Grievous Bodily Harm,” a lovely term from old British law. There have been a couple of high profile American cases where Xyrem was used as a date-rape drug. The FDA has warned against taking dietary supplements that contain it. It’s the very same chemical as GHB. It is also an FDA approved prescription drug. Read more on Topic: Xyrem and Doctors…
Filed under medicine, politics, prescription drugs by on Dec 8th, 2012. Comment.
Newtown, CT and the American Tradition of School Shootings
Christmas may have provided a break in the mourning for some in Newtown, CT. That’s good. Too much mourning is not a good thing.
My heart goes out to those of any other minority religions, for I do not know who or how they are, or if their international communities have reached out to them in any way. America is neither Christian nor homogeneous. Failure to live up to the “freedom of worship” part of the Franklin D. Roosevelt and Normal Rockwell Four Freedoms is just another way we have failed, as a nation, to live up to expectations.
My heart goes out to anyone who has not felt support from the religious
Read more on Newtown, CT and the American Tradition of School Shootings…
Tags: adolescent males, commentary, editorial, Newtown CT, Parents, psychology, Religion, research, school shooting, survivor guilt, traditions, tragedy.
Filed under Violence by admin on Dec 29th, 2012. Comment.