Dr. Alycia A Chambers is one of my new heroes. An investigation in 1998 led her to suggest that Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky met the criteria for pedophile, in her own assessment of the person now identified as “victim #6.”
What is at stake here is not the usual legal case of “my expert vs. your expert,” for only the most jaded of lawyers would suggest that this case be deferred to the adversarial system, letting the truth fall where it may.
Sexual abuses of childhood trust generally lead to post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which can affect the conduct of an entire life if untreated. They are all too often untreated.
Dr. Chambers’ report was buried for a long time. Part of this could have been because she was female. It is not powerful anymore to talk about sex discrimination and harder to prove it, but I have no trouble believing the opinion of a professional female was buried in the files. Read more on Penn State Coach Scandal Update…
Filed under abuse, Sexual Misconduct, Sports by on Jul 25th, 2012. Comment. 
Seems to me that doctors are starting to think like insurance companies.
And it seems to me they are making decisions for the wrong reasons.
No. This is the wrong way to think. Read more on Unnecessary Medical Tests…
Filed under Doctors, medical errors, medicine by on Jul 12th, 2012. Comment.
To tell people who are overweight that they need to move around more and count calories is kind of like telling Yogi Bear to leave tourists alone and avoid eating the contents of picnic baskets. It ain’t gonna happen.
I have long ago surrendered to the fact that logic, reason, science and – yes, even the truth – have overcome the need to manipulate the population with misinformation in order to control them and to wring every bit of money out of them.
I give professional nutritionists the benefit of a doubt — even though two of them wrote this book. After all, every dietitian I have ever known was “recovering” from at least one eating disorder. And usually on the “lower serotonin” side of life, probably a little obsessive, maybe a little depressed.
Mostly, these are people who believe everything they are told without questioning, or exist on “wishful thinking.” Or they have a political or professional agenda. Read more on How Many Calories in B.S.?…
Filed under eating disorders, medicine, weight by on Jul 12th, 2012. 1 Comment.
Sure, the malpractice system is broken. And there are lots of suboptimal doctors out there.
I have told some what the correct diagnosis is and they have ignored me. Some are too busy to take phone calls from me. Institutions have refused to order tests that I’ve requested.
On the other hand, I have been lectured about the necessity for “cover your ass” medicine. I could not practice it if I wanted to. Nobody would pay for it. In my specialty, I am always told to look for ways to cut costs while some patients cry to me they cannot afford their medicine. We do our best. Read more on Capping Malpractice Damage Awards…
Filed under Diagnosis, medicine by on Jul 2nd, 2012. Comment.
You can deep fry just about anything and it will taste good. Ask just about anyone who lives in the south. Twinkies, cheesecake, pickles, or whole turkeys. Maybe even an old tennis shoe. Nothing is exempt!
This woman has grown a Southern comfort food empire by cooking deep fried cheesecake and other things I am unlikely to eat. She did not go public with her Type II Diabetes until three years after she learned of it. Now someone from some group for science in the public interest says she should have come forward earlier.
Her empire can’t be doing that well, for I bought a little bottle of her mint jelly at some deep discount store about a week ago. I liked it, but it wasn’t any better than anyone else’s mint jelly. Admittedly, I’ve never watched her on television. I don’t watch cooking shows because I don’t care about food the same way I used to. I remember when all I could think of after one meal was what I would get for the next. And I was never even the primary food preparer at home. My honored husband has always taken that in hand for me. Read more on The Cooking Guru’s Health Problems…
Filed under Celebrities, News, Nutrition, weight by on Jun 27th, 2012. Comment.
Mattel really got it right with this one. The “Bald and Beautiful” Barbie“ for young girls with cancer is a truly beautiful thing.
I would certainly not consider myself an authority on the relationship girls have to dolls. I was never terribly excited about them.
I hated fashion dolls as they were thin. My mother had explained to me early on that none of the women in our family were thin — so I would never be. She tried to find me a chubbier doll, but I was not fond of clothes then. Maybe I could have related to a doll that looked fat enough to need to shop at Lane Bryant for clothes that fit. There was no such doll then. Read more on A Company With Heart — The Bald Barbie Story…
Filed under Self-esteem by on Jun 22nd, 2012. Comment.
There’s a joke about a woman whose blood pressure was 180/90. She didn’t think she had reason to be concerned. After all, she argued, 180/90 is the mathematical equivalent of 2/1 and that doesn’t seem so high, does it?
I once treated a young man of color, obese and sad looking, whose numbers were close to this – 170/100. And I was not laughing.
This young man was schizophrenic for sure, but pretty harmless. Life had beaten him down enough that his jail experiences — assault, as directed by disembodied “voices” — had him so frightened that he would never do anything the voices said. Not now, not ever, and I believed him.
As a psychiatric physician, I always managed to get “vital signs” on all patients. That should not have been a battle, but it was. I did not understand nor relate to the medical assistants who took them. Why? 18 months training after high school and they had not been nice to me — not at all — criticizing my lunch and the fact they did not think I worked hard enough.
I was concerned when I saw a blood pressure of 170/100. Patient said he had been on some kind of medicine. The best I could get with one of my “naming medicines and seeing what it sounded like” was hydrochlorothiazide — maybe. And of course the relevant parts of the chart were missing, as was the case more than actually finding anything.
He said he had stopped his medications a couple of days before because they gave
Filed under Uncategorized by on Jun 20th, 2012. Comment.
The New Orleans Saints were busted for giving financial rewards to players who inflicted game-ending injuries on the other team. Perhaps you can understand why I think competitive sports should be banned.
When I was very young, my father and mother took my brother and me to a Harvard football game. My father — the original dyed-in-the-wool Harvard man — also pointed out how it was the only major stadium that was a “U” shape. Being open on one end somehow made it special. He told me about the values of sportsmanship and fair play, and how it was good for young men to play football. They were “good” young men, and maybe, since many prep school girls like me dated Harvard men…well, someday.
My father was surprisingly naive about his love of Harvard and cheering. He is the only person I have ever known personally who believed that Tom Lehrer’s parody fight song, “Fight Fiercely Harvard,” was a real Harvard song. Read more on Encouraging Brutality In Sports…
Filed under Brain Damage, News, Sports by on Jun 19th, 2012. Comment.
I have no use for “science vs. religion” debates. They are artificially created to get people angry at each other, when there is absolutely no reason.
Whatever divine entity you believe in — whatever “universal intelligence” — is not a stupid being. Any Deity would simply reveal to people what they can understand.
Such a Deity has given humans a marvelous mind that can question and search for the truth. Much has been learned — and many miracles are possible — because of the hard work of people who advance science and technology. Read more on Want To Waste Time? Argue Science VS Religion…
Filed under News, Religion, Science by on Jun 15th, 2012. Comment.
All right — I am married to a man I love and I dearly love my profession. So how could a “boy she has it all” woman like me possibly get depressed?
Mine didn’t look exactly like the criteria laid out in the DSM-IV. I mean, I am not going to sit around for two weeks feeling this way just so I can meet criteria. But other than the two-week bit — I was depressed. I did not want to do much of anything except cry. I could not believe the negative thoughts creeping into my consciousness and I was having a hell of a time pushing them out. I felt sleepy, listless, the whole nine yards.
I did not prescribe myself an antidepressant. I do not think that anybody really believes at this point that a congenital lack of antidepressant has made anybody depressed — ever. Read more on Things to Consider Before Reaching for Antidepressants…
Filed under depression by on Jun 14th, 2012. Comment.