Life as an Extreme Sport

Author: Kelly

HIV and Viagra

Bioethics

Normally I love the “Things I Learned from my Patients” thread on the Student Doctor Networks forums. Funny, full of the kind of morbid medical humour that’s rampant with ED docs, EMTs, firemen, etc, and just plain amusing stories.

However, this particular post got my ire up for the following comment:

In a urology clinic, had a patient come in for ED (see, that’s why it fits here!) and asking for Viagra. Denied any medical history, but when I got to meds, tells me he’s on Truvada and the such. Also, am I a jerk for not wanting to give someone with HIV ED meds? Wouldn’t this be like telling him to make sure he shares his dirty needles as well?

Well no, no, as a matter of fact that’s not. What, people who’re HIV+ should never ever have sex again? HIV has gone from being a fast moving death sentence, And the Band Played On plague, to a managed infectious disease. Yes, it’s still infectious, yes, it can still kill – and it can also be managed, like many other chronic infectious diseases, and it’s not our jobs to decide who’s allowed to continue living their life and who has to wear a scarlet HIV across their chests, forever denied intimacy, love, or just the physical gratification of sex.

Yes, one would hope the doctor would educate the patient about HIV being a preexisting condition and part of the medical history. One would hope the doctor would talk safe sex and how to reduce the risk of transmission, and the need to be open and honest about your status with your partner. But it’s not the doctor’s job to decide that the patient can or cannot have sex – just like a doctor shouldn’t decide that about anyone’s sex life, for any reason.

The Women [movie review]

Duct Tape and Prayers, life and living

For the last half a dozen years or so, women outnumbered men in my family home. Me, my sister, my mother, and my poor lonesome father. While there was the ex-husband for a while, and my brother when he was around or living there, it wasn’t at all uncommon for the three gals to override Dad on some movie choice, and he’d end up groaning through some Disneyesque chick flick. Granted, he had me, and when Lifetime or Oxygen got to be too much for even me, we’d disappear and watch football or science fiction and leave the kleenex and girly stuff to Mom and Trace.

Before Mom died, she took the two of us girls to see Menopause, the Musical. I think she knew, even then, even when she was on the first round of chemo, that she wasn’t going to make it. She said she wasn’t going to be there for us when we went through this. She had needed a hysterectomy a few years earlier, so she knew… and this was the best way she could really share with us. So we went to the musical, and we laughed and laughed, Mom sitting between us, holding our hands. Sharing knowing looks with my sister.

It was wonderful. It was shaded with sadness. In some ways it was the epitome of all those Hallmark, Lifetime, Oxygen movies, rented taped or watched live.

Laurie and I went to see The Women tonight. It was a funny and touching movie, about friends and family, the bonds women form. Best friends, mothers, daughters, grandmothers. And through the entire film, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was a movie I would have seen with my sister and my mother.

Mom would have loved it.

the more things change…

Philosophy, wisdom and folly

There is the difference that in geometry everyone is of a mind that usually nothing is put down in writing without there being a sound demonstration for it; thus the inexperienced more frequently err on the side of assenting to what is false, wanting as they do to give the appearance of understanding it, than on the side of denying what is true. But it is the reverse in philosophy: since it is believed that there is no issue that cannot be defended from either side, few look for the truth, and many more prowl about for a reputation for profundity by arrogantly challenging whichever arguments are the best.
-Descartes, Letter of Dedication, Meditations on First Philosophy

…the more things stay the same.

misreading at Panera

...and everything else, Academics, life and living

I’m at Panera, trying to wake up enough to do a tutorial I need to finish ASAP, before gathering my reserve energy to run errands – mostly stock up on food before the trimester officially begins. So I’m blearily trying to make weekend plans, chat with friends via email, and contemplate getting a pastry or something, since I’m still hungry. And I glance over at the table tent to my left and see:

Caramel and Nuts go together
Like fresh bread and warm mercury

The WHATFUCK?!

Oh. And warm memory.

But it still looks like mercury.

WoBioBlog: Reproduction of 1998 Wakefield Study Finds NO MMR/Autism Link

Bioethics, WoBioBlog

It’s pretty commonly known that Andrew Wakefield’s 1998 Lancet paper on the link between autism and the MMR vaccine has been the source of considered controversy over vaccinations and autism, even after the majority of the paper authors removed their names and the journal retracted the paper. Wakefield’s unethical conduct, the leaps of logic, and the small sample size itself, all contributed to reasons the paper was ultimately discredited.

Unfortunately, that sort of discrediting might hold weight in academic spheres, but doesn’t necessarily take hold in the public sphere. It’s much more entertaining to write scare-tactic headlines touting fears of vaccines and the rise of autism than it is to say “woops”, let alone “woops, we maybe made something worse… sorry about that, please go vaccinate your kids before measles skyrockets to new epidemic proportions.”

Hopefully the news that a reproduction of the Wakefield study shows absolutely no link between autism and the MMR vaccine will gain foothold in the media at large, and go a long way towards convincing parents that vaccinating their children…

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