(Untitled)

[candle]

O-chem and premeds article from Saturday's lunch discussion. (Abstract for people not there: A Harvard Med school instructor argues that pre-meds taking two semesters of conventional o-chem is not beneficial.)

Comments

[wyrdone]

I for one, would not want a doctor or clinician who did not understand fundamentals of their profession.

It would be like says "Here have an IT technician who does not know the difference between a peice of RAM or a HDD." Or even worse once who did not know the difference between a reisistor and a transistor.

Both professions, at the core, are troubleshooters. The doctor just has a more organic less understood topic of study. That's why they take 6-8 years of schooling.

[aineotter]

O-chem is primarily a weeding class, as I experienced it; and it was required to graduate with as a biology major, anyway. No, learning SN-2 reactions probably isn't important, but you need to know about functional groups to understand amino acid side chains, and how they affect protien structure and function. Sure these classes could be made more clinically relevent than they are, but they are being taught by the undergrad institution, for a variety of career paths. There were both bio and chem majors in my class; some of them were probably headed into polymer science, and would need all those hideous reactions. We only retain a fraction of what we learn, anyway.
What I'd like to see added, though, is statistics (in the place of, say calculus. I've never used calculus in medicine) and evolutionary theory. Diseases *evolve*, and they do it quicker than we can,

[vtbiochemgoddes]

Sweet... seems like an article I will most certainly have to read