And it’s snowing in hell. A doctor columnist in the Wall Street Journal has made the case for single-payer . 301 health plans, and look where he works , nowhere near Chicago or Springfield. I give him props just for being able to keep up with 301 different health plans.

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WikiBooks (a Wikipedia cousin) has a good intro/refresher Spanish course online. I also found a Spanish Dermatological Vocabulary Used by Mexican Workers . Incredibly helpful.

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Love the idea of a medical school encouraging its students to blog , and no offense to the student bloggers over there, but it seems a little forced when you look down at the footer:

This page is maintained by UMHS Public Relations & Marketing Communications.
Contact UMMS
© 2005 Regents of the University of Michigan

The University of Michigan may monitor this blog about the information you’ll find or delete inappropriate content.

That’s some censorship I’m happy not to have.

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From the study’s conclusions: Each hour increase in television viewing was associated with an additional 167 kcal/d (95% confidence interval, 136-198 kcal/d; P < .001) and with increases in the consumption of foods commonly advertised on television.

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Great job, New England Journal. A new feature this week, called Videos in Clinical Medicine. Featuring Placement of an Arterial Line with a nice video, narration, and animation in a little Flash applet. As far as journals go, NEJM is my favorite; it seems to be the most technologically advanced of the major journals.

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Two tidbits from my Pediatric Urgent Care Clinic:

• Mom comes in with sick baby who has been vomitting after breast feeding. We see the child, he looks okay, and pediatrician reassures mom that baby will be getting better soon. Main thing to do is keep the baby hydrated. Perhaps smaller, more frequent feeding will help; Pedialyte might work as well. Instantly, mom wants Pedialyte. Pediatrician again reassures mom: mother’s breast milk is fine. Mom again, “No, I want the Pedialyte.” Me: How did we get to the point that we trust Pedialyte (which actually has too much sugar to be of the right concentrations) over evolution? Have we made the human body and breast so potentially pathologic that we’d rather use some man-made concoction?
• The effect of the nuclear family: my attending today said one of the biggest reasons she hated private pediatric practice was “4am calls for Tylenol dosing from rich parents. They don’t have close ties to grandparents or aunts or uncles, so they rely on the pediatrician for common ‘raising your child basics’ information.” I’ve often thought this is also why all the “X for Dummies” and “Idiot’s Guide to Y” have become so popular: often these are subjects that used to be passed down through generations and oral tradition. Now we opt to pay for the same advice from strangers, albeit experts in their field. (On one hand, maybe this nips some bad parenting styles in the bud. On the other, seems like an awful waste of often good, comforting information.)

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