They’ll card you.

But only if they think you’re not supposed to be drinking yet. God bless them because you want to look young when you’re starting out in this publishing business. You’ll be interning, probably, with a bunch of kids that just graduated.

Getting carded will make you feel awesome if you’ve started a new internship where one of your primary responsibilities is BISAC Subject Coding.

No one will lie to you about how fun it is but they’re telling you the truth about how it’s important to make your books findable on the internet. It’s just, you won’t want to be responsible for doing that all day without getting paid.

That’s why you’re meeting your friends at the LCBO to pick up a few cans of pear cider instead of meeting at a bar after work like everybody else who got their pay directly deposited into their account the midnight before.

That’s where I’ve been, interning at this new place, and why I wasn’t posting for about a month.

Mostly because my commute to work in the harbourfront part of town is a monster drag that takes forever. And it’s cost effective, splitting a six-pack with a friend before you go down to the water and talk about what you’d rather be doing all day at least until rush hour is over.

Making salmon sandwiches, sailing around Lake Ontario and then around the world comes up a lot.

I know people who’ve had to do a few internships. Two or even three of them.

Some intern at one place for longer. Some do totally different internships, I mean like different departments all together. Some still don’t find work in publishing after all that, but, those are the ones you’ve met.

You’ve met them at low points in your life. Like when you went back to retail last summer, selling books and doing author events part-time at that store I used to blog about.

She’ll probably be your supervisor and most likely she’s done at least three internships and has given up on publishing, probably forever. She’s decided to make this retail thing work and every single one of her crushed dreams get overcompensated with micro-managing you and repeating herself.

She’ll say stupid things like, being ingratiating is a good thing while you’re trapped on break together in the walk-in closet of a staff room.

But it’s not like I could find work with an actual publisher either or in anything full-time really. I was starting publishing school soon and this felt perfect, working with books at the store, being able to work around my classes in a part of town like Yorkville.

I did Sales last time. I’m doing Marketing & Publicity now at a nice Canadian independent publisher. It’s been around for longer than me and it shows in our founding publisher’s shuffle. God bless him too.

I’m going to do stuff like write for their blog and write press releases and do award submissions and yes, social media. I have to, it’s just not going away. I’m going to have to re-activate Facebook, tweet all the time and put stuff on YouTube.

This is the future of publishing, readers.

But this is my second internship and I’m kinda worried I’ve got a smug, “I told you so.” coming from that bitch supervisor if we ever bump into each other again because I think publishing killed her on the inside a little bit.

It happens.

But listen, getting carded at your local LCBO on a Friday night trumps being a mature intern who attracts publishing burnouts.

The cashier even put on her glasses and smiled.

I wasn’t hurt for long when she immediately apologized once having a closer look at my face and presumably, the deep-set lines there.

She put my beer in a paper bag without asking if I even wanted one. I gave her my ID anyway and told her she made my day so she’d stop blushing.

Don’t forget you’re putting a ton of valuable experience on your resume. And if you ask, you shall receive the office e-reader over the weekend so you can write a summer reads review by Monday early afternoon.

That’ll be good for you when the right job finally opens up at the right place doing exactly what you want with benefits and direct access to natural light.

And if having a relationship with the author is on your list then take this Marketing & Publicity internship seriously. Because otherwise the only relationship you’re having with the author is with his manuscript, reading it over and over.

Plus looking for Oxford commas until it’s time to deliver boxes full of advanced reader copies around the office and then around the world.

I’m telling myself to Wilson Phillips it.

If I hold on for one more day things will go my way. I’ve seen Bridemaids three times now.  I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve watched Under the Tuscan Sun before bed. It’s helped me believe good things can still happen.

And that when you learn to love living within your means being grateful for everything you’ve got you get way more.

Every time.

LCBO, Toronto Parks and Recreation and damn good friends, this post is for you.

—-

GUJARAT, India – Rambha Gajre was desperate. She and her family faced eviction from their cramped, tin-roof hut if she didn’t soon repay loans she used to cover life-saving medical treatment for her son.

