Prestige Matters

Yes, I know, another NYT article. When I don’t have time to read, I read this, and the paper my family gets, only I read that one in hardcopy so it’s harder to quote …

In any case, an article about the medical/legal professions, titled, “The Falling-Down Professions“

Says that the quick-fix generation isn’t likely to apprentice itself into a long-term, high-effort profession that – especially with insurance costs these days? – will produce significantly less payoff than, say, starting the next Facebook.

Sure, you can get rich starting YouTube, but it strikes me that it’s a much more risky way of starting one’s life; in fact, as I remember, the owners of Facebook were already at Harvard (hard work to get in, at least :P) and studying something else.

In any case, it strikes me that, if all the smart(ish), motivated people want to be in computers, business, etc, we’ll get different types of medical students, and, therefore, different kinds of doctors – either major idealists (the kind who can carry idealism through 20 years of school and residency), or those who for some reason (say, antisocial, what have you), didn’t or couldn’t go into a potentially easier or more lucrative profession.

Ditto with lawyers, although I can’t help thinking this is slightly less important.

In any case, one of the payoffs for being in medicine or law used to be a kind of invisible cloak, a prestige that followed the individual who’d given so much of his life to the service of others. It used to be you were a heart surgeon – now you’re just another technician doing cardiac procedures. Once, you were a flashy trial lawyer. Now you’re just another suited slimebag. What’s to like?

So the money’s going down, the perceived rewards are going down, and the prestige – for all but those at the top – is disappearing. Question: where will all these facebook owner-wannabes be in 30 years when their hearts give out …?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/fashion/06professions.html?em&ex=1200027600&en=d9ecf7fd36e3fd5b&ei=5087%0A

A fun link

I’ll put this in Links (under medical) too, but check out this anatomy site: http://www.winkingskull.com.

You can learn all the parts of your body, and then test yourself on them. I haven’t done this yet; most of what I learned in highschool biology went in through my eyes, and spilled out onto the page, ne’er to return (pity, that), but this is very, very cool.

In other anatomical news, cardiologists will no longer be dissecting dogs as part of advanced medical training. Says the NYT, cardiological training has long included

operating on dogs to examine their beating hearts, and disposing of [the dogs] after the lesson.

They’ll be using echocardiograms (kinda like an ultrasound for the heart) and other advanced technology to study instead. I’m glad we’re saving more dogs, but find myself asking two questions: one, so (huzzah!) now we’re not operating on dogs that will now be euthanized instead – meanwhile, we keep and kill thousands of animals in less humane conditions every day. This is kind of like UN delegates – all of whom had flown to the meeting – talking about how to reduce carbon emissions. It’s good on paper, but seems not to address major underlying attitudes …

second, I do wonder if it isn’t better, after all, for a medical student to actually see and handle a beating heart, than to learn from a screen. In the end, it’s touching that’s believing, isn’t it?

Your Cyborg Future is Here (part II)

This YouTube video shows off something very interesting, something I think is the wave of the future; mechanical body parts, moveable via brain waves. The mechanism reads your brain waves, and performs the action, so that (for instance), one can think “go left” when in a game online, or “curl fingers,” and the action is performed.

All of this has been coming along for some time (I still can’t find the early articles about monkeys racing cars via brain waves…), but what’s *really* interesting, in my opinion, is what’s said right at the end of the vid:

“and eventually create cybernetic body parts
that can be moved by brain power alone…”

The medical applications, of course, are astonishing: paralyzed people will gain mobility. War amputees will run again. Those with arthritis will once again hold cans, cut fruit, even pick up pins. But what about other applications? Cybernetic body parts need not be limited to natural or necessary ones; what about an extra set of hands, worn low on the back? What about eyes in the back of your head? Backpacked guns that target automatically and fire in the blink of an eye? What about driving your car – or (more likely?) controlling your phone and music, and chatting via text while driving – all via brainwaves? I’d love to have a long, prehensile tail, myself (trust me, you don’t want to know why …)

Even more exciting, this could make pseudo-telepathy possible; If a computer can read letters or words from my brain (as in the “Second Life” clip from the movie), and those words can be transmitted wirelessly to someone else – and then downloaded and read/heard …

I can’t wait! I just hope I’m not too old to learn to use this technology when it goes commercial… ;)

On a related note: this post shares a title with an earlier post of mine: Your Cyborg Future is Here (Part I), which talked about internet/instant information dependency, and my points then hold true: As tool users, innovators, we have to be very aware of the tension that exists between tool use and tool dependency. I am, of course, aware that at this point human civilization depends on technology for survival:

Humanity develops technology in response to population growth and the resultant crowding and struggle for resources. Technology… allows human societies to thrive at increasingly higher population densities and in in more inhospitable regions than ever before. This is a consistent historical trend, one which shows few, if any, signs of stopping. (“Sustainability and Technology,” Nov. 8)

However, I think there’s a fine line between creating a civilization dependent on technology, and creating people dependent on technology. There’s a fine line between using the internet, and using the internet as a substitute for thought, reason, and memory.

Perhaps even more important: there’s a fine line, and there must be, between a society that is technologically advanced, and one in which one must be technologically savvy in order to succeed. At the very least, if the latter is going to be true, we must (somehow!) find a way to insure that technological ability is correlated as much as possible to skill and interest, rather than (as it is now) to socioeconomic status. A true technological divide can only deepen the already chasmic socioeconomic differences inherent in US society – if it hasn’t already.

(Easier said than done, I know, but this is a theory blog,
not a presidential candidates’ stump speech…)

A final point: Advanced technology is fanatically important in the modern world. Technological dependency (whether it comes in media or pill format) will only take us away from the physical, the natural; and (yes, I’ll keep saying it) – if we discount our bodies, we discount what it means to be human in the first place…

(vid link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d55CJYtHKAI&feature=user)

litigious societies and liberty at work (Re: Staph infections)

I wrote the following response to other readers’ responses to this article about drug-resistant staph infections:

To 241, Linyo: We live in a litigious society. If your doctor doesn’t prescribe the antibiotics and your child gets very sick, you sue the doctor. He or she is already paying near half his or her income to medical malpractice insurance, and that amount goes way up if you sue. Furthermore, many doctors are basically handcuffed by the system; they have to see 8 or more patients an hour or Medicare won’t pay – writing a prescription takes 2 minutes. Discussing healthy parenting takes 20.

So: NOT prescribing takes longer and may lead directly to massive personal, professional, and financial difficulties for the doctor. On the other hand, prescribing the antibiotics won’t hurt anyone — in the short term.

Doctors write the prescriptions, but let’s not kid ourselves here – they’re not in control of the system or even of most situations any more.

To Keith, #212, who posted this:

“Yes, once again the responsibility for public health is erroneously placed on the individual… Shame on the keepers of public institutions…”

– correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t the word “public” imply personal responsibility? The ‘keepers of public institutions’ are people just like you, who just happen to work for the state instead of the local grocery store.

The idea behind a true democracy (even if that’s no longer what we have here in the US) is that we have the freedom to make our lives and communities – and, ultimately, the world – a better place. You want the government to take care of you, move to Cuba, where they have a mature system much like the one you’re describing.