Tobacco Companies Funding Lung Cancer Research! wtf !

One of the most things that I hate in this life is cigarettes, smoke, tobacco or whatever you call it. There are a bunch of reasons for this hate rid, which I won’t go into this time. Anyway, for my amazement today I heard on ABC news about this Cancer Study at Cornell Medical School that was funded (now hear this) by a TOBACCO COMPANY! Can’t be, right?! Well have a look at this article:

By MARILYNN MARCHIONE and STEPHANIE NANO Associated Press Writers
Mar 26, 2008 (AP)

“The disclosure of hidden tobacco money behind a big study suggesting that lung scans might help save smokers from cancer has shocked the research community and raised fresh concern about industry influence in important science.

Two medical journals that published studies by Weill Cornell Medical College researchers in 2006 are looking into tobacco cash and other financial ties that weren't revealed. The studies reported benefits from lung scans, which the Cornell team has long touted.

…Many were stunned to learn that a foundation Cornell set up and listed in the New England Journal of Medicine in October 2006 as a sponsor of the study actually got $3.6 million from a parent company of cigarette maker Liggett Group Inc. The tobacco source was reported in a New York Times story Wednesday.”

Cornell, come on! What were you thinking when you accepted this money?!!

Tobacco Company, for God's sake, Who would ever believe a Cancer research study funded by you?!! Sheesh!

Source:
ABC news

Update Mar 27

Sorry I haven’t been posting for a couple of days. I have been a little busy studying. If you are curious, I have been studying pathology, behavioral science and microbiology.

I postponed today’s edition of the Medical Student Carnival till next week too. Because of lack of time, I was afraid ill end up posting a mediocre edition, so I didn’t.

Medicaid seeks to cut contribution to GME funding

Medicaid seeks to cut contribution to GME funding

A change would hurt teaching programs, medical education leaders say.

By Myrle Croasdale, AMNews staff. July 9, 2007.

Teaching hospitals' training budgets could be cut between 15% to 30% if a proposed Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services rule change goes into effect. The Dept. of Health & Human Services wants to end federal matching of state Medicaid graduate medical education reimbursements.

Teaching hospitals escaped the cut this year. Congress passed a one-year moratorium on the cut as part of a military spending bill approved May 25.

For the entire story, click HERE.

2008 residency match summary

Residency match summery from NRMP

In case you are not wearing your glasses, click on the image to expand.

IMGs and 2008 US Residency Match

According to the NRMP also:


US Citizen IMG (international medical graduates)
Applicants 2,969
Matched 1,541 --- 51.9%
Unmatched 1,428 --- 48.1%



NON US Citizen IMG (international medical graduates)
Applicants 7,335
Matched 3,108 --- 42.4%
Unmatched 4,227 --- 57.6%

2008 Residency Match Stats

According to the NRMP (National Resident Matching Program)

2008 main residency match:

TOTALS

Number of programs: 3,475
Positions offered: 22,240
Unfilled programs: 512
US seniors applicants: 22,626
US seniors matches: 14,359
% Filled by US seniors: 64.6%


Because I'm interested in Family Medicine, here are its stats:


Number of FM programs: 455
FM Positions offered: 2,636
Unfilled FM programs: 105
US seniors FM applicants: 1,303
US seniors FM matches: 1,156
% FM filled by US seniors: 43.9%

Medical Student Carnival 2nd Edition 3-19-2008

First of all, In the name of all medical student bloggers, I would like to congratulate our fellow bloggers who Matched this year; secured a position in a residency program in the US. Namely, Graham at Over My Med Body, Lone Coyote at Medical Student Musings, and MedicalStudentgod at Creating the god Complex. Best wishes to all of them.

Now, to this weeks edition of the Medical Student Carnival.


Posts by Medical Student Bloggers (in no particular order)

• Med Student god from Creating the god Complex wrote on Letters of Recommendation (LORs), Dean's Letters (aka MSPEs), and Residency Interviews.
• Tomography from Indulge in the Fascinating World of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine wrote about fMRI and scientists claim to have figured out a way to predict the image that their subject is looking at.
• Arsenic from Alex Playing Doctor wrote about his experience Suturing in medical school.
• Beach bum from Anatomy on The Beach wrote about "The Art of Medicine".
• Vitum from Vitum Medicinus wrote how he would use the word "Collegial" to describe medical school.

• Anonymous at Half MD wrote You won't believe the stuff I saw today (schizophrenic woman) he wrote an other thoughtful post titled The Fake Doctors. Note: if you are a psychiatrist, Do Not read it!
  
