This post follows a lengthy conversation I had with my wife, a physician-scientist, about this very topic.
Many of you who attended the ScienceOnline2010 conference here last January probably met Carmen Drahl, the Princeton-trained chemist who now writes for Chemical & Engineering News and their appropriately-named drug discovery blog, The Haystack, as well as their Newscripts feature.
For the latter, Dr. Drahl pointed us toward a recent “Crosstalks” paper in Chemistry & Biology by Thomas U. Mayer and Andreas Marx of the University of Konstanz (and her interview with the authors) who mused as follows from their abstract:
Which five molecules would you take to a remote island? If you imagine yourself as a castaway on an island you might pick water, glucose, penicillin, and ethanol in combination with aspirin. However, as a scientist, you may ask yourself which molecules impressed you most by their chemical or biological property, their impact on science, or the ingenuity and/or serendipity behind their discovery. Here, we present our personal short list comprising FK506, colchicine, imatinib, Quimi-Hib, and cidofovir. Obviously, our selection is highly subjective and, therefore, we apologize up front to our colleagues for not mentioning their favorite compounds.
The authors pose two different questions: a) Which molecules, drug or not, would you take as the sole occupant of a desert island? and b) Which drugs most impress you with their chemistry, biology, or impact on science? Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Terra Sigillata*
The Speech Production and Articulation Knowledge Group at the University of Southern California (USC) works on very interesting projects. If you’ve ever wondered what an MRI of vocal performance might look like, this is it. From USC:
This video illustrates real-time MRI of vocal performance. It includes examples from a soprano and an emcee/beatboxer. This video was featured at the Sounds and Visions Session of the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM) Scientific Sessions, May 2006, Seattle.
When I was a much younger man I had a 1968 Chevy Impala. I loved its V-8 engine and spaciousness, but I paid a steep price for it. It consumed gas like a drunk on a binge. It was prone to breakdowns, usually in the left lane of a busy highway. Even as it consumed my limited financial resources, I couldn’t count on it to reliably get me to where I wanted to be. Yet I held onto it. One day, though, its transmission gave out, and I finally had to resign myself to buying a new, more reliable, more modern, and efficient vehicle. Yet to this day, I miss my clunker.
I am reminded of this when I think about the state of primary care today. Many of us are attached to a traditional primary care model that may no longer be economically viable — for physicians, for patients, and for purchasers.
We hold onto a model where primary care doctors are paid based on the volume of visits, not the quality and value of care rendered. We hold onto a model where patient records are maintained in paper charts in voluminous file folders, instead of digitalizing and connecting patient records. We hold onto a model that generates enormous overhead costs for struggling physician-owners but generates insufficient revenue. We hold onto a model that most young doctors won’t buy, as they pursue more financially viable specialties and practices. Read more »
On this blog alone, there are a variety of guest pieces critical of the effort, saying it does not increase patient satisfaction, nor does it save money. And that’s not good news for its advocates, who are pinning primary care’s last hopes on the model.
Medical homes hit the mainstream media recently, with Pauline Chen focusing one of her recent, weekly New York Times columns to the issue. She discussed the results of a demonstration project, showing some positive results. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at KevinMD.com*
These docs “take great pleasure in sharing their medical experiences, clinical knowledge and insights into waiting-room medicine with health-conscious technophiles to facilitate the learning process by providing diverse and hopefully entertaining reading material.” It’s always worth a read (and a chuckle), no doubt.
With the theme of “Killer Posts” (just a hint — hate to blow the surprise), this edition of Grand Rounds is sure to educate in more ways than one! Experience it HERE.
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I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…
When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…
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Better Health’s Grand Rounds this week is hosted by the ever-so-crafty 
