Monday, September 11, 2006

Today....

Today is September 11. A day that will never be forgotten. I will never forget where I was on 9/11, when I heard about the twin towers. Do you remember where you were??? I think about the lives lost and it saddens me; I think about the fact that people in this world exist who commit atrocities such as 9/11 all over the world, all the time, and it disgusts me.

Peace on Earth... Is it possible?

The world is crazy. Really. Speaking of things that are wrong in the world, pharmaceutical companies are evil. What?!??! Who said that!?! Did you hear something?

Today a woman came to our Career Pathways class to discuss Complementary and Alternative medicine (CAM), my favoritest subject in the world right now. I took a class just for fun called Alternative and Folk Medicine during the Spring 2006 semester. It's the coolest class I've ever taken. EVER.

She was awesome. She was politically active during her med school years, organizing unions for students and residents. She's all about CAM and she's all about activism. She talked about some CAM techniques, about how the US and South Africa are the only industrialized countries that do not have socialized medical care, about how no one in this country receives good medical care, about big pharmaceutical companies and how they fund 75% of research, and a lot of other things that interest me greatly.
It sounds cheesy, but she was really inspirational to me- what she said throughout her talk, the way she spoke, everything. I love to hear speakers like her. She was a bit dorky and she used her hands a lot while she spoke; she was REAL. She was a feminist hippie girl who fought and is still fighting for what she thinks is right. Gotta love that!
At the end of her talk she reminded us that as physicians, we will have the background and status to make a real difference. Yay Activism!

More about CAM later, it's bedtime.


Oh, just to talk about food for one second: I made me some mashed sweet potatoes to eat with dinner tonight. Success! I'll be a chef extraodinaire in no time!

6 comments:

DobyD said...

Fuck, Fuck, Fuck the US's Medical care standards. Those fucking money hungry pigs. And you know what, what the hell. Fuck, Fuck, fuck the po-po.

DobyD said...

study, study, eat whole lot, study, study, sleep a whole lot.

Anonymous said...

Marianita, I have to say one thing, not because I'm the spelling police, but because virtually all of the MNTS notetakers for the first half of MIM made this same error.

The word is complementary. The system of innate immunity: complement. Alternative medicine? That's complementary.

Complimentary would be me telling you that you're one hot Phoenician. That's a compliment.

See ya.

Marianita said...

Tyre:
Thanks for pointing that out. I hate mistakes like that!
I was just writing quickly, not thinking. I usually check my blogs before posting because I'm anal about stuff like that, but it was late and I was "slackin' on my pimpin'" as my friend Randi would say.
BTW: I don't think that the word "complementary" in CAM is related to the complement system in immunology (were you implying that?)
Oh, and as an MNTS notetaker myself, I'll have you know that I did not write "compliment" in my notes.
And one more thing, complement is not the "system of innate immunity." Innate immunity involves many different things, one of which may be complement activation. BUT remember, the triggering of the classical complement pathway involves Antibodies, so we're talking ADAPTIVE Immunity, not innate... Not that I'm the Immunology police :)
Nice name, by the way. Tyre is supposed to be an amazing city. Too bad I didn't get to visit.

DobyD said...

You effing tell em Dogless!!!!!! Yea!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

lol this is good stuff.

Anonymous said...

There was a study at Imperial College London in 2002 about the role of the classical complement pathway in innate immunity, specifically in the immune response to S. pneuomniae.

I wasn't even referring to your notes when I made the compliment/complement comment. It may have been there, it may not have been - it was only an observation based on the notes from everyone else.

Alternative and complementary medicine. Complementary in this context means just that, to complement. Just as the complement system enhance the immune system, complementary medicine enhances traditional medicine. That was the issue the speaker in Pathways brought up - whether the new field should be called complementary, implying a slightly different role than would 'alternative medicine'.

I think perhaps I misjudged and fired off a comment that I wasn't aware you would take sensitively. For that, I'm sorry.

Tyre. I wonder what it looks like now. It would be nice to visit when things settle down.

I hope this semantic war of minutia is put to rest. Some people like discussing things like this. I'm a humanities and literature major. I overstepped my boundaries. The main reason I was spurred to comment about the word, and start the Facebook group, was an article from an Islamic woman about the hijab. It had nothing to do with school, or your MNTS note sets.

Alrighty then.