So Rambha did what thousands of other desperate women and men from India’s slums, and across the world, now do to survive — she signed up to be a human guinea pig in drug trials for foreign pharmaceutical companies.

“I am helpless, I have to do this,” she said. “They don’t really force us, but I don’t have a choice.”

Read the full article and watch video from the episode  by clicking the link below.

In India, oversight lacking in outsourced drug trials.

–Michael M.

It’s starting to suck to be Leigh Turner. Dr. Turner is an Associate Professor at the Center of Bioethics at the University of Minnesota. Turner authored a letter sent to the FDA concerning stem cell trafficking and use in non-FDA sanctioned procedures.

Dr. Turner has called to task CellTex Theraputics Corp. and RNL Bio on eight key points:

1. The safety and efficacy of stem cells offered

2. The deaths that have allegedly been linked to RNL Bio cells

3. Whether or not the Texas Medical Board can approve the use of non-FDA approved stem cells

4. If RNL Bio has arranged U.S. citizens abroad to receive non-FDA approved stem cells

5. If CellTex is selling stem cells to clients

6. If RNL Bio is marketing adult stem cells to clients

7. If proper informed consent practices concerning non-FDA approved stem cells have been followed regarding CellTex and RNL Bio stem cells

And number eight is the kicker…

8. If Dr. Stanley Jones, Vice President and Chief Medical Officer of CellTex, administered adult stem cells to Texas governor Rick Perry.

ABC News says that Rick Perry received his own stem cells. It also states that, even if Perry did receive his own stem cells, this is not an FDA-approved procedure. ABC News goes on to say that “a branch of a South Korean company [RNL Bio] that has become known for commercialized dog cloning, ‘regenerative’ beauty products, and accusations of conducting ‘stem cell tourism’” was the company that cultured Perry’s stem cells.

It gets more complicated.

The online magazine Slate ran an article about Dr. Glenn McGee. McGee is a bioethicist. He was the founding editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Bioethics (AJOB). He also enjoyed the status of an endowed chair – a position that can be viewed as winning an academic lottery – at Albany Medical College (AMB). Three years later, McGee left that post under circumstances that have never been completely divulged. With that said, it is to note that Scientific America reported that McGee was in a romantic relationship with the director of graduate studies at AMB, Dr. Summer Johnson — McGee’s now wife. He then went to another endowed chair appointment in Kansas City. He left that post on February 13, 2012, and took a new position as the President of Ethics Research Division with CellTex. That lasted 15 days. He resigned with CellTex on February 28, 2012.

And then it just starts to go pear-shaped with stupidity.

Why did he leave? It’s hard to be the editor-in-chief of the discipline’s premier journal and work for a private company without people asking if you’ve ever heard of this thing called conflict of interest. It’s why good research studies don’t allow the primary investigator to select the patients to include. It’s also why you don’t appoint your wife the editor-in-chief once you’ve stepped down from that very post. But that’s what happened — Dr. Summer Johnson McGee replaced her husband at AJOB. Maybe her hubs went confused when she said she needed a job. The discipline’s premier journal remains the biggest joke in the industry. I’ll admit, I am brand-spanking-new to the field, but I don’t think it takes a Ph.D. to recognize an educated idiot. Seriously, Glenn, could you make any more bad-fucking-decisions? I hear the Statue of Liberty has a torch for sale.

It’s so hard to be a wunderkind these days.

Back to Dr. Turner: if you plan on slaying Goliath with your measly slingshot, make sure you have a heavy rock.

The article Slate ran is gone. In its place is a retraction notice and an apology to Dr. McGee for their failure to meet appropriate editorial rigor.

The folks over at CellTex aren’t happy. They want Dr. Turner’s letter to the FDA removed from the internet. Of course, I was afraid that might happen, so I downloaded it. I also have the rebuttal letter from CellTex’s “representatives” to the FDA and a separate letter to the University of Minnesota blasting Dr. Turner.

