Killing Dogs in Training of Doctors Is to End (NYT)

Fritz Goro/Time Life Pictures, via Getty Images
Operating on a dog in 1948 to perfect a technique to be used on human hearts.

New York Times
January 1, 2008

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR

By next month, all American medical schools will have abandoned a time-honored method of teaching cardiology: operating on dogs to examine their beating hearts, and disposing of them after the lesson.

Case Western Reserve School of Medicine was the last to use the method, but the dean, Dr. Pamela Davis, said it would no longer do so after this month.

On Nov. 19, New York Medical College in Valhalla joined New York’s 11 other medical schools and announced that it would close its dog laboratory.

Among the 126 American medical schools, 11 still sacrifice animals for teaching, according to the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, an advocacy group that tracks the practice. Other than Case, none of them use dogs.

Francis Belloni, a dean at New York Medical College, said his students now used echocardiograms to study heart function, and the subjects were live medical students rather than live dogs. Dr. Belloni said the use of animals was not done lightly and had value, but added that students would “become just as good doctors without it.”

Medical School Curricula with No Live Animal Laboratories

Please note that this list includes only schools that do not use live animal laboratories to train medical students and does not refer to basic research that may be conducted at medical schools and universities (Most, if not all of them still use canines, non-human primates in laboratory research- which involves inducing diseases & disorders on these animals). From PCRM.

fresh from the underwear drawer

fyi: the underwear drawer is someone else's blog.

Pain Management Clinic at GW

edit: I've read & re-read this post, wondering if I have been unduly harsh.... perhaps I was in my choice of words, but my sentiment remains the same.

Duncan's mystery arthralgia still remains a mystery. What also remains a mystery to me is why the three different rheumatologists he's seen since June suck so hard. It's not a good sign when one wonders if one's rheumatologist has ever taken a academic course beyond undergrad immunology or reads current literature on a regular basis. One would think that rheumatologists would also have a functional, working knowledge of pain management, but that too has been lacking.

On Sunday the pain was severe enough that, for the first time, he had to use a fentanyl patch. I am thankful that a very understanding family doctor let us have them, "on standby", just in case, en route to figuring out this mystery. Nevertheless, pain levels were only diminished (as opposed to disappeared) and he still took two days off work.

On Tuesday he had his first appointment at George Washington's Pain Management Center. While the visit got off on shaky ground due to miscommunication by the nurse, it ultimately ended positively. I (we) came away with a decent amount of faith & hope that Dr. Desai would be very competent in managing the unpredictable, often debilitating levels of pain that Duncan deals with. Thanks to Dr. Desai, we can now focus on trying to find the underlying cause.

I only hope that the people at Hopkin's Rheumatology department will be as seemingly good. Unfortunately, they have a tougher task at hand- figuring out the cause of this (auto)immune-related arthralgia. Immunology/Rheumatology is not as straightforward as the art & science of pain management.

Based on the brief interaction with Dr. Desai, anesthesia doesn't look like such a bad option if I ever make it in & through med school.

the crimson tide is optional...

... unless you have gyn/endocrine issues.

I normally wouldn't post anything this personal on a blog... but am doing so in response to various messages.

Google this topic (keep in mind there will be naysayers, like that silly person on NPR several weeks ago).

or check out NoPeriod.com and this video (it's a bit long & IMHO only gets interesting when she starts talking about the bears).

I've used Yasmin to dodge the inconvenience for years.

The same results can be accomplished with most monophasics BCP's like generic lo-ovral.

reconsidering medicine (for only a moment)

Since my last post I have pushed back my MCAT date to July 24th and am still not ready. Perhaps it's like pregnancy... sometimes you plan on going through it once and only once but end up going through it again. Don't extend that that analogy too far b/c like all analogies, it'll fall apart.

Since I am not ready and have chickenshitted out of the test multiple times now, I've decided to still sit for it. But those scores will never see the light of day. For those of you who don't know me that well, I am clinically & neurotically hung up about this rate limiting step of that path to medschool. I will get there. One day.

This week, I was belittled by one of the most respected rheumatologists in the washington dc area. In the last 48 hours I have had some time to process the encounter. It's 48 hours more than I should be spending brooding. The whole thing reminded me of what I used to tell myself when I worked in bioresearch: the assholes that I've encountered are there to prepare me for the assholes I will encounter in medicine..... it was a sudden reminder because I haven't really had to deal w/ many assholes (of consequence) for a long time since bailing from jobs I hate.

On the Amazon.com page that I hyperlinked asshole to, it said that readers who bought The No Asshole Rule also bought How Doctors Think.

Why did s/he belittle me? Why was I even there? - that's another post.

picture by Michelle, author of http://theunderweardraweraboutme.blogspot.com
altered somewhat, by me
I bought a t-shirt from her. You can too if you click on the picture.

short SLAP repair video

this is a concise narrated video of a SLAP repair

I have a torn WHAT?

The issue that has kinda taken up my time lately has been this



in my right shoulder... damned gym climbing!!

After a month of physical therapy doing exercises similar to the ones found on this Climbing Shoulder Health article, my shoulder is still clicking... and I don't trust it. I wish I had been doing these exercises all along- perhaps it would have prevented it.

This animated presentation entitled SLAP Tears in Climbers describes it pretty well.
This other animated presentation has video footage of the repair procedure.

This collection, Anybody heard of a "labral tear"? has some laymen's anecdotes & comments about labral tears from people who have dealt with it.



149 days til MCATs



edit July 10 2007:
-I had a SLAP repair done on Jan 29, 2007
-Went to PT three times a week for 3 months
-Started back climbing during SUSHIFEST in UT on April 21st belayed by none other than Mal Daly who, without all 10 fingers & missing a foot, climbs 5.awholelotharderthanmostfolks.
-It's pretty much as good as new.