To physicians organizations: when your spokesperson speaks, see that they don't sound like a dickQuoth the spokesdroid for the NY chapter of ACOG, the American College of OB/GYN: "What obstetrician who has never seen the patient, doesn’t know the midwife, and happens to be at home at their son’s baseball game is going to say, ‘Sure, I’ll come in ( Read more... )

So I decided I'd take a class on use of opioids today, sponsored by BU. Some notes ( Read more... )

I worked a 12 hour shift yesterday. I hate them, but had a couple of patient encounters which were really pleasant or interesting, and reminded me why I went in to this business in the first place.

( Apparently it's a long story )

Here's an interesting one, and I am surprised I didn't learn about it until now. The APA (American Psychiatric Association) is revising the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the 'bible' of psychiatric diagnoses. Basically, if your special problem isn't in here, it doesn't psychologically exist (not completely true, but it establishes ( Read more... )

Today's Questionable Content is, IMNSHO, directed to quite a few people I know. Just sayin'.

(PS: For the Horde!)

So comes now the esteemed Senator from Massachusetts, Scott Brown, who is co-sponsoring the above named act. In short, it states that if a naturalized citizen is found to have aided a foreign terrorist organization, s/he may be stripped of their citizenship. (This in response to the recent arrest of a naturalized citizen for the attempted Times ( Read more... )

Now and again, the Supreme Court gets it right, both in substance and in the details.

So here (PDF) is the court's opinion on the recently passed law banning "crush" films (basically, films depicting animal cruelty). The issue here is the statute at hand, not the issue of whether the depictions are a good thing or not; the statute was overbroad ( Read more... )

Yesterday the President "directed the Department of Health and Human Services to prohibit discrimination in hospital visitation" on the basis of pretty much anything, but specifically including sexual orientation. Basically, he required HHS to craft regulations which would require hospitals which receive Medicare or Medicaid money (meaning pretty ( Read more... )

I've been thinking about my social life recently. Because I don't have much of one. Oh, I have a few friends, and more than a few acquaintances, but not really a social life to speak of. And I've been thinking what to do about it ( Read more... )

"To border on becoming unacceptable by established risk conventions -- that is, to reach an annual fatality risk of 1 in 100,000 -- the number of fatalities from terrorist attacks in the United States and Canada would have to increase 35-fold; in Great Britain (excluding Northern Ireland), more than 50-fold; and in Australia, more than 70-fold. For ( Read more... )