• Anna Burkhead at The Differential,wrote What Makes a Bad Medical Student?
• Bertalan Mesko from Scienceroll wrote about Dangers of Web 2.0 in medicine, another article of his that I read and liked was 10 tips on how to acquire a disease!
• Graham from Over My Med Body started a series of articles Titled: "Health Care's Broke", here are two samples: Direct To Consumer Advertising - Shift Work
  
• The Evil Resident wrote "While I don't actually think that all of HIPAA is a steaming pile of lawyers' *&^% that makes physicians' jobs even harder than it already is..." You Got to Check it out!

• Frylime from A Quasi-Medical Autobiography, as a medical student, blogged about her experience in a Psychiatry Rotation.
• Clinton from Not My Second Opinion wrote about Sleep Hygiene
• Zac from Agraphia: Ravings of A Med Student, wrote about Feeling Like a Doctor for the First Time and Shadowing.
  
• Avaron over at Scrub Notes wrote Why Incentives Matter (Even For Physicians).
• The Little Medic at I'm a Medical Student Get Me Out of Here! asked Old Enough to be your Doctor?

• Anonymous at Borca's Area wrote about some Awkward Medical Terms.
• Harry at Unprotected Text wrote a memorable post titled "A Day to Remember" (Alzheimer's)
• Anonymous at "From Med School" wrote about The Obesity War and how Spine Patients Pay a lot and Get a Little
• Danielle at 6YearMed wrote How to Become a Doctor (Without Even Trying)
• Jeffrey from Monash Med Student wrote about A Medical Group on FaceBook (Caution!!! Disturbing Photos)

Posts by Non-Medical Students:

-From Clinical Cases and Images:

• HIPAA rules.
• NPR: Doctor Blogs Raise Concerns About Patient Privacy
• Can you trust blog? 10 question for medical bloggers

-From SDN: Trick Question : Tips for Medical School Interviews.
-From White Coat Underground:

• HIV Causes AIDS-I'll tell you how.
• More good HIV Science.

-From Radiology Picture of the Day:

• Direct Blow to the Left Orbit during a motor vehicle accident
• Young patient collapsed secondary to drug overdose (Extensive Cerebral Edema)
• Two Aneurysms arising from Anterior Communicating Artery and ... (Multiple Cerebral Aneurysms)

-From USMLEMD: Medical Digital Library (a massive collection of medical links)
-From NEJM: Green Urine


Things for students to think about:

-From Stuff White People Like: #17 Hating Their Parents
-From Edwinleap.com: Sex and College Life
-From YouTube: Gene pioneer Dr. J. Craig Venter gives the 32nd Richard Dimbleby Lecture



Thanks a lot for reading this weeks edition. If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions please drop me a line and I'll reply as soon as I can. Feedback is highly appreciated.

If you would like to submit posts for the next edition of the Medical Student Carnival please send me a link at prep4md[at]gmail[dot]com. For information about previous and future editions of the carnival visit Medical Student Carnival. Till next time, take care!

The Next Edition of the Medical Student Carnival

Man, Medical Student Bloggers were really productive the last couple of days! The second edition of the Medical Student Carnival is going to include more than double the number of articles it did last time.

Now I see why the carnival is supposed to be hosted by someone else each week! Though enjoyable, it is time consuming. I'm planning on hosting it here on "My MD Journey" another couple of times till the Carnival strengthens and gets more publicity. Plus, there are several things I need to straighten out.

I still didn't make my mind whether I should include posts related to medical students written by NON medical students or not. Also I'm encountering two problems: 1) most medical student blogs -though interesting- are rather diaries 2) most of the submissions I'm receiving from Blog Carnival . com look and smell like spam! (I WILL NOT INCLUDE THESE, sorry submitters I changed my mind)

Please give me your feedback on last weeks First Edition of the Medical Student Carnival.
Stay tuned till Wednesday!

Tips for Google Reader

Here are some tips to use Google Reader more efficiently:

• There are many keyboard shortcuts that you can use. Some of the most useful are: J/K item down/up O: open/close item S: add star M: mark as read/unread T: tag an item ?: displays a quick guide to all of Reader's shortcuts shift-A: marks all items in the current view as read.
• Star items for reference later on.
• Do a monthly Clean up of your reader. After a while you will realize that there are some feeds that you rarely read. Save your self sometime and delete the feed instead of skimming through the posts day after day.
• Set a certain time of the day to go through your feeds and stick to it. Based on my experience half an hour to an hour will do based on how many blogs you are subscribed to.
• A beautiful feature on the Reader is the search feature (no kidding this is Google's reader!). When you are in a hurry and looking for a certain article between thousands that have been pilling up for months this tool comes really handy. Just search for the article by keywords, author's name, title, etc.
• In order to see the original page of the post that you are reading you can click on the gray arrow icon (gray circle with two small white arrows). If you use the expanded view, you can click on the post's title instead. (i use this one all the time when i decide to post a comment on an article.)
• You can use tags to sort certain articles together. To do that, simply click the Add tags link at the end of the article. Then, enter the tags you'd like to apply.
• The Trends tool is awesome! It gives you some statistics about your reading Trends and your subscription Trends. If you didn't try it out by now, you should. It shows the top 10-20-40 feeds that you read. The most you stared. Number of articles read vs. % read. The most frequently updated feeds and so on.
• Last but not least. You can use Google Reader off-line! To be honest I did not try it out. But you can learn how to do it over here.

