What's the price?
MCAT fee: $200.
Medical school application fee: $500.
Interview expenses: $2000.
Four years of medical school: $160,000.
Five years of research and a Ph.D. in biology: optional.
Becoming world-renowned neurologist on TV, being able to diagnose patient via video, getting nominated for Nobel Prize in Peace and Medicine by your congressman: PRICELESS.
The Nobel worthiness of Dr. Hammesfahr have been
discussed previously. Now here comes Dr. William P. Cheshire Jr., the world-renowed neurologist cited by Governor Jeb Bush to have diagnosed Terri Schiavo with minimally conscious state without performing any physical examination. The New York Times'
profile on Dr. Cheshire was pretty unflattering. While Dr. Hammesfahr did not have any publication in the Pubmed database, Dr. Cheshire has dozens. Unfortunately, most of them had to deal with tooth ache, but none on PVS. When his name was mentioned to someone in the field of bioethics, the answer was succint, "Who?"
The list of doctors that have publicly stated their views on Terri Schiavo's condition contrary to the rest of the medical community consists of: a neurologist "nominated" for Nobel Prize despite zero research publication, clinical or basic (Hammesfahr), a nuclear radiologist (Dr. William Maxfield), a doctor specialize in headache (Cheshire), and a heart surgeon that refuses to debunk the myth that HIV can be transmitted through sweat and tears (Dr. Bill Frist, Senate Majority leader).
Look, I know from first hand the educational endeavour that one undertakes to get a medical degree is a substantial one--I've been working for the last six years to add some of those extra letters after my name. But the field of medicine is vast, and in this hyperspeed age of research and technology, a doctor is often forced to become more and more specialized in order to stay on the top of his game. While it's no shame to admit one's limitation, it is a disservice to everyone in medicine to hand out unsubstantiated praise and accolade like "world-renowned," "an authority in bioethics," and "Nobel nominee" to individual doctors purely because their views fit your political and/or personal agendas. So please, Mr. Jeb Bush, a "world-renowned" relative, and "expert" in politics, keep your medical experts to yourself.
Can you do me a favor?
Nominate me for the Nobel Prize? It really doesn't matter if it's in Physics or Medicine or Peace or Literature, just write a letter. It would look so nice on my CV.
Apparently that's what a doctor in Florida did with the help of a congressman.
Dr. William Hammesfahr first came to my attention because his name was mentioned in numerous online and news reports as the doctor that believes Terri Schiavo can be rehabilitated from her current PVS. These reports inevitably noted that Dr. Hammesfahr is a Nobel nominee. As it turns out, the congressman from Florida is not qualified to nominate someone for Nobel prize, but that didn't stop him to nominate the doctor for both peace and medicine.
Media Matters for America has detailed coverage of the interview of the doctor at Fox news, which in light of the background is pretty funny. Someone in the comment section had beaten me to the punch--like me, he had discovered Dr. Hammesfahr has ZERO published peer-reviewed article in the Pubmed database. So good luck on the nomination hope for the Medicine prize.
For comparison,
Dr. Ronald Cranford, a neurologist and clinical ethicist in Minnesota, who determined Mrs. Schiavo's PVS and advocated the termination of her feeding tube, has 58 articles on topics such as brain death and terminal sedation. Just compare their CV. Like they say, "We report, you decide."
Prediction.
No, not about the NCAA basketball tournament. This will be a rant about the Terri Schiavo case. There is nothing stranger than life, and this case is full of ironies that I feel like Michael from the "Godfather," "every time I think I'm out, they pull me back in."
1. Congress could pass a law on a person that had been in a vegetated state for more than a decade over a weekend, but can't decide on a balance budget that affects 300 million people.
2. George Bush's symbolic gesture of flying in to save the woman's life was widely praised. I guess he wasn't too enthralled in a captivating book like
"my pet goat".
3. Bush is trying to save her life so the government will continue to pay for her care through Medicaid. Bush wanted to
cut Medicaid in the most recent budget proposal.
4. Bush is trying to save Schiavo's life while he had signed the
Texas Futile Care Law that allow hospitals to terminate life support for patients, who are terminally ill,
even when opposed by family wishes.
5. The Florida judge, who allowed the removal of the feeding tube, is
a conservative Republican. The federal judge to hear the Schiavo case will be
Judge James Whittemore, a Clinton appointee.
