1. Religion out of medicine, a new message for Ontario doctors

Comment #231900 by Nick6742 on August 17, 2008 at 9:45 am

This can work both ways though. If you're a male provider and a muslim comes in and demands that only a female doctor may examine his wife or that he must be present for the entire examination and you send them elsewhere, that could be a violation of this guideline depending on your interpretation.

2. PLEASE WRITE IN SUPPORT OF PZ MYERS

Comment #208263 by Nick6742 on July 10, 2008 at 7:15 pm

done and done

3. Psychiatrists: Least Religious But Most Interested In Patients' Religion

Comment #200903 by Nick6742 on June 28, 2008 at 12:38 pm

Not to mention that she thinks 'god gave us aspirin!'

Here I thought it was Friedrich Bayer and the willow tree.

4. Psychiatrists: Least Religious But Most Interested In Patients' Religion

Comment #200817 by Nick6742 on June 28, 2008 at 9:14 am

I hope you never get her either.

Our curriculum (at Albany and throughout the US)is full of the evidence of evolution and the professors teach it appropriately. She and her ilk are willfully ignorant, they've been presented with the evidence and facts and have chosen to ignore them for superstition.

Med school is a big attraction for faith-heads, it lets them feel like they're doing the G-man's work while attaining social status and $. They learn about evolution enough to pass a test and then pretend that they never heard direct refutations of arguments for ID.

5. Evangelical grunts

Comment #200741 by Nick6742 on June 28, 2008 at 7:27 am

I think the author misses the point in this. Indoctrination in the military is a problem, but I don't believe it's not the major reason why so many soldiers are evangelical.

Most soldiers come from poor to low-middle class families. They are very often evangelical before they enter the service.

6. Psychiatrists: Least Religious But Most Interested In Patients' Religion

Comment #200700 by Nick6742 on June 28, 2008 at 6:10 am

Thanks, I'm glad you liked it!

7. Psychiatrists: Least Religious But Most Interested In Patients' Religion

Comment #200583 by Nick6742 on June 28, 2008 at 12:08 am

The video is up on google video if anyone is interested: medical student panel on faith in medicine.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4814737602943516661&hl=en

p.s. I know I mangled the title of 'Origin', shameful, but these things happen.

8. Psychiatrists: Least Religious But Most Interested In Patients' Religion

Comment #200517 by Nick6742 on June 27, 2008 at 7:12 pm

I can put it on rapidshare, but that isn't the friendliest of sites. Any ideas are welcome.

9. Psychiatrists: Least Religious But Most Interested In Patients' Religion

Comment #200515 by Nick6742 on June 27, 2008 at 7:04 pm

In my ethics class at med school this spring we had a panel discussion on the role of faith in medicine. I have the mp3 if anyone wants to listen, I just need an easy way to distribute it. It offers a look at how physicians (American physicians anyway) use their philosophical view of god in directing their practice. I'm advocating the atheist point of view in the recording. Post here if you would like to listen.

In the aftermath I found that about 1/3 of the class is a Dawkinsian type of atheist, about 1/4 are religious, most often devout, and the rest are deists or of the 'faith in faith' persuasion.

10. Mormons urged to back ban on same-sex marriage

Comment #199145 by Nick6742 on June 25, 2008 at 8:39 am

It's not just religious people who get married. I'm married and my wife and I are both atheists. This ban is ridiculous, but marriage is not.

11. Sarcasm Seen as Evolutionary Survival Skill

Comment #198106 by Nick6742 on June 23, 2008 at 8:09 am

It may not seem that valuable, but functional neuroanatomy can have a major clinical importance. I think you would be surprised at how often neurologists use social deficits as well as motor to diagnose what specific dementia a patient suffers and narrow down the pathology going on in the brain, the target for any pharmacological or surgical therapy.

12. Pastors Challenge Law, Endorse Candidates From Pulpit

Comment #196747 by Nick6742 on June 20, 2008 at 12:00 pm

A far more sinister abuse of this code is the Co$ manipulating the city government in Clearwater, FL to blatantly restrict the civil liberties of the citizens there. The IRS is incompetent and lacks the will to do anything important.

13. Council pays psychic for exorcism

Comment #126480 by Nick6742 on February 13, 2008 at 10:30 am

I'm a little confused, were these people in public housing or their own home?

14. 10 cc of atheism

Comment #124767 by Nick6742 on February 10, 2008 at 7:22 am

I love house even if the medicine is a bit (or a lot)iffy.

I think his accent is fine. I don't know any american's who notice it at all.

