Bioethics, healthcare policy, and related issues.
I hate to do this.
I’ve been struggling to build this blog up for a year and a half; just recently - and not without much begging - I’ve had some good fortune with links from other bloggers and seen my traffic climb from a handful of much-treasured regulars to about 100 hits a day. As pathetic as that is, it was progress, and I was getting more excited about trying to reach out further.
In the meantime, the rest of my life has been circling the drain for a decade or more, and is starting to pick up speed. For those who don’t know, I have been “on leave” (i.e., they haven’t seen me in years) from a doctoral program where I specialize in bioethics. But I need to finish that program to have any real place in this profession - blogging isn’t it. And I desperately need to do something about my negative cashflow situation. Spending all day reading blogs and working up one lengthy post has become another way to avoid doing the things I really need to be doing but don’t really like. Several of my friends have made pointed comments to that effect, and some have threatened to take over my blog if I don’t get my shit more in order.
Most importantly, I’m up against a deadline for making some important, possibly very valuable, moves in my career - predicated on my doing something serious about the PhD I’ve been bogged down on for years now. And as much as I don’t like to see it, this blog is essentially an end in itself, but is blocking my way to other things that serve more important ends. So, some serious prioritizing is in order.
I’ve decided to put Sufficient Scruples on the back burner, for a while at least. Already, I’m only making an average of 4-6 posts per week, but simply thinking that I should be posting every day is enough to eat up my time. So I’m going to cut back to 1-2 posts per week, maybe mostly on weekends.
It hurts to let this go, and to think about what I know this will do to my traffic volume. In particular, I feel like I’m letting down the few regulars who have been coming by. I want to thank you for all the interest and support you’ve shown. Be aware that this is in service of something that means a lot more to me personally, and will also let me play a bigger role in the issues we both care about. But I’m sorry to be running out on you.
Do come by every week or so, please! I will still post content here, but it will be much lower in volume. I’ll try to make it up in quality. And feel free to e-mail me. I rarely hear from readers, but I’d like to. As for you lurkers out there (yes, you at the American Physical Society with your two-hour browsing times - and you at the megachurch down in Dallas who’s been coming by every day for weeks - and the many others), say hello! I don’t know who you are (Sitemeter gives me your IP address but can’t know your username, so don’t worry), but I’m very glad to see you on the blog; feel free to drop me a line at the “Contact” link above.
Thanks to everyone who does or has read this blog; thanks to all those who have commented or e-mailed or linked; thanks especially to those who cared enough about me personally to offer feedback on the larger context it sits in. I hope you won’t disappear, as I won’t, but I’ll be sorry to see less of you from now on.
Best wishes.
DB, of the eponymous “Medical Rants”, makes a good point about rare diseases:
The problem with Lemierre’s Disease is that it represents a “long tail” disease. Most sore throats are viral or due to streptococcal disease. At least we thought that until recently. Evidence from 2005 in two articles suggests that the organism thought responsible for most Lemierre’s Disease - Fusobacterium necrophorum - may cause as much as 10% of pharyngitis. . . .
For the past 30 years, the infectious disease community has worked to decrease the use of unnecessary antibiotics. They have assumed that group A beta hemolytic streptococcal infection is the only pharyngitis cause which needs “necessary antibiotics”. They have assumed that group C and group G streptococci do not need antibiotics. They have excluded the possibility of unknown bacterial infections. Now it appears that Fusobacterium necrophorum may indeed be an “unknown bacterial cause” of pharyngitis.
What can we do about the Long Tail?
There seems to be some sort of multi-way dispute taking place between the extreme animal-rights activists, the really extreme animal-rights activists, and those who are actually taking care of animals. In much the same way as the vegan/vegetarian dispute over arificial meat, the animal lovers are carrying on the fine tradition of progressives letting the perfect be the enemy of the good by turning on one another for docrinal incorrectness before they can accomplish anything.
Plus there’s the two dead chimps and a body chained to a laboratory door, but that’s the least of things.
“Blue”, of The Gimp Parade, has an interesting post on the differing reactions non-disabled people have to the disabled in different contexts, and on the expectations they seem to have for how the disabled are “supposed to”, or are allowed to, look to non-disabled eyes.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what people with disabilities look like and how it influences our interaction with the nondisabled in public. What disabled people are supposed to look like is part of the interaction too. . . .
Anyone who has experienced both limping and using a wheelchair will tell you that public reactions to the two appearances differ. Same with manual chair versus power chair, white cane versus guide dog, invisible impairment versus visible one(s), and, Ballastexistenz claims, with dog versus sans dog for her as a person with autism. Visual differences cue stereotypes, and breathing on one’s own versus towing a ventilator on my scooter also makes a discernible difference. Most notably, even fewer people are willing to make eye contact. . . .
Okay, so I know it’s fear of difference and the old “there-but-for-the-grace-of” thing. And that’s fed by a history of segregation and institutionalization. I’m 37, by the way, and Americans in wheelchairs who are my age are pretty much the first generation allowed to attend public school with everyone else.
More on the weird research front:
A study of 61 male university students found those who were hungry were attracted to heavier women than those who were satiated.
As what - a potential food source?
As usual, there’s an evolutionary-psychology Just So Story to go along with it:
In some societies where food is a limited resource, such as the South Pacific, higher body weights are revered. In others where food is abundant, such as the West, lower female body weights are preferred.
Evolutionary psychologists believe this is a survival preference. What you are looking for in a mate is the best chance of healthy offspring and in an environment where food is scarce, a heavier woman is deemed a safer bet for this.
They do mention, however, that there are biological factors involved, and a variety of social conditioning factors that influence not only how people feel about body size, but how they perceive it. So, in short, nobody knows why this effect occurs.
Interesting, though.
Hat tip: zuzu at Feministe.
Right-wingers have been beside themselves over a small cluster of deaths from toxic-shock-like syndrome, caused by infection by certain specific microorganisms, in patients who had obtained medical abortions using RU-486 or a similar preparation. Specifically, there have been 4 such deaths from 2003 - 2005, plus one previously; the most recent 4 all involved women in California who had been given an “off-label” vaginal suppository for Mifepristone Misoprostol (one of the two drugs used in the most-common medical abortion procedure), as opposed to taking it orally. These similarities prompted concern among health officials; the American College of Gynecology, which had endorsed the off-label usage, convened a study panel on the issue, and Planned Parenthood stopped using the vaginal-delivery method (which is otherwise more comfortable, easier, and more effective than oral delivery). The anti-choice contingent, however, of course began trumpeting the incidents as “proof” that all medical abortion was “unsafe”.
This “proof” suffers somewhat from certain facts: (a) no clear cause of the toxic syndrome in these cases has ever been determined; (b) the medication has been used safely, orally and vaginally, by over half a million women, as compared with only 5 deaths; (c) the death rate for medical abortion - as for every other form of early- to mid-term therapeutic abortion - is lower than that for childbirth, making abortion in general, and RU-486 in particular, the best choice for women from a safety perspective. Now, the results of ACOG’s review of the situation show that this safety differential favors RU-486 even more than was previously known.
