Archive for December, 2009
Posted on December 31, 2009 03:08:32 PM
Can’t resist another bit of straight plagiarism. In this week’s Times Higher Education, the inimitable Laurie Taylor wrote this.
Rock around the clock
Professor Georgina Kunzite, the Head of our Department of Crystal Healing, has reacted strongly to the recent High Court ruling that the University of Central Lancashire must hand over teaching materials from its defunct homeopathy course to a campaigning sceptic.
Speaking to our reporter, Keith Ponting (30), she said she had no intention of acceding to any similar request for materials from her own oversubscribed course in crystal therapy. Such a move, she argued, risked undermining the power of the crystals, which were notoriously wary of attempts to question their curative validity.
She had initially been disconcerted by the court’s decision. “But since then I’ve taken to sleeping with a large lump of pink rhodochrosite crystal under my pillow. This does mildly disturb my partner, but it has certainly helped to rebalance my chakra.”
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Well well, where could he have got that idea?
Posted on December 31, 2009 01:51:30 PM
Sometimes a picture’s worth 1000 words. Poor kid. My sister-in-law snapped this photo today. Not a fun way to enter a new year… I think we’re all feeling a little bit like this, with the economy “messed up” and record unemployment levels. Let’s hope that 2010 brings some relief!
Posted on December 31, 2009 12:00:38 PM
As 2009 comes to an end, it seems that everyone is creating year-in-review lists. I thought I’d jump on the list band wagon and offer my purely subjective top 5 threats to rational thought in healthcare and medicine.
Of course, it strikes me as rather ironic that we’re having this discussion – who knew that medicine could be divorced from science in the first place? I thought the two went hand-in-hand, like a nice antigen and its receptor… and yet, here we are, on the verge of tremendous technological breakthroughs (thanks to advances in our understanding of molecular genetics, immunology, and biochemistry, etc.), faced with a growing number of people who prefer to resort to placebo-based remedies (such as heavy-metal laced herbs or vigorously shaken water) and Christian Science Prayer.
And so, without further ado, here’s my list of the top 5 threats to science in medicine for 2009 and beyond: (more…)
Posted on December 31, 2009 09:00:00 AM
Whenever drugs are involved in a patient’s admission, the outcome is either craziness or comedy. Methamphetamines and cocaine seem to be the popular drugs of choice requiring admission. These people are usually angry and agitated. However, it seems like pot humor always adds a little touch of the unexpected to an otherwise boring admission.
Take for example the 27 year old truck driver who was brought in by his roommate for “acting weird’. What happens when you mix a little marijuana and a little alcohol? You get Happy’s pot humor post of the day. (more…)
*This blog post was originally published at The Happy Hospitalist Blog*
Posted on December 31, 2009 07:00:00 AM
I took this photo when my mom was in the hospital earlier this year. My hand looks like I wash dishes for a living. Her hand shows many of the spots that come with age and sun exposure: actinic keratosis, liver spots, etc.
There is a decent article that gives an overview of hand rejuvenation in the Sept/October issue of the Aesthetic Surgery Journal.
The epidermis thins as we age. Lentigines, actinic keratoses and seborrheic keratoses, general dyschromia, and textural roughness appear. Capillary fragility may make bruising common. Fat atrophy may make tendons and bony prominences more noticeable and the veins appear to bulge.
The article goes through the available treatments: chemical peels, vein sclerotherapy, fillers, laser therapy, intense pulsed light (IPL) therapy, fractional skin therapy, and Thermage.
It also reminds us that caution must be exercised as hand skin has relatively few adnexal structures and therefore has less capacity to replace the epidermis.
(more…)
*This blog post was originally published at Suture for a Living*