Naked Doctors tradition to continue?

It’s nearing that time of year again. Med Students getting sweaty, trying to cram 6 years of lungs, guns and antibiotics into a mind already warped by the smell of formaldehyde. They’re dosing up on whatever they can get there hands on (with the imminent promise of Schedule 5+ if they can just… get… through… this).

That’s because, after November at the University of Cape Town – 6th year medical students become DOCTORS.

The class of 2003 used to mark these momentous yearly occasions with their own brand of cleansing ritual. The whole class, dressed to theme (Doctors by Day, Victoria Secret by Night was my personal favourite), would flock to an arbitrary building on the side M3. They would quickly and clinically get themselves boozed… and flash the traffic.

This wasn’t any ordinary flashing of the traffic. With stethoscopes flying, lab coats swirling and SA’s finest wiggling their jiggly bit – the event made KFM news 3 years in a row, and was responsible for more than a few dented bumpers.

I’d like to say I met my anonymous SA Doc like that… Idling down the highway, afternoon traffic, sweet sounds of some boy band playing (dial obviously stuck – irony is students just don’t listen to KFM!)… There she would appear, like a vision… Mouth open in a drawn out Savanna-induced whoop of delight. Her nipple catches my eye… It would be love.

But alas, I was usually the sucker holding the bra.

At All Scrubbed, we’re wondering if this great tradition is going to continue – and would like to appeal to our readers to get in touch with any UCT medical student they know. Spread the word – it would be a crime to deprave the M3 of its most exciting yearly onslaught.

Americans investigate guided missile to TERMINATE HIV.

Recently spotted on BodyHack, a Wired Magazine blog about medical stuff. Raised the heckles a tad, no?

"In some cases the best way to fight a fire is to light a fire of your own. But could the best way to fight AIDS possibly be with AIDS?

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania are testing the idea that a modified strain of the HIV virus, called a lentivirus, could be turned into a sort of anti-AIDS guided missile that could directly target the HIV virus already in patients. Naturally safety was the primary concern.

The Scientist reports:

One safety concern with using lentiviruses as gene delivery vectors is that they might form replication-competent lentiviruses, but Levine and his colleagues found no evidence of this in any of the patients. Another concern is vector mobilization, which the researchers saw in the first 60 days after injection, but not after that. This mobilization probably doesn't mean the vector isn't safe, said Richard Sutton of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, who was not involved in the study, but he acknowledged that it is "a little bit concerning. Usually we don't like these vectors to jump around once they're inside a person."

While safe, the therapy still has a long way to go before it could be used for treatment. In the trial on 5 patients, only one showed a significant decrease in their viral load. "

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm all for research, innovation and striving beyond the boundaries of our little human imaginations in order to help cure/prevent the most obnoxious virus of our time... But, typical Americans think that everytime there's a hope and a prayer, it's worth publishing it to the world! Doesn't that grate?

This idea is in its infancy - we've come so much further in our HIV/Aids vaccine studies - yet our media coverage is merely a dribble. Even if this "guided missile" is as potent as they hope, Africa could never afford to use it.

Ain't it kak, in a world of shrinking borders - somethings still push the third world further and further away?

As for the comments, well that just adds fuel to the stereotypical fire - the garlic and parsley brigade can bite my ass. Manto called... she wants her idea back.

Medical Jokes... Bad handwriting results in?

And to end of this Tuesday with a bang (and because no-one died today, or ran around parading a venereal disease) - here's some rather chuckly medical "notes" blunders... Pilfered from Medical Jokes. I guess this is what happens when the bad handwriting thing gets out of control.

Note to self: Idea for further blog posts... Scan copies of scripts / notes and have a handwriting competition. Stereotypes, my ass.

1. The skin was moist and dry.

2. Rectal exam revealed a normal size thyroid.

3. The patient had waffles for breakfast and anorexia for lunch.

4. She stated that she had been constipated for most of her life until 1989 when she got a divorce.

5. Between you and me, we ought to be able to get this lady pregnant.

6. The patient was in his usual state of good health until his airplane ran out of gas and crashed.

7. The lab test indicated abnormal lover function.

8. The baby was delivered, the cord clamped and cut, and handed to the pediatrician, who breathed and cried immediately.

9. Exam of genitalia reveals that he is circus sized.

10. I saw your patient today, who is still under our car for physical therapy.

11. The patient lives at home with his mother, father, and pet turtle, who is presently enrolled in day care three times a week.

12. Bleeding started in the rectal area and continued all the way to Los Angeles.

13. Both breasts are equal and reactive to light and accommodation.

14. She is numb from her toes down.

15. Exam of genitalia was completely negative except for the right foot.

16. While in the emergency room, she was examined, X-rated and sent home.

17. The patient was to have a bowel resection. However, he took a job as a stockbroker instead.

18. The patient suffers from occasional, constant, infrequent headaches.

19. Coming from Detroit, this man has no children.

20. Examination reveals a well-developed male lying in bed with his family in no distress.

21. Patient was alert and unresponsive.

22. When she fainted, her eyes rolled around the room.

23. We will follow her eyes and nose with a foley catheter.

24. By the time he was admitted, his rapid heart had stopped, and he was feeling better.

25. Patient has chest pain if she lies on her left side for over a year.

26. On the second day the knee was better and on the third day it had completely disappeared.

27. The patient has been depressed ever since she began seeing me in 1983.

28. The patient is tearful and crying constantly. She also appears to be depressed.

29. Discharge status: Alive but without permission.

30. Healthy-appearing decrepit sixty-nine-year-old male, mentally alert but forgetful.

31. The patient refused an autopsy.

32. The patient expired on the floor uneventfully.

33. Patient has left his white blood cells at another hospital.

34. The patient's past medical history has been remarkably insignificant, with only a forty-pound weight gain in the past three days.