Man what an impact web 2.o has on our lives!

I hope that was helpful. Do you have any other tips? Please share them with us.

Free source for MRI : The Human Brain Atlas

I have been studying Neuroscience last week preparing for USMLE Step 1, which Im planning on sitting for next Sep. Some of my friends advised me to dedicate extra time to viewing and studying brain CTs and MRIs. In my search for MRI sources on the web I found several remarkable collections but unfortunately some were "stolen" (you know what I mean) and others had strict terms of use. I found one collection that was a little unique. The MRIs in are Copyrighted but they allow anyone to use them with no restrictions as long as you mention their source.


So, here you go:

The Human Brain Atlas

Keith D. Sudheimer, Brian M. Winn, Garrett M. Kerndt, Jay M. Shoaps, Kristina K. Davis, Archibald J. Fobbs Jr., and John I. Johnson

Radiology Department, Communications Technology Laboratory, and College of Human Medicine, Michigan State University;
National Museum of Health and Medicine, Armed Forces Institute of Pathology

In this atlas you can view MRI sections through a living human brain as well as corresponding sections stained for cell bodies or for nerve fibers. The stained sections are from a different brain than the one which was scanned for the MRI images...

Here is the copyright info:

All of the images on this site are copyrighted. They were produced with the support of public funds, and we wish to keep them available for public use. You may use them for any purpose which will not interfere with their use by others. We do ask that you SECURE OUR PERMISSION, so that we can track the uses being made.


There is no charge for the permission nor for the use of the images. The permission process is important for our guidance in producing additional images and also for maintaining our public support. We also ask that you credit this site as the source of the image(s), and the National Science Foundation for its support.

Sources:
The Human Brain Atlas
Copy Right Info
Michagen State Unioversity - Brain Biodiversity Bank

The First Edition of the Medical Student Carnival

As a third step in my pursuit of getting medical students from all over the world closer together to exchange experiences and expertise, get the new talented medical student bloggers the publicity they deserve, and most importantly to make our voices reach infinity and beyond! I decided to start a series of posts (called carnivals these days), with links to the new and outstanding articles that have been published by medical students in the past week or two.

In the beginning its going to be a solo effort. I will try my best to include only the best written, most thoughtful, and most helpful articles. That said, I tried very hard lately to subscribe and add as many medical student blogs to my Feed Reader as I can. I'm glad to announce that I keep track of more than a 100 medical student blogs, and so forth, my selection will be from these.

Without further delay, lets get to this weeks edition of the "Medical Student Carnival"!




Among all the amazing medical student blogs out there, two blogs in particular stood out among all the others in the last couple of weeks. Namely, Medical Student Musings by The Lone Coyote and Over My Med Body! by Graham, so lets start with these.

• The Lone Coyote from Medical Student Musings blogged about her struggle choosing what specialty she wanted to go into. After that, she described the diversity and different perspectives that medical and regular people have of medical fields. Then she gave future 4th year medical students a couple of words of advise on what to do about choosing their specialty.
• Graham from Over My Med Body! wrote about whether medical students should mention on their residency applications that they are bloggers or not. In another interesting post, he gave his path and advice to pre-meds on how to get into medical school (part one) and (part two).
• Danielle from 6YearMed wrote about his experience when an IV procedure went totally off track!
• Harry from Unprotected Text gave some advice on what not to do as a first year medical student!
• Are you considering enrolling in an MD/PhD program? Then you should have a look at what mylifemypace from my life, my pace blog has to say about what it takes to be an MD/PhD.
• Tomography from Indulge in the Fascinating World of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine posted 22 Must See Diagnostic Images for all Medical Student.
• Can Med Students save the world? read what Kendra from The Island Med Student blog has to say about that.

