medgremlin

@medgremlin@midwest.social

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⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Clever, clever⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
Generational AI like ChatGPT is absolutely useless for anything besides maybe making summaries. Humans use language as a default method of communication, and if you are trying to produce academic work, the onus is on you to learn how to use language effectively. These heaps of algorithms and marketing exclusively hallucinate and plagiarize, both of which are absolutely unacceptable in academia (and should be unacceptable in society at large, in my opinion.)
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Clever, clever⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
Tell me you haven’t reviewed classmates’ papers without telling me you haven’t reviewed classmates’ papers.

Some of the papers I’ve read from my classmates make me wonder how they got out of high school, let alone into university or (!!) medical school. There are a lot of people who cannot write decently to save their lives that are still somehow in academia.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
I thought the point was to be better than Hamas? Of course they mistreat detainees, but that doesn’t mean Israel gets a blank check to do the same. Also, many of the Palestinians currently being held by Israel without charges in indefinite detention are innocent civilians, including many from the West Bank. Israel has been illegally detaining and mistreating thousands upon thousands of Palestinians without any kind of due process or concern for human rights for decades. Pointing a finger at Hamas and saying “Look! They’re doing it too!! October 7th!!1!!” is not a valid argument for how Israel has been treating captive Palestinians for years.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
The way that Hamas treats Palestinians is partially the responsibility of Netanyahu and the Likud given that they provided Hamas with material support to take power in the first place. Also, the fact that Israelis stormed an IDF base in protest of the punishment of IDF thugs that anally raped innocent Palestinians to death with rifles tells me a lot about what Israel thinks of all Palestinians, not just the ones that are actually part of Hamas.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tough Shit⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
I just finished my surgery rotation for medical school and I saw so many colonoscopies. I have seen the inside of dozens of people’s colons and this is a pretty good explanation for what’s going on. I could also tell which patients ate a lot of fruit or seeds because there would still be some residual seeds in there after the clean-out prep.

Pro tip: if you are going in for a colonoscopy, ask for the pill form of the prep. Most insurances cover it, it works better, and you don’t have to drink the gallon of disgusting fluid.

Also! Colonoscopies are very important! They are the single best tool for detecting and preventing colon cancer. During the scope, if they find any polyps, they get removed and sent for evaluation to see if they are cancerous, pre-cancerous, or benign, and the polyps are basically the seeds of colon cancer. It is recommended to get your first colonoscopy at age 45, unless you have a family history of colon cancer, in which case you would get your first one 10 years younger than the age the family member was diagnosed, or age 45, whichever is younger.

There are the home tests like the cologuard, but that has a 45% false positive rate, and they’re only good for 3 years while a colonoscopy is good for 10 years(*) if it comes back normal, so the cologuard ends up being more expensive in the long run. It also only detects the later, more advanced polyps that are more likely to be closer to being cancer, and if it comes back positive, you have to get a colonoscopy anyways. A lot of the false positives come from the fact that it tests for DNA associated with cancer mutations and for microscopic blood in the stool, and they don’t tell you if it’s positive because of the DNA or the blood, and you can have microscopic amounts of blood in your stool for tons of reasons.

TL;DR: Colonoscopies are very important, and MUCH better than the home test. Talk to your primary care provider about when you should start screening, and if you’re over 45, go get scheduled for one now. Colon cancer is a horrible disease, and it’s actually quite preventable and easy to catch in the early stages, if you get your colonoscopies on the recommended schedule.

*Addendum: If your colonoscopy detects certain kinds of polyps, or more than a certain number of polyps, you might be on a shorter interval for surveillance scopes to make sure they catch anything before it becomes cancer, and that interval can be anywhere from 3 to 7 years depending on what they found. Also, if you have a family history of colon or rectal cancer, you’ll be on a 5 year schedule because you’re higher risk.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Horrors We've Unleashed⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
While that gene therapy does exist, it is not the same as what is being done here. The offspring of these mosquitos will have this same modified gene. The offspring of the recipients of the Sickle Cell gene therapy will not have the modified gene. We have the ability to alter a single human for their lifespan, but we do not have the ability to alter a human in such a way that their offspring will carry the same modification.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Horrors We've Unleashed⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
Gene therapy is not the same thing as CRISPR. CRISPR is modifying the genome before the organism makes it past 1 cell.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Horrors We've Unleashed⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
Not necessarily, but the advancement of the technology and refinement of the technique are not progressing very quickly and since it’s so far away from human application, there’s not a lot of money/investment in it.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Horrors We've Unleashed⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
As a widely available, cost-effective treatment? Almost certainly not. We have yet to successfully genetically modify a human being and there’s a metric ton of legal and ethical red tape to deal with before we can even try.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Horrors We've Unleashed⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
CRISPR is profoundly difficult and expensive, and gets more difficult and expensive the more chromosomes are at play. Modifying mosquitos is much easier, and with the short generations (days or weeks instead of decades for humans) it’s much easier to get the genetic changes to stick and observe their efficacy. We might get around to modifying humans someday, but it will likely be centuries before it is available for anything besides fixing lethal anomalies (and even then, it’ll be a long time until that becomes consistently successful).
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Horrors We've Unleashed⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
Many species of mosquitos are reliant on blood for reproduction. The females utilize a “blood meal” for the nutrients for laying eggs to be fertilized. Additionally, it is the female mosquito bite that transmits diseases like malaria.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon lives in the midwest⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:
If they jewelery was given as a gift in good will, it would be worse to reject it or to accept it and never use it.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨2 life pro tips in one meme!⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:
Our water is polluted enough as it is. I will always advocate for yeeting the rich…into volcanoes.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon is a good samaritan⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
I have done CPR on people before, and it is astonishingly brutal. To do it correctly, you have to cave their sternum in to be able to apply enough pressure to the heart to actually move blood around. For “Out of Hospital Cardiac Arrest” patients that receive bystander CPR, the survival to discharge is around 10%, give or take. The most common outcome of CPR (if it is successful and you get a pulse back) is days to weeks of dying slowly and painfully in the ICU. The older someone is, or the more health problems they have, the much lower the chance of recovery is.