35. She slipped on the ice and apparently her legs went in separate directions in early December.

36. The patient had a rash over his truck.

All Scrubbed goes cooking with Prixige...

Nope. Not part of the Anarchy Cookbook on interesting ways to heat up an anti-inflammatory - but rather some pharmaceutical DRM (that's Doctor Relationship Management for those in the know).

The Wicked Food Cooking School played host to the latest round of Novartis talks on Prixige's Lumiracoxib - the Cox2 inhibitor (not as rude as it sounds) to end all Cox2 inhibitors - or so they tell me. The introductory speech washed over me like morphine - very few intelligent questions from the nonDoc. Except one interesting case scenario:

56 year old banker. Presenting with Osteo-Arthritis in the knee. Panado just wasn't cutting it because the poor bugger was walking 5km, 4 times a week. Stop me when it's starting to sound like crazy talk... but what 56 year old South African banker has the time to walk 20km a week!? God is in the details after all.

Turns out the answer was easy. Prescribe Lumiracoxib. (PS. That's why doctors are so smart... you can only prescribe Lumiracoxib if you can SAY Lumiracoxib.)

Jokes aside, the message was pretty clear. This wasn't any old anti-inflammatory. And in the days of some pretty serious gastric ulcers - you want a drug with the least gastro-intestinal side effects that also keeps those CV issues (yes, at first I was wondering whether it was my high school or university education that was threatening) at bay. The cardio-vascular ones.

Then to the cooking. At first, I must say, I wondered about the brand connection between an anti-inflammatory and cooking. Then I stopped wondering. As if in a surreal dream, I was cooking next to Barry Lambson. His wife, the lovely Dr. Lambson had hauled him away from the 1987 reruns of Western Province vs. Orange Free State at Newlands. Pharaceutical event. Barry Lambson. Box wine. And some spicy tomato soup.



As the haze of Claret Select finally descended... Barry left me. I think I was taking too long chopping the mushrooms - he went in search of greener pastures - the can opener for a particularly stubborn can of tomoatoes most likely.

All in all, great evening. I was left pining for samples and prepped with enough knowledge to dangerously convince someone I knew what I was talking about.

Can't wait for the Cox3 function.

(Note: Thanks to Dawn and Zama for making it a helluva evening. Also thank to the Wiki Wicked Food School for whipping my culinary skills into shape. Highly recommended.)

Striking the Medical Ethic

Ran across this video on YouTube... And instead of making up a thousand reasons why I should link to it, it kind of brought up the whole issue of medical ethics. Our friend, Ali, goes on about cloning, euthanasia and plastic surgery - with his own unique brand of "bedside manner". He leaves out one of the most important issues though, one that people don't really think about.

Do doctors strike? Can they?

A couple of months ago, a whole bunch of Zim doctors went on strike - evidently $57 million a month was just not enough. It seems they had to bring their own scalpals to work, which cost $58 million. Ah, what can you do? Seriously though. Good on them. And better on them for sitting in the hospital pub for all but the most critical of patients!

Do our hospitals even have pubs? A quick search revealed basically nothing. The closest we get is a pub 226m underground in a mine shaft in Gold Reef City. That shaft, used to have a hospital.

I digress.

Medical ethics is such a broad blanket protection for everyone we treat - it pretty much prevents us from striking. We're not like lawyers (they don't strike because they can't bill for it) or Pick 'n Pay workers (How hard can it be? Ya Pick. Ya Pay). But we do seem to care.

You can't save a patient if you're on strike. And let's face it, people just don't not get sick.

So, even when this country subjects Interns to more than 90 hours a week (go look up the Basic Conditions of Employment if that doesn't sound like a lot), mediocre pay and such horrific working conditions that the tea room is usually the source of the infection... We still don't strike.

In fact, the most simple task of trying to get a bunch of doctors together to fight with SAMA against the government is nigh impossible. We're too busy caring about others, to fight for ourselves.

What's with that?

The ForeSkin. Part II. Revenge of the Sif.

Right. As promised... the second post - bringing this whole sticky argument to a head. Cough. If you weren't convinced last time - three more points to try and sway it.

1. You will have a proven, lower risk of contracting STD's - not harbouring crawlies under there will help.

2. You therefore have a lower risk of contracting HIV. Less microtears. And, you did know that STD's and HIV like to hold hands?

3. And finally, come on guys, it just looks better! The "extra inch" it adds is more than compensated by the apparent increase in girth.

Not much more we can say, aside from thanks for the comments that are still coming in about the first post. It's obviously a touchy issue. Cough.

Some interesting foreskin envy links:

- Artificial Foreskin

- The Fate of the Foreskin: A Study of Circumcision?

- Would you rather be circumcised or uncircumcised?

- Speaking of Uncut

- The Unkindest Cut of All: Circumcision no longer a popular choice?

MANTO WATCH: Condom Crusader

Wah! Is this a joke? Is this a viral campaign? Is she a virus? No-one knows, but recently spotted on CherryFlava was a Manto video for the Pronto Condoms brand.

She dicey, she's quick and she's more slippery than Zuma in the shower. Pranto Manto.

Get the video here!