A new semester...

The Spring 2010 semester is here. My agenda is as follows:

Biochemistry
Neuroscience
Physiology
Behavioral Science

Now, I'm quite stoked about the first three courses. The latter, however, as a conservative, deeply disappoints me from the start. Our semester has begun with a review of health care policy, aka "why you students should just accept the government health care plan". Our lectures are by a man who holds a Ph.D., but, with a straight face spouts off the liberal talking points that have been debunked time and time again.

46 million Americans uninsured? No......

The U.S. has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the developed world. Not necessarily...

The uninsured can't afford to buy health insurance. Not according to this book...

Mercifully, these were the overt themes of the lecture, assumingly because we only had a 50-minute time frame for lecture, with some minor topics including the lecturer praising HMOs as the best way of controlling costs.

There were a few comments the lecturer made that I agree with, including the idea that if patients and physicians want more autonomy in their care, then costs will be higher than if the gov't decides on care and rationing of care. The rest of the semester that deals with health care policy will also touch on ethical topics such as sanctity of life, autonomy, health care rationing, alleged "access", and many more.

Fortunately, much of the semester is an introduction to psychiatry for 2nd year, so the health care policy lectures will be sporadic. What really irritates me the most is the idea that I'm taking out student loans at $50,000 a year to have professors use their political persuasion to lecture me. This lecture was not objective, there were no alternative views addressed, the statistics and studies that use them were false (have been debunked), and the lecturer made vague derogatory references to the political persuasion I belong to. I am not a Republican, or "big R" Republican, but a republican - "little r" republican (credit to Mike Church for the "little r" term). A hybrid of libertarian, constitutional, and republican conservative ideals. Conservative being key.

I took the opportunity to email a widely known physician activist against gov't-run health care for advice on how to handle this course. Given the nature of my home institution and the air of liberalism in the instructor, the best advice I was given was to keep my head down, regurgitate for the exam, and keep my conservative ideals in check for my future practice. And unfortunately, that's what I'm going to do. I highly doubt my university, the same university that employs Bill Ayers, btw, will actually concede to giving equal time to conservative options for healthcare in this case. In the end, though, I will have no excuse not to be armed with knowledge of the ideas the left wants to implement, and how I can do my best to implement my "little r" republicanism in the face of this.

I'm sure I will comment more on this course as the semester moves on. The rest of my courses though are great. I do enjoy my professors and appreciate that they give us a strict scientific education without much bias. Of course, there's always some element of bias in one's own field, but they do well to keep it to a minimum. No political themes, (save one immunology professor last year), no ethical or moral quandries to worry about. The material alone is hard enough without having to to bring emotion into play! Even our genetics professor was fairly balanced when discussing stem cells and other controversial medical issues.

Being a conservative, and a Christian one at that, I still feel it's important to be armed with all the information present in medicine today. I need to learn what embryonic stem cells are, and what they're used for. I just don't want my professors making qualitative statements about these topics based on their personal opinions. Just give me the facts and let me decide. Yes, abortions exist, and I want to know what the procedure is in an anatomical, physiological, and surgical sense. Some states allow physician-assisted suicide now. I want to know how it's performed in a biochemical and physiological sense. Do NOT tell me it's my "duty" to perform them though, just because you approve of them.

And so far, with exception to my new Behavioral Sciences course, it's been fairly benign. Now, for topics!

Biochem started the semester off with a lecture on blood clotting and thrombosis. Our current lecturer is incredibly thorough, too.

Physiology started out with the GI system. So I guess I'm learning how to deal with other people's shit right now (<--- comic relief portion of the post). Seriously, though, the GI system is considered one of the nasty, undesirable topics, but there's a lot of interesting things happening with our nervous systems and hormones that allow our bodies to keep on going.

Neuroscience seems to strike fear into the hearts of my classmates, but I think this will be the sleeper course that I come to love. Anatomy was also that way for me. Neuro is starting smoothly, mostly because my original career and degrees required a significant amount of knowledge of neuroanatomy and neurophysiology. Learning lower extremity sensory and motor movements will be challenging, but I'm hoping the rest will be a more in-depth review. I'm really looking forward to the lab - I really enjoyed my neuroscience lab when working on a doctorate degree years ago (of which I left to study medicine).

Outside of school, January's sailing on and we're halfway done with the month already. I kind of want time to fly until May. We have lots on our plate for the first half of this year! We're wanting to put our house on the market as soon as we finish the last 2 bedrooms and a few more small repairs. A new roof will go on when the snow melts (March????). I also need to get our taxes sent off before March 1, so I can meet the priority date for FAFSA filing. Since our government has decided to work towards bankruptcy I need to get a head start on loan qualifications.

So, this Spring of 2010 will be as busy as ever...