It’s like a giant bioethical soap opera. I’ve tried to link as many articles as I could to this post. It’s fascinating reading. I wish there were more heaving bosoms, psychos with alter-identities, and bastard children. Fingers crossed!

–Michael M.

A couple years ago, and while I was still in my undergrad, I was approached by a Ph.D. student wondering if I would write [gender neutral pronoun] dissertation. I said there would be a time when I wouldn’t want to write my own, so I didn’t want to ruin the experience. This article is a bit worse in my book, but it’s timely enough as my ethical research class just finished talking about ghostwriting…

__

Critics Respond to Dismissal of Ghostwriting Accusations

Some bioethics experts are criticizing Penn’s dismissal of the research misconduct charges levied by a psychiatry professor against two of his colleagues in the department.

Last July, professor Jay Amsterdam alleged that a paper published in 2001 under the names of Psychiatry Department Chair Dwight Evans, professor Laszlo Gyulai and three researchers unaffiliated with Penn had actually been ghostwritten by a company hired by the manufacturer of the drug that the paper was examining.

A faculty inquiry committee convened by the Perelman School of Medicine concluded that “there was no plagiarism and no merit to the allegations of research misconduct,” according to a statement released earlier this month.

“While current Perelman School of Medicine policy and journal practice call for acknowledgment of the assistance of a medical writer,” the statement read, “the committee concluded that guidelines in place in 2001 did not.”

Eric Campbell, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School who studies physician conflict of interest, said it “seems very disingenuous” to dismiss the charges of ghostwriting simply because there were no official rules at the time.

“People in academics know it’s not okay,” he said. “Do you think a student would have been let off? If students know, faculty should know … It’s against the basic tenets of science.”

This article first appeared in The Daily Pennsylvanian (03/11/2012)

Read the full story here:

http://thedp.com/index.php/article/2012/03/after_dismissing_of_ghostwriting

_accusations_critics_respond

–Michael M.

There is something about the capitalist slant of making money on healthcare that seems wrong to me. Healthcare is the only industry I have ever worked within – a year and a half of teaching English at JCTC. I worked in medical devices, and if you have ever had a vacuum cleaner salesperson solicit your house, it’s very similar to a device sales rep. visiting your clinic. I can’t even tell you how many thousands of dollars that have been spent on me trying to win my affection for a specific company’s device. And as much as I love being taken out to dinner or flown to X-location for “training,” it’s a side of healthcare that makes me feel horrible about the “perks” associated with my previous life.

Now: I am going to be a little rough with the United States in discussing the “unique” way we deal in healthcare. I’m not saying at all that I don’t treasure the fact that I am a citizen of the United States, but, when it comes to how healthcare is made into a commodity, we are victims of our own wants. We want to live in a country that is the “home of the free” and a place where the “American Dream” can flourish. However, I feel like the American Dream should include low-to-no-cost health insurance. I am insured through the university, and it’s only because I am a fellow in the Bioethics program. If health insurance wasn’t part of my fellowship, I wouldn’t have any. For me, the American Dream is made possible by going back to university to acquire more knowledge. But if I don’t have at least a part-time job – and sometimes not even that will bring health insurance – I can’t receive insurance benefits. Why is health insurance considered a benefit of employment? Are the people who are unemployed or under-employed not the people who need health insurance coverage the most when it comes to off-setting out-of-pocket expenses?

