Archive for September, 2008
Vanity, thy name is “expert”
As my medical school years drew to a close, each of us faced the choice of residency that would determine how we spent our professional lives. A close friend and member of AOA, the medical honor society comparable to Phi Beta Kappa or Law Review, declared that he had chosen OB/GYN. He and I had shared [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )The truth will set you free… but first, it will piss you off.
David J. Balan, on Overcoming Bias, writes about the difficulty of responding honestly when people say, “Give it to me straight.” Generally, it’s such a bad idea that the Cajuns in my neighborhood have a story to illustrate:
Boudreaux was a widower whose most valued possession was his cat, Felix. Boudreaux won a trip to Europe, and he [...]
Medicine as a guild
Only recently, with the reflection time provided by the onset of disability retirement, and with the prodding of Robin Hanson’s posts on Overcoming Bias, I realized that the practice of medicine is not a science. It’s closer to a “guild”.
The art of medicine is a well-known cliche, apparently referring to the use of one’s “clinical [...]
The sooner the better?
When does a normal function become a medical disorder? When it’s premature ejaculation. There are a myriad of things one could discuss about this phenomenon, most of them controversial, and frequently gender-biased. Just the definition is confusing. Premature? For who?
The mammalian activity of relatively rapid ejaculation (within one to several thrusts) when mating had been [...]
Penile undermarketing
Alert blog-reader Moshe has asked the question: “If these penile implants you’ve talked about are so wonderful, how come I haven’t heard much about them?” You know, Moshe, I’ve been asking that same question since 1975, when I scrubbed in for my first inflatable penile prosthesis (IPP) operation. The result was so impressive that the female scrub nurse (unmarried) remarked, “Can you get me a list of men who have these things?” She wasn’t referring to size; the finished product was no bigger than the original. What she saw was control: comes up when you want it to (no matter how drunk the guy, nor how ugly the girl), stays up ’til everybody’s happy (or at least finished). The most urgently anxious patient I ever had was a widower in his 70’s who had just married a similar-aged widow. “Doc,” he begged, “I just got to get me one of those transplants (sic) right away: I just found out her late husband had one!” Ah yes, tough competition there.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 7 so far )Rise and shine!
MIT computer scientist Dr. Scott Aaronson, in a post at Overcoming Bias, asked: Why do we, as a society, provide food stamps for the hungry but not sex stamps for the celibate?
Exhibiting a version of Godwin’s Law, the reader comments eventually deteriorated into a discussion of rape. Two anonymous commenters, the first an (I would guess) [...]
You’re going to stick what into my what?!!
In this post, I promised to give it to you “straight” about some treatment options for ED, and the inside (a little more ED humor there) info that goes along. Yesterday, we talked about the pills your ol’ pappy wished he’d had when his “best friend, Mr. Happy” died before he did. Today, we’ll feature the [...]
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