My prediction, good luck Republicans, after Whittemore's rejection of the stay, you will have to move it up to the Supreme court. What will be after that?
Circular logic.
Surprise, surprise.
Teenagers, who pledge to keep their viriginity, are more likely to engage in oral and anal sex, and are just likely to contract STDs! Teaching abstinence-only to teens may only lower the chance of them using protections during their first sexual experiences. And the defense by the abstinence-only group?
Leslee Unruh, president of the National Abstinence Clearinghouse in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, called the study "bogus," disputing that those involved had pledged true "abstinence."
"Kids who pledge abstinence are taught that any word that has 'sex' in it is considered a sexual activity," Unruh said. "Therefore oral sex is sex, and they are staying away."So let me get this straight, teens that pledge no-sex would stay away from any kind of sex, therefore anyone that had sex did not really pledge. What kind of circular argument is that?!
Oh, a second question, if the kids avoid anything that has sex in it, do they run away screaming whenever they enter a concert hall and see half a dozen jazz musicians on stage? You know, a sextet.
Democrazy in Lebanon.
No it's a misspelling. At least not in Lebanon. Last few weeks, anti-Syria protesters have been DEMOstrating and pushing for the removal of Syrian troops from their country. Yesterday, pro-Syria protester were DEMOstrating, at the behest of Hezbollah, to support the pro-Syria government and Syria. And the 400,000 that turned out dwarfed the anti-Syria crowd. That's just CRAZY! One day everyone hails Bush as the angel of democracy in the Middle East after Syria pulls back its troops, but can
someone make some sense to what the pro-Syria demostration now means? Can it be that not everyone in a country can agree on what they want? Hmm, sounds familiar.
I don't know latin or greek, but perhaps it's not a coincidence that democracy is one letter away from demo-crazy. You, like I, could start doing it with all words that end in -cracy. Go ahead, have fun. Let's start with gynecocrazy...uh, scratch that, how about androcrazy?
UPDATE:
Lebanon actually has a democratically elected government, even women can vote and be elected! The only thing that seems undemocratic at the moment appear to be the overrepresentation of Christian (40% population, but constituitionally required 50% seats in parliment). I meant no disrespect for calling them democrazy. If anyone is to take that title, that would be us Americans.
Today's EU is not yesterday's EU.
I got into an argument with someone recently over the idea of flat tax. Long story short, it comes down to a couple of simple questions. One, whether flat tax hurts low income families. Two, whether it will increase overall tax revenue by removing the incentive to evade taxation by people with higher income. My initial attraction to flat tax was based mainly on my speed reading of
Bruce Bartlett's article. Now a little more digging on the net shows that any flat tax proposal has come with it a threshold (under which the person pays no tax) and deduction for individuals and spouses and dependents. This is clearly an attempt to protect the people trying to keep their heads above water. Whether that's enough, I don't know, but will keep it in mind.
However the nagging feeling that has been growing in my stomach has been the question at the other end of the spectrum. Does flat tax increase government revenue? The evidence at first glance suggest so. Bartlett pointed to half dozen or so EU members and Russia that have seen increasing tax revenue after the implementation of a flat tax. Sounds great, until I realized all the EU countries in question are in fact in eastern Europe, and like Russia, have immature economies. Flat tax is pro-growth, which is usually synonymous with pro-business, no one denies that. In fact, the developed countries such as GB, France and Germany, which has highly progressive tax rates, are furious at these countries. In the end, I think Bartlett is highly disingenuous to use countries like Georgia and Estonia as examples of benefits of flat tax. I believe the increase revenue has as much to do with increased foreign investment and economic growth as better compliance with tax collection. In fact in the conclusion of the
IMF work paper cited by Bartlett, p40, it clearly stated:
a key lesson must be that tax-cutting reforms of this kind should not be expected to pay for themselves by greater work effort and improved compliance. Our analysis suggests that the strength of PIT revenues in Russia over this period was largely driven by an increase in real wage rates unrelated to the reform. This may have been associated with the strong energy prices, wider structural reforms, or simply a return to more normal trend levels, and in any event a full understanding is likely to hinge on features of Russian labor markets.Look, I am for simplifying the tax code. I also have some moral ambivalence toward the idea of progressive tax on the successful. But considering that the most developed, wealthiest countries in the world had held on to the progressive tax, I am relectant to throw my hat behind a new system whose best supporting evidence comes from countries barely crawling out the shadow of their communist past.
