Doctors (M.D.'s) and radiation

Here are two excerpts from an interesting pair of articles that appeared in the New York Times recently.  In one, they tell of patients all over the country getting radically overdosed by hospitals that x-rayed their heads for a computerized tomography scan (CT scan), leading to hair loss where the x-rays entered their heads, and, more to the point, possible brain tumors down the road from the radiation damage; in the other, they tell of medical schools beginning to waive the science requirements for admission, because they are just too hard for some of the doctor wannabes, many of whom are children of doctors or hospital executives. One of them just didn't want to "waste a class on physics." Another, Kathryn Friedman, has 3 relatives high up at Mt. Sinai Medical Center. 

The Radiation Boom: After Stroke Scans, Patients Face Serious Health Risks 

By Walt Bogdanich

Published: July 31, 2010

When Alain Reyes’s hair suddenly fell out in a freakish band circling his head, he was not the only one worried about his health. His co-workers at a shipping company avoided him, and his boss sent him home, fearing he had a contagious disease.  

Only later would Mr. Reyes learn what had caused him so much physical and emotional grief: he had received a radiation overdose during a test for a stroke at a hospital in Glendale, Calif.
Other patients getting the procedure, called a CT brain perfusion scan, were being overdosed, too — 37 of them just up the freeway at Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, 269 more at the renowned Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and dozens more at a hospital in Huntsville, Ala. 

Getting Into Med School Without Hard Sciences

By Anemona Hartcollis

Published: July 29, 2010

...“The default pathway is: Well, how did they do on the MCAT? How did they do on organic chemistry? What was their grade-point average?” ... “That excludes a lot of kids,” said Dr. Kase, who founded the Mount Sinai program in 1987 when he was dean of the medical school...

“You have to have the proper amount of moral courage to say ‘O.K., we’re going to skip over a lot of the huge barriers to a lot of our students,’ ” said Dr. David Battinelli, senior associate dean for education at Hofstra University School of Medicine. 

... [The students] forgo organic chemistry, physics and calculus...They are exempt from the MCAT.

Among the current crop is Ms. Adler, 21, a senior at Brown studying global political economy and majoring in development studies. Ms. Adler said she was inspired by her freshman study abroad in Africa. “I didn’t want to waste a class on physics, or waste a class on orgo,” she said.

A classmate in the program [is] Kathryn Friedman, 21, ... a senior, majoring in political science. Her mother and uncle are doctors at Mount Sinai; her father, Robert Friedman, who works in the entertainment business, is on the Mount Sinai Medical Center board.

The humanities program has allowed her to pursue other interests, like playing varsity tennis and going abroad, she said. 

 

Apparently for many people we share this world with, the laws of science are just an obstacle, and damn the consequences.