• MedStudentGod from Creating the God Complex gave his thoughts on: If you go back in time will you choose medicine again?
• nosugrefneb from /weblog wrote about How guns should be banned and reminds us of devastating incidents where college students where killed by gun-shoots.
• Bertalan Mesko from Scienceroll was this weeks guest on the Dr. Anonymous Radio Show. He is the first medical student to be invited to the show, by the way.
• CCLCM Student from CCLCM Student Blog wrote: "If I Can't Be a Doctor, At Least I Can Try to Act Like One" explaining an experience he had with a standardized patient at his school.
• Half MD from Halfmd.com wrote about an unbelievable thing he saw one day (check it out for your self!)
  
• Arsenic at Alex Playing Doctor shared his First Code experience with us.

Thanks for reading the first edition of the Medical Student Carnival. I know it is so humble compared to the prestigious Grand Rounds Carnival but I hope Its a start for an ever growing project :)

If you wish to submit a post for the next edition please send me a link at prep4md(at)gmail(dot)com

Bertalan Meskó Tonight on the Dr. A Show

Bertalan Meskó from Scienceroll is the guest today on the Dr. A blog-radio-show. Todays show is unique in that Bertalan is the first medical student on the show. Supposedly the show should be on air in 3 hour from now (Thursday, March 6th, 2008 at 9pm Eastern Time!).

Refer to:
The show
Bertalan's blog
Dr.A's blog

How to get 99 on USMLE Step 1

Again, I collected a list of links to several detailed USMLE Step 1 exam and 99 preparation experiences. The experiences are detailed and clear. Materials and question bank scores are included. If you are preparing or planning on taking the USMLE Step 1, they will be of great help, especially if you are an IMG (international medical graduate) or an IMS (international medical student).

zerocool79, step1/95-235

http://www.prep4usmle.com/forum/thread/30882/3/

guest007, step1/99-254

http://www.prep4usmle.com/forum/thread/37265

Kity 99

http://www.prep4usmle.com/forum/thread/64098/

Faraym 90

http://www.prep4usmle.com/forum/thread/61086/

Angel^Doctor 99

http://www.prep4usmle.com/forum/thread/61639/

p53 99

http://www.prep4usmle.com/forum/thread/28886/

edie

http://www.prep4usmle.com/forum/thread/60318/

Samisaf Step 1 / 99 NBME 800! --- My Favorite, concise and down to the point (I'm following his foot steps)

http://www.prep4usmle.com/forum/thread/58888/

rezaaa 99

http://www.prep4usmle.com/forum/thread/54138/

IceAge 99

http://www.prep4usmle.com/forum/thread/47109/

doc.jay 99

http://www.prep4usmle.com/forum/thread/47158/

muadt 99

http://www.prep4usmle.com/forum/thread/32726/

MRMAVERICK, step1/99 UW/78 Qbank/75

http://www.prep4usmle.com/forum/thread/52925/2/

sharvil,

http://www.prep4usmle.com/forum/thread/31304/1/

study_ing, step1/99 Qbank/80

http://www.prep4usmle.com/forum/thread/39091/1/

askdoc, step1/99 Qbank/84 ... Exhaustive guide to Step 1 (almost 20 pages long!)

http://www.prep4usmle.com/forum/thread/34492/


Related posts:
How to get a 99 on USMLE Step 1 using Question banks only?

Basal Ganglia Lesions (videos)

I was studying Neuroscience today from Kaplan Lecture note for USMLE Step 1. I came across several clinicopathologic correlations to the basal ganglia.

For a quick review:

• Chorea: cause of lesion : atrophy of the Striatum
• Athetosis: cause of lesion : diffuse Hypermyelinization of the Corpus Striatum and Thalamus Cerebral Palsy.
• Hemiballismus: cause of lesion : Hemorrhagic distruction of the contra-lateral Subthalamic nucleus, Hypertensive patients.

Note: all the above mentioned movement disorders are caused by lesions in the Indirect pathway.

• Parkinsonism: cause of lesion : Degeneration of the Dubstantia Nigra. This movement disorder is caused by a lesion in the Direct pathway.

I found a couple of videos on YouTube illustrating a couple of these movement disorders. I hope you find them helpful.

Chorea



Athetosis



Hemibellismus

10 Links for Medical Students

Here are 10 links for Medical Students I collected in the last week or two:

• A huge list of Medical Mnemonics thanks to dokidok
  
• How to get into medical school (part1)
• How to get into medical school (part2)
• Tips for taking the USMLE
• Graham from over my med body gives his opinion on how to "fix" the USMLEs
• 22 Must See Diagnostic Images for Medical Students
• If you had the choice to go back in time, will you choose medicine again?
• A collection of applications, links, tools, and resources for students
• Why its great to be a medical student
• Why are some doctors unhappy?