CPR is absolutely reasonable for a younger person that stands a good chance of walking out of the hospital at the end of it, but 90 pound 90-year-old is extremely unlikely to survive in a meaningful way. It is very reasonable to request to not be put through that massive amount of suffering for a very low chance of any meaningful benefit.

There’s also degrees of DNR. There’s separate options for CPR, intubation, supportive care, active treatment, palliative care, etc. It’s a lot more nuanced than CPR yes/no in most situations.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Karaoke place⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
I think the other part of it is that something like a full colonoscopy is a lot safer if the patient isn’t moving at all given that one of the biggest and most serious risks is poking a hole through the colon with the camera.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Karaoke place⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
That sounds more like a waking sedation. Those will get used in American medicine if it’s just a sigmoidoscopy (the last bit of the rectum and colon), but for a full colonoscopy, they really prefer to conk you out a bit more than that.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Karaoke place⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
The ones I observed with my attending physician were using twilight sedation with propofol, and I think they got small doses of fentanyl to manage discomfort/pain during and right after the procedure. The propofol lets them knock you out for a while without putting you under so much that they have to intubate. (That is anesthesia’s job though, so it might be recorded differently on your records)
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Karaoke place⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
The ones I observed with my attending physician were using twilight sedation with propofol, and I think they got small doses of fentanyl to manage discomfort/pain during and right after the procedure.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Karaoke place⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
Not if they did the bowel prep well enough.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Karaoke place⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
It’s usually propofol.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why I Haven't Seen Any Trump Supporters In Fediverse (Lemmy and Mastodon)?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
Biden absolutely has some control over this, but Netanyahu is the bigger problem at the moment. Biden has influence over Netanyahu (with a lot of caveats and red tape due to decades of foreign policy), and Harris has influence over Biden…but that’s not the same thing as absolute control. There are also parts of this that have to get approved by congress and there’s only so much the office of the president can do unilaterally.

They can be doing more, and they should be doing more, but Harris’ role and capability is limited to that of an advisor (under strict scrutiny from everyone) right now, and that doesn’t actually give her that much power.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why I Haven't Seen Any Trump Supporters In Fediverse (Lemmy and Mastodon)?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
I’m not terribly old, but I’ve been around long enough to know that the lower offices are where you actually affect change in this country. The higher the office, the less they listen to their constituents.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why I Haven't Seen Any Trump Supporters In Fediverse (Lemmy and Mastodon)?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
There are lower ranking Democrats that are espousing the right ideas about things like the filibuster, gerrymandering, and even some that are agitating about the electoral college BS. The best strategy I see right now is to clear as many Republicans out of office as we can, and support the newer, lower-level representatives that are aiming to affect real change.

My voting strategy has always been to “vote blue, no matter who” on the top of the ticket, then do my research and be more selective about the offices lower down, especially in the primaries. Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter if more progressive candidates take hold of the House and the Senate if everything they pass just gets vetoed by the fascist in the Oval Office anyways.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why I Haven't Seen Any Trump Supporters In Fediverse (Lemmy and Mastodon)?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
You do realize that she’s the Vice President and doesn’t actually have any authority or power unless Biden kicks the bucket, right?

Because it really seems like you think that she has any ability to make unilateral decisions or enact her policy platform right this second, and that simply isn’t the case.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why I Haven't Seen Any Trump Supporters In Fediverse (Lemmy and Mastodon)?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
America is, unfortunately, a two party system. If not enough people vote for Harris, Trump wins. Period. There are no options besides Harris and Trump, and only one of them has talked about how Israel should literally nuke Gaza (I’ll let you take a guess on which one it was.)

I see your idealism, and I agree that any amount of genocide is unacceptable, but letting Trump win will just accelerate the genocide in Gaza, expand it to the West Bank (more noticeably, anyways), and likely start new genocides here in America. I’ve been writing to my representatives and sending them articles about the atrocities being committed by the IDF and imploring them to do something about it…but I’m not dumb enough to withhold my vote from the Centrists and allow the Fascists to take over.

I repeat: withholding your vote from Harris is effectively a vote for Trump because America is a two party system, and there’s only two options to pick from.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Thanks to science, men can now locate the clitoris with micrometer accuracy.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
Context for people unfamiliar: this is a video-assisted intubation. The white bit on the screen is the larynx (vocal cords), and the fold below it is the opening of the esophagus.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Thanks to science, men can now locate the clitoris with micrometer accuracy.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
The little white ring is a larynx. This is a video-assisted intubation.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It is what it is⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
Oof. Tell me about it. I went to a Gen pop hospital after working in a level 1 peds ER and the other ER folks gave me “the look” when I talked about some of the stuff at the peds hospital. Non-accidental trauma cases are a special kind of PTSD.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon is a soyboy⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
Personally, I prefer soy milk to cow or oat milk because it has a better nutritional profile. It has less sugar and fat, and more protein, as well as having fiber. (Some oat milk brands do have fiber in them, but most of the ones I’ve found are very high in fat, sugar, and calories.)
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon tries to be ethical⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
Thankfully, the extent of the religion in the education is in the ethics discussions and strong recommendations to discuss spirituality and religion with your patients because faith communities are “very important”. The religion does not make it into any of the actual medicine or science.