Island Med Student

Check out my post on Medscape about saying no to drugs.

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I have admittedly not been keeping up with the news until recently. I barely knew who was even running in the upcoming presidential election. So, I’ve been trying to catch up in the past few days.

There’s one thing I know for sure: I hate Huckabee. I have to admit up front that I’ve barely skimmed the surface of his position on issues. It only took listening to these two answers about evolution and medical marijuana, however, for me to have a pretty good hunch that I don’t like this guy. Also, am I the only one who thinks he looks like Richard Nixon?

Here’s his first response on evolution:

Okay, I’ll admit that he did a great job answering the question. However, he represents what pisses me off about many people who don’t believe in evolution–he obviously does not even understand what it is. He said that we’re not “descended from primates.” Well, that’s absolutely correct. But no one is claiming that we descended from primates. We are, in fact, primates. Also, some anti-evolutionists will say “humans didn’t descend from monkeys.” Well, that’s correct as well. We did, however, share a common ancestor. I could rant on this for a while, but I shall not.

My second favorite Huckabee response of the day is this answer he gave to a woman who wanted to know if he was for legalizing marijuana.

There are a million reasons why this video upsets me, but I’ll stick to the main one. Bascially, Huckabee suggested that narcotics could be a viable alternative to marijuana for relieving chronic pain. I could write a book on why this is a terrible argument, and he never actually said “legal” narcotics, but let’s assume that’s what he meant. Okay, so he’s saying that morphine, for example, is an alternative to marijuana. Well, that’s great because morphine is legal, and marijuana is not. That works out so well! And everyone knows that legal drugs like alcohol and cigarettes are way better for you and less addictive than the scary illegal ones like marijuana. And everyone knows that morphine is way less addictive than marijuana. And that people rob banks all the time to get more marijuana. And that…..okay, I’ll stop now.

On another note, I’m sick as hell. I don’t know if it was the travelling, or change of climate, or stress of the season, but I have a pretty bad cold. I have gotten up only to go to the bathroom for the past 3 days. I hope I start feeling better soon. Googling Huckabee is certainly not making me want to stay for very long in this country.

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I just read an article about a company making treadmill desktops. All I can say is IT’S ABOUT TIME!! Probably the WORST thing about my last job was that I had to sit at a desk the entire day. It was absolute torture! Ask anyone who knew me. I was constantly complaining about having restless legs (no, not the syndrome), and I had to go on frequent walks just to maintain my sanity. It’s NOT NATURAL! I’d go as far to say that the two largest influences causing obesity and sedentary lifestyles in the US are television and desk jobs. (Of course the Internet is up there as well.) I had talked about inventing little stand alone bicycle pedals that you cut put under your desk, but of course I never did. I’m so glad someone finally invented something that might work. I expect that they won’t sell all that well, but I’d like to think they will. If I were still at a desk job, you can bet I’d get one of them suckers. Obviously I don’t care how stupid they look, but other people might. But what looks more stupid? Walking on a treadmill and working at the same time? Or sitting on your big ass everyday until it ultimately kills you? (Pardon my hostility, but I really do loathe desk jobs.)

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One of the first things I noticed after stepping off a plane onto US soil is the undeniable obesity problem here in the States. Please check out the article I wrote for Medscape which addresses the issue of fat doctors as healers.

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NY Times just posted an article, about this year in health fads. Here is the summary:

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Merry Christmas everyone! I must admit that I am not terribly in the Christmas spirit today. In fact, the only proof that I have that it’s Christmas is the date on my wall calendar. It doesn’t feel like Christmas here. I don’t see any signs of Christmas. I don’t smell any Christmas food. If I was a synesthete, I might say that seeing a Christmas tree makes me smell eggnog, or that when I eat fruitcake, I hear the song Jingle Bells. An article that just appeared in Seed Magazine discussed this very phenomenon. It turns out that around one to four percent of people suffer from a form of synesthesia, which is a neurological mixing of various sensory inputs in their brain. The picture above was drawn by Marcia Smilack, an artist and synesthete who uses her synesthesia to create many forms of art.
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Please check out my latest post on Medscape about increasing diversity in medicine. This is actually just the beginning of an article that I plan on writing. I have many more rants brewing on this topic.

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I just read an article in the New York Times magazine concerning organ donation. Thousands of people are dying in the U.S. every year waiting for an organ. The problem with obtaining viable transplant organs is that it’s a voluntary donor based system. It’s illegal in the U.S. to be paid for an organ.

The authors of the article, Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt propose that we use economic principles to deconstruct this problem. They used life insurance as a good example. If you take out a life insurance policy on someone, and sadly they die at a young age, you profit from this tragedy. Organ donation could potentially work the same way.

I think the authors make an excellent point about the value of changing the organ donation system from a voluntary model to a free market model. If a monetary incentive were offered to donors, it would increase the supply of organs for transplant.

There are obvious objections to this model for organ donations. One is that poor people could be tempted to donate their organs without fully understanding the risks. While this is certainly true, is it fair that poor people donate their organs everyday, yet don’t receive a dime of compensation for them?

Another objection is that it’s simply “wrong” to pay someone for an organ. However, we have been doing just this for decades. Egg, sperm and blood donors are compensated for their donations.
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