I am taking a health policy class this semester, and the authors of our textbook – Leiyu Shi & Douglas Singh – use the term “fragmented” to discuss the delivery of healthcare in the United States. Fragmented  is just a fancy word for “ broken.” and the top 10 differentiating characteristics the authors give as the reasons the United States current healthcare system is unwell reads like a laundry list of excess-based problems:

1. No central agency governs the system.

2. Access to health care services is selectively based on insurance coverage.

3. Health care is delivered under imperfect market decisions.

4. Third-party insurers act as intermediaries between the financing and delivery functions.

5. Existence of multiples payers makes the system cumbersome.

6. Balancing of power among various players prevents any single entity from dominating the system.

7. Legal risks influences practice behavior.

8. Development of new technology creates demand for its use.

9. New Service settings have evolved along a continuum.

10. Quality is no longer accepted as an unachievable goal in the delivery of healthcare.

As conduits of health care providers within the already established system in the United States, physicians have to get paid. Reimbursement is a constant hot button topic with physicians. If a doctor can’t make enough money to exceed payroll and the overhead for his or her office, there’s not much hope for that doctor continuing to be part of a viable heath care delivery point. It’s a give and take. Patients give fees; doctors collect payment from the fees patients pay. One positive in this arrangement is that patients are customers. We pay for services that are expected to be rendered in a satisfactory way. Doctors are bound to deliver care to paying customers. (SIDE NOTE: the original wording of the Hippocratic Oath reads that physicians should always render care under a moral obligation even when patients cannot pay.) However, reimbursement is slight in some cases, so a negative might be that a physician might not elect to see people who are uninsured. I also can’t help but wonder if doctors don’t throw a battery of tests at their patients just to boost the amount of money that can be generated by over-testing. It happens all the time.

Insurance companies, on the other hand, want people as subscribers. This is a customer service-client relationship all the way. One positive effect from insurance companies is offering a variety of plan benefits so as to entice the subscriber to use their plan. Getting a new health insurance policy is like buying a new car: you want as many bells and whistles as you can get for a reasonable amount of money. Even if the perk is something useless, like a heated ashtray or preventative stroke insurance “just in case” you stroke out. Insurance companies feed of the fear of the unknown, and it’s one way that they can offer a private insurance policy with a $1200 premium. People will pay for it if they feel it will pay for itself. But the truth is that the insurance companies want to keep you as health as they can with yearly “well-visits” because the better you are physically, the fewer amounts of claims you will claim. Insurance companies hate when they have to give your money back.

I realize that I am being terribly long-winded, but there are four players in the healthcare system that seems to muck it up for all of us. But like everything else, there are both positives and negative to each role these players play.

Player: Managed Care Organizations

Positive: They make being sick simpler by acting as a means of delivery for payment to providers.

Negative: Who cares if you have been going to the same doctor for 25 years? Now you will see who the MCOs want you to see, or you can forget about them paying out.

Player: Employers

Positive: Employers make health insurance costs manageable by putting everyone into a pot of sorts. That $1200 a month premium might be a tenth of that cost thanks to employer contributions.

Negative: unless you work for a very large employer that can take a hit when someone makes a $1M claim, one sick person and his or her claim could torpedo low premiums for all his or her fellow employees.

Player: Institutional Representatives

Positive: So. Many. Regulations. It’s near impossible for people to keep up with their own healthcare benefits because there are so many regulations. Institutional representative keep up with all that bureaucracy for us.

Negative: See positive.

Player: The Government

Positive: Governmental involvement helps with programs that are an asset to subscribers. The Veteran’s Administration (VA) is a good example of how the government does make certain social programs available for those in need. The office of Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) would also be a positive that can be claimed to the defense of governmental involvement.

Negative: In an imperfect society – in a capitalist society – the government can be, and is, subverted by the private sector. Therefore, the government’s role can sometimes be nullified at the expense of its People.

All this business can get me fired up. So the thought I am left with is a terribly unpatriotic one: is the American Dream killing our healthcare system

– Michael M.

I just snatched this off Wikipedia. I wonder if there is any significance to the fact that the man in woman are represented by the color black?

–Michael M.

With debt from student loans nearing or, by some accounts, surpassing the amount of debt from credit cards in 2011, there’s been a lot of talk lately about whether a traditional liberal arts education is worth the cost. The 20-somethings who fill the ranks of the Occupy Wall Street movement, for example, have been ridiculed for their gold-plated fine arts degrees, which can cost as much as $100,000. Rick Scott, the Republican governor of Florida, has derided public funