All Articles by T. A. McNamee, MD
Dr. McNamee is an associate professor and internal medicine residency program director at Sanford School of Medicine of the University of South Dakota.
Medicate or Educate? – Just Pop a Polypill
At this moment, a trial is underway in India. This trial, named the TIPS trial, involves a new medication -- a so-called “polypill” -- which contains three antihypertensive drugs, a statin, and aspirin. Its researchers enthuse that it may cut the risk of cardiovascular disease by half in healthy people. So far, the study has shown that the side effects of this medication are minimal, or at least not any worse than those of any of the individual components alone. It’s also demonstrated small but significant reductions in blood pressure and cholesterol. The bigger question is: why do we think we really need this medication in the first place?
Be a Doctor! The Hours are Great!
Residency training in the United States has historically been a period of abusive hours and intense training. Until recently, there was no limit to the number of hours per week a resident could work. In fact, that has something to do with why they’re called “residents” in the first place: they practically lived in the hospitals in which they worked.Then came the Libby Zion case, in which a young woman died while under the care of overtired residents. Suddenly America realized that it probably wasn’t a good idea to have inexperienced doctors taking care of really sick people on less than three hours of sleep per night.
Who Gets to be a Doctor?
I was intrigued by a recent article in the New York Times describing how a Swedish medical school admitted a student whom they later learned had done jail time for murder. Apparently Swedish universities aren’t allowed to do criminal background checks, and even if they were, the student in question had legally changed his name prior to his application to medical school. So now the murderous Swede is a medical student, and the school is wondering what to do with him.
Father’s Milk
There’s a great scene in Meet the Parents in which Ben Stiller’s character Greg is trying to convince his future father-in-law, played by Robert DeNiro, of his history of milking cats in Detroit. He claims it’s possible because cats have nipples. DeNiro’s character replies, “I have nipples, Greg. Can you milk me?”In spite of the disturbing mental image this conjures, it actually is possible for men to produce breast milk. As DeNiro’s character so comedically noted, men do indeed have nipples.
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