Blog, MD

One of the curses of being of Ashkenazi origin is the lactose-intolerance that has prevented me from enjoying regular milk on my morning bowl of cereal for the past, oh, 20 years. Well, maybe not a curse - especially given the miracle that is Lactaid milk - but it rates at the least, […]

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“I thought the only space traveler who wore a wig and an adult diaper was William Shatner.”
–David Letterman
In light of the recent lapse in judgement by one of NASA’s finest (which you can read about ad nauseum by Googling ‘weird astronaut’ or some variety thereof), there has been increased scrutiny placed on the mental […]

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Dr. John Niederhuber (director of the national cancer institute) before:

Dr. John Niederhuber today:

Great news! The House of Representatives (yes, the U.S. House of Representatives) just voted to pass the FY2007 Joint Funding Resolution, which includes a $620 million increase for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and provides significant increases to the National Science Foundation ($335 […]

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Clark Bartram’s fascinating Wizard of Oz-esque dream-sequence Pediatric Grand Rounds got me thinking about my nocturnal activities.
Despite the fact that my sleep latency is remarkably short, I still insist on going to bed with my trusty iPod on. This is a holdover from when I was much (much) younger, and I learned to fall […]

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I now have to stop talking about poop GI matters for a while since Adam is going to give the impression that I have an obsession of some sort with the stuff.
Instead of spending time in the laboratory tonight (for which I’m feeling tremendously guilty), I ambled down to my favorite moviehouse, the Coolidge Corner […]

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One of the few easy questions that neuro-oncologists get asked by patients (or parents of patients) at the time of diagnosis is, “Was there something in my genes that caused this? Is it hereditary?”. I think that it is fascinating to ponder the reasons why people ask this question, and whether or […]

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Wow. Talk about a young technology getting recognized quickly by the Nobel committee. The 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was just announced a couple of hours ago and it went to Andrew Fire and Craig Mello for the discovery of RNAi (RNA interference). The two scientists who won are young […]

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It’s been a big month for awards in science and medicine.  The 2006 Albert Lasker Awards and the 2006 MacArthur Foundation Awards were recently announced.  The Lasker awards go to “… celebrated scientists, physicians, and public servants whose accomplishments have made major advances in the understanding, diagnosis, prevention, treatment, and even cure of many of the […]

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As I was doing my daily cell culture work, I had WBUR on the radio and heard three particularly good science and/or medicine-related stories.
First was an interesting piece on the potential for corporations outsourcing major surgeries for their insured employees to countries such as Thailand or India. Now, while this probably hasn’t happened much, […]

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There’s a terrific animation that I just heard about (through MetaFilter, of course) called The Inner Life of a Cell. It’s a computerized tour-de-force of cell biology. I recognized dozens of processes that I’ve studied over the years (e.g., microtubule assembly, actin polymerization, integrin binding, mRNA transcription, etc.). It’s amazing.
See for yourself.

Technorati […]

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I’m not so bright. Really. Quite dim.
Ok. Maybe not all bad. But how many doctors do you know who mistakenly show up to be on-call. I can tell you of plenty who forget to show up when they’re on call. But none who not only show up when it’s […]

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This is why I like science so much. It’s the ideas that people have that are so good, that when you hear about it you immediately see why they’re so good (and wonder why you didn’t think of them in the first place). There’s an article in the NY Times regarding the biology […]

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From time to time, particularly when I’m on-call like tonight (yes, I’m on call again for bone marrow transplant), I surf some of my favorite little corners of the internet. One of the more morbid corners that I typical go to is the obituary section of the NY Times. I can’t explain it. […]

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