my life in the last two weeks, in a picture
Category: Academics
Classes and coursework.
Monday Bioethics Roundup
I’m not moving nearly as fast as I wanted to this morning, so instead of actually doing a few things I should be, I’m going to make random comments on bioethics-y things I’ve read this morning. Oh, lucky you.
First up is new AJOB corresponding editor Ricki Lewis’s post on nutrigenetics, science and semantics. It’s a good article and an interesting read, talking about companies that purport to offer customized lifestyle and dietary suggestions based on population based gene/health biomarkers. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) had some concerns about this practice, so they set up a sting involving mislabeled DNA, simply to see what results were returned to them. This alone is terrifically interesting, and you should read Ricki’s article rather than my summary for the full take on it (there is little point in my reproducing an already well-written essay!).
What I find interesting, though, is that the concept of nutrigenetics hasn’t been talked about more often, or raised more ire. It could simply be that I’m not hanging around the right people, but when BiDil first came on the market, there was a big kerfuffle over the very concept of treating people based on what basically amounts to racial profiling. The folks I knew who were strongly for BiDil used a “genetics makes us different and we should acknowledge that” argument, while those against railed against phony conceptions of race, stereotyping, and so forth. I fell in the middle, noting that there are certain diseases that affect certain groups at a much higher incidence than others, and thus it would be foolish of us to pretend that there wouldn’t be medications affecting certain groups differently, as well. But I also agreed that one of the most problematic things about BiDil was determining just who would receive the treatment.
In that, this bit with nutrigenetics reminds me of BiDil, because both rely on self-identification as a primary mode of their functionality. Ricki’s essay and the GAO results suggest that nutrigenetic companies are relying much more on the self-reported lifestyle and even age and gender description provided by clients than any genetic testing (for example, shouldn’t they have been easily able to spot the gender discrepency?), and to quote the always-quotable House, “patients lie.”
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Continuing the trend of “I really was on the cutting edge,” virtual psychiatry and telemedicine continue to grow. Dr. Crounse had a good idea with Dr. Goodwell, it was just a little too ahead of itself in the grand scheme of things.
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Finally, and stumbled across on my own, I came across the baby home gender early detection kit, which claims to tell you the gender of your lima bean at 5 weeks gestation. I have no idea how accurate these tests are, because I’m too lazy to look right now (or maybe more accurately, I should be out of the house inside 20 minutes, and am still lounging in my flannel PJs with the cats), but I have to wonder at some of the implications for family planning that these tests offer. It is not uncommon for families to want to gender balance their children, and right now that’s done via expense and IVF. Could these early gender tests become the poor-man’s way to gender balancing children, allowing women to opt to abort pregnancies that are wrongly gendered for the parents desire?
Bad Jokes
The worst philosophy joke, as told to me earlier this evening by Professor Jerry Levinson:
A young man is going out on his first date, and is very nervous. He asks his father what should he do, if conversation fails? The boy’s father tells him this is easy, just remember family, food and philosophy. “The three ‘fs’.”
So the young man and his date are driving back from the movies, and conversation has indeed failed. Desperate, he remembers his fathers advice and asks, “So, do you have any brothers or sisters?”
“I’m an only child.” She replies shortly.
“Oh.” He thinks, and remembers the next ‘f’ is food. “Uh, do you like broccoli?”
“No, I hate it.”
“Oh.” He thinks a little longer, remembers the third categorty, and asks, “So, if you had a brother, would he like broccoli?”
…yes, I laughed. Hard. We all did.
And then Pete followed it up with the worst utilitarian joke he’d ever heard, which I’m also going to force on your eyes:
A small bunch of utilitarians had a food group, where they would gather together and cook for one another, sharing food and wine, appreciating the good. At one meeting, one of the members told them, excitedly, that he had just heard of a recipe that made the most perfect, succulent pork ever! The problem was, you had to put the live pig in a metal box, then heat it slowly over a period of 24 hours. The pig would die after 12-13 hours of intense pain. But! It apparently made the best pork you would ever, ever taste! The group was eager to try this, but one member asked whether or not they could, in good conscience, do this – was the net gain of good enough to warrant the extreme suffering of the pig?
Everyone sighed and frowned and thought about it, agreeing that it was an awful lot of suffering to cause… then one member snapped his fingers and said “I have it!” Everyone looked eagerly to him for the solution: “All we have to do is get more members!”
…I’ll spare you the rest of the jokes that were flying around the table. I, however, had an awesome time: an interesting discussion on aesthetics and no one true beauty, lasting several hours, accompanied by dinner at a very nice French restaurant, followed by drinks and live music at a very funky jazz bar. (And how small is this town? Small enough that we ran into another grad student at that jazz bar, out on a date.) All in all, a lovely way to spend the day – laughter, geekiness, and intelligent discourse. For all my moments of homesickness lately, having the occasional day like this really nicely highlights why I am here.
Acting Metatron?
I think I’m a writer and sort of a performer, and part of the deal is wanting to connect with an audience. Wanting to have your work read or enjoyed. And there is a real pleasure in knowing that you’ve made that connection with people and that they seem to like it.
I like that quote. It rings true for me, even if The Daily Show Resident Expert John Hodgman was talking about the role of fame, and what it brings – not something I have experience with. I do have experience with being a writer, and sort of a performer, and I think it’s something that’s come out most, these last few years, in front of the classroom. Put me in front of a group of people, give me a topic, and… I will make a willing fool of myself, in the name of entertaining education. Some of the things I’ve said and done in a classroom setting, I look in amazement on the memory, and often with embarassment. How in the world did I think saying/doing [fill in blank] was a good idea?
Example? How about the last class I TAed, where I decided to use the internet to my advantage and bring up MySpace while talking about communication, privacy and the internet? Completely forgetting, of course, that the MySpace picture I had up was in much more revealing clothing than I generally wore while teaching, taken at a night out at the clubs. And of course, the entire photo album was up and visible on the first page. Now, it’s not that I had a problem with my students seeing me in anything other than what passed for business clothing in Seattle; after all, many of them could see the MySpace information already. It was the surprise of forgetting there was a nearly half undressed me on awaiting us, the surprise of the class, and my general “oh, man, I’m never going to live that down…”
Of course (and thankfully), at the time, my instant response was “see! what a perfect example of what we’re talking about!”
I’m not even going to go into some of the stuff that happened when I was teaching sex ed,…
But, in a roundabout way, I come back to the initial quote, of writing and being a bit of a performer, and it’s an impulse I understand. Right now I miss the performance bit – I miss the teaching, but I also just miss stepping into the skin of the reactive performer, the person who just opened her mouth and let God speak through me.
that got thru
I am not the best with the people skills. Working on it, as best I can. But I can miss cues, and pull faux paus for it. This time, at least, the message got through loud and clear. Which is regrettable, but there it is.
Of course, Michael wants to play devil’s advocate and make me think about other options, which is fair – especially given the absolutely shitty few days I’ve had. And there are plenty of demony points to raise. But, it’s something I’ve been hesitent on for a bit now, just because the cues and signals have strongly shouted one thing, conflicting with what I’ve been told.
Oh, fuck it. I don’t know what to believe anymore. Maybe this was all just a horrible mistake.