15. The Passion of 'Anonymous'

Comment #124763 by Nick6742 on February 10, 2008 at 7:11 am

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfu7Sr50N7U

A video from their 2006 conference detailing how they are going about stripping the psychiatric infrastructure of the US and depriving good doctors of their licenses. They are entirely evil. Hopefully medical societies in the US will start to stand up to them too, now that this evidence is out.

16. The New Atheist Movement

Comment #123108 by Nick6742 on February 6, 2008 at 1:14 pm

I was hoping this would be about operation CoSplay.

A major battle against religion and irrationality taking place on the internet that should get some coverage here.

The actual video was utter tripe

17. New Findings Confirm Darwin's Theory: Evolution Not Random

Comment #113488 by Nick6742 on January 19, 2008 at 6:16 pm

I don't think the journalism in this piece was of the highest quality. i.e. 'electronic microscopy'

I assume they meant electron microscopy, which is a very different thing than electronic microscopy ( which could describe almost all modern microscopy)

18. American kids, dumber than dirt: Warning: The next generation might just be the biggest pile of idiots in U.S. history

Comment #82439 by Nick6742 on October 26, 2007 at 10:34 am

Let's not get carried away, the teacher in this article teaches in Oakland. Not many big cities in the US are going to be at the top of the achievement ladder. The vast majority of my classmates in undergraduate, graduate, and medical school were products of the public education system and they were all doing fine. There's room for improvement, but the sky isn't falling.

As evidence I offer the increasing SAT (1 of 2 major US college entrance exams) scores that have been continuing to rise for years.

19. A Nation of Christians Is Not a Christian Nation

Comment #76795 by Nick6742 on October 7, 2007 at 9:34 am

Votes, McCain has a long history of saying random things with no factual basis. From this to 'no american would work in the fields even for $50/hour' to his opposition of mixed martial arts as 'human cock fighting'. Let's also not forget his chumming up to Bush in 2000 even though he personally and professionally despised him.

20. Mind Over Manual

Comment #70205 by Nick6742 on September 14, 2007 at 10:30 am

Ah, I see your point now. I was approaching the problem from a purely medication/physical modality standpoint.

robotaholic, that's not really true. Medical specialty deals with different types of diseases even if the organ systems overlap. Rheumatologists and orthopods both treat joint pain, but for different diseases and different pathologies. Psychiatrists and neurologists both treat CNS diseases, but again these are from different pathologies and require different treatments. Both are grounded in science and used the best evidence to decide their treatments, they just treat different things.

21. Mind Over Manual

Comment #70190 by Nick6742 on September 14, 2007 at 9:40 am

I think I miscommunicated. Most of my experience comes from neurodegenerative diseases and so I'm also not the most informed on this topic. I still think the utility in the DSM-IV is in providing a label to a set of symptoms and not for informing the treatment of those symptoms.

22. Mind Over Manual

Comment #70029 by Nick6742 on September 13, 2007 at 6:01 pm

This summer I saw a presentation from a consortium of researchers looking for biomarkers for various psych disorders. They are making great headway, one especially intriguing was that schizophrenia seems to show a very diabetes like/insulin-resistant/under stimulated picture in the CNS. confirmed with multiple techniques. This article didn't really mention that this work or anything like it is going on.

What's more is that the article creates a false dilemma. The vast majority of clinicians regard these Dx criteria as vague guidelines. Diagnostic criteria are most useful as inclusion criteria in clinical trials, not as a way to diagnose an individual sitting in front of you.

23. Scientists should unite against threat from religion

Comment #64923 by Nick6742 on August 22, 2007 at 11:48 am

Sam is right, it's disgraceful that Nature doesn't know better.

24. New age therapies cause 'retreat from reason'

Comment #61432 by Nick6742 on August 5, 2007 at 6:21 am

If you treat someone for cancer, how can you cure them 'at some level'? Either they still have cancer or they don't. The metastases grew or shrunk.

What bothers me about this new trend, is that it has adherents in dangerous places. I would wager that at least 10% of my medical school class believes in 'alternative medicine'. Does anyone really want your surgeon concerned with your aura, or your dermatologist concerned with meridian blocks?

Keep up the good fight against these fruitcakes.

25. Physician, Heal Thyself

Comment #54984 by Nick6742 on July 9, 2007 at 3:04 pm

This article is on point. During my first week of med school we had to write our own Hippocratic oath's. One student wrote 3-4 sentences on procedures he would not do because of religious conviction. There are also some girls who attended a conference with several of us and refused to share a hotel room with even 1 male because of religious convictions, forcing us to book 2 hotel rooms needlessly.