Best Lecture So Far... plus some random stuff

Today I had the best lecture to date in medical school. Rather, I had the best lecturer; the content (epidemiology) isn’t terribly interesting on its own—although it’s highly important. If you’re curious what it is, here is the official definition from my lecture notes: “The study of the distribution and determinants of health related states or events in specified populations and the application of this study to the control of health problems.”

Why is my instructor so awesome? In addition to more customary lecturing skills (talented oration, lucid enumeration, logical flow etc) and his use of television examples (from Seinfeld, Southpark, Maury Povich), he illustrates principles with examples from reality that highlight patterns of magical thinking that are rampant in society. In other words, I can tell that he champions critical thinking and skepticism—subjects near and dear to my heart.

For example, to emphasize the importance of validity in evaluating a treatment strategy--despite it having high sensitivity or reliability--he called attention to the use of so-called “facilitated communication” which purports to allow communication with an autistic individual (or anyone else with limited-to-no communicative faculties) through a “trained” facilitator. You can read more about it here. Though this “skill” can sometimes appear convincing, it fails utterly under even the slightest amount of scientific scrutiny. If you want to see the damage of which this kind of pseudoscience is capable, go here. By the way, while I’m on the topic of autism, vaccines do not cause autism, nor is there any evidence whatsoever to suggest that they do.

When I have my medical degree, I plan to devote much of my energy to fighting the insidious infestation of pseudoscience masquerading as medicine running rampant in this country. This includes facilitated communication, therapeutic touch, reflexology, homeopathy, faith healing, reiki etc. For a fairly comprehensive encyclopedic entry of these and other forms of quackery, visit this site.

Alright, I’m hopping down from my soapbox now. The Cell1 exam was 2 weeks ago and I survived! To celebrate, my housemates and I hosted another brunch—and it was heaven. I think there were about a dozen people altogether, and we made a ton of food. I experimented with the scrambled eggs by adding milk and pancake mix (I remembered seeing this on the menu of an IHOP) and it made them super-ultra fluffy and delicious! I recommend this for all of your future scrambled egg endeavors.

Concert band is making my life crazy and sucking all kinds of study time from me. Not only was our first big concert the night before the Cell1 exam, but my Thanksgiving break was truncated due to rehearsals I had to attend, causing me to leave late and return early. In addition, there are two extra rehearsals this week and three more (mini) concerts. Agh! I have crap to learn, people! On the bright side, the lecture material for Cell2 is much more palatable, and studying is much more tolerable. On an even brighter side (there are three sides, OK? Get over it), my director offered me a paying gig on December 13^th, woohoo! Money! I can use that!

My dad has informed me that we’re changing the dynamics of our Sprint family plan; I will soon be getting a smartphone for the first time in my life (and I’ll finally have the capacity for internet usage and unlimited texting!). I can’t wait for my new phone. My current one is only nominally functional. It only rings/vibrates when it feels like it, so I often have missed calls/alerts. I’m planning to get the HTC Hero with Google as my new phone.

Here are some random thoughts upon which I would expound had I been updating my blog more regularly:

1) Stacy is moving out. We need a new roommate. ASAP. Pain in the butt.

2) Something is wrong with our sink drain and/or disposal unit. Annoying.

3) Obama is doing many things to disappoint me.

4) Just when I think my disgust with Sarah Palin can’t possibly intensify further, she proves me wrong.

5) I drink waaaay too much coffee.

6) All of the med students are required to render a piece of art somehow illustrating professionalism or humanism. Yes, Required. No further comment.

7) I went to the Melting Pot for the first time last week. Wow. Me gusta.

8) I love Glee. Like, a lot. Also, I recently discovered that I love Lada Gaga. Who knew?

I’ll do my best to update more often. I forget 98% of the stuff that happens to me. Perhaps I have beta amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles of tau protein…