Life as an Extreme Sport

I am full of awesome

Academics, Bioethics

I am full of awesome. Why?

Well, today, I lost my boss. We all lost my boss, really. It was very distressing.

You see, we had this small thing called a Nor’easter that covered us in several feet of snow. It disrupted traveling. Including the traveling said boss was doing. I spoke with him for less than 2 minutes at 2pm EST, and he’d said he’d call me back… and then nothing. Concerning.

I knew what airline he was flying, and looking at their scheduled flight times, he should have been on the ground hours ago. Very unlike him to vanish like that. I was, frankly, getting a touch worried. Was he sleeping under a seat in an airport somewhere, exhausted and forgotten? Had he wandered onto the tarmac by mistake, or worse – been captured by neocons in some debate, with no end in sight?

It was around then, chewing idly on my pen, that I realized there was another button to click on the flight schedule. The actual schedule. Accounting for time zone shifts, I quickly started eliminating flights – he couldn’t have been on them, he was on the ground, on the phone with me. I found the first flight he would have been able to get on, with the restriction of being free to talk to me at 2pm EST. It had landed about an hour before, which meant that he should have been free of the airplane, and their archaic and inane cell phone rules.

And this is why I am full of awesome. Because I actually, accurately reverse engineered, from less than a 2 minute phone call, the most likely flights for my boss to be on… and I was right.

Pharmacy Says Happy Valentine’s, Have Some Viagra

AJOB Editors Blog, Bioethics

Valentine’s Day. Hearts, candy, chocolates, roses; if your car isn’t buried under a snowdrift somewhere in the Northeast, maybe a nice dinner out or a movie. It can get costly. And in Britain, as of the 14th of February, men can add another USD100 to the total Valentine’s price: the cost of a pharmacist provided pack of Viagra.

That’s right, a British pharmacy chain has decided to sell small samples of Viagra over-the-counter. If you’re between 30 and 65, male, and are willing to sit through an hour long consultation with the pharmacist, take a blood pressure, glucose, and cholesterol test, you too can buy four pills of Viagra.

The theory behind all of this, launched on Britain’s National Impotence Day (a shared date with Valentine’s), is that some men are just too shy to talk to their doctor about erectile dysfunction, and so are suffering in silence. This may very well be the case — but is an hour long visit with a pharmacist going to be easier than a doctor’s visit? Is it going to be so easy that it suddenly makes going to the doctor a walk in the park? (If you decide you like the effects of the Viagra, you’ve to see a physician for a ‘script.) For that matter, should pharmacists even be prescribing medications?

And does anyone else marvel at the fact that for USD100, you can have an hour of a pharmacist’s time, several tests on your health done, and a mini-prescription filled? It’s more time than most people ever spend with their physician, for a lot less money!

Woops: Another quick search of the news sites before posting shows that it really was just a big marketing push. The pharmacy isn’t actually offering the OTC pills ’til Monday, and you have to schedule your appointment in advance. Sort of takes the spontaneity out of that one…

-Kelly Hills

Originally posted at the American Journal of Bioethics Editors Blog.

why go silicone when you can go stem cell?

Bioethics

Disclaimer: I resisted all titles related to milkshakes, slurries, soups, or other crass comments. And I’ll have you know, it took great restraint on my part!

So, today Sean walks into the office, and I swear, he might as well have been clapping and squealing in delight. I am a wise enough woman at this point to automatically brace myself, before asking “whaaat?”, with appropriate caution. He told me, with glee, that he’d just found a story he knew I’d have to blog about, and proceeded to point me to this.

Honestly? I think he just wanted to see my reaction as I read the article. I’m pretty sure my face went from amusement to shock to flat out, jaw hanging open astonishment.

You see, scientists in Japan are claiming to be able to naturally increase the size of a woman’s breast two sizes, using nothing but her stomach fat and stem cells. The fat and the stem cells (and it’s never specified what sort, or from where these cells are produced) are mixed together into a super-enriched stem cell fat…soup, which is then injected into the breast and left to, in theory, grow. Grow up to two sizes.

I remain skeptical. Where are these stem cells coming from? Why are they growing in the fatty tissue of the breast? What tells them to “go”, and where are they getting the “stop” signal from? Since when did stem cells work like this, anyway?

Frankly, it sounds like someone is using a typical method of breast enlargement – injection of one’s own fat – and is simply refining (blending?) the fat mixture into smaller suspended particles before injecting it back into the body. It’s playing on the fears of silicone, the promise of science, and the allure of having “natural” artificial breasts – all at what I’m sure is a very pretty price.

This is one of the few times I regret not having video capability – I suspect the entire thing would be even more stunning if you could see both my reaction, and Sean’s.

editing wikipedia

Academics, Bioethics

I was back at Wikipedia’s bioethics “talk” page this evening, looking for a quote someone had made about secular bioethicists being baby eating commies (or somesuch, it wasn’t that extreme, but only barely), and got to wondering if I am close enough to the discipline that I would be considered, by Wikipedia guidelines, to have a conflict of interest. So I asked Michael what he thought. His answer? I think you have too much valid information. Sadly, according to the CoI guidelines, he’s probably right and I probably do.

This is probably best for my blood pressure, though.

It does lead to an interesting question, though. How can Wikipedia be a place where experts contribute to the discussion with lay people, when experts are not allowed to participate in the creation of articles, because they have conflicts of interest by being in the field? Of course, in the CoI guidelines, they say that, for example, an expert on climate change is welcome to contribute to articles on that subject, even if that editor is deeply committed to it. However, it also specifically says that if you work with the people or institutions being talked about, you should probably not work on the page.

It might not be an issue if it were something like gardening, but bioethics is controversial. Just take a look at the talk page! Although it hasn’t been edited for a few years, it’s clear that the people discussing it are pretty divided.

And on top of it, as Crooked Timber noted a few weeks ago, you get into a situation where the expert does know more than the lay person, yet by Wikiepedia rules you have to keep both opinions there – and the laity has as much say as the expert. Don’t we have experts for a reason, though? I agree that they should be more accessible, but aren’t we doing everyone a disservice when we give the 17 year old high school student the same credence and weight of word as we give the person who’s been an expert in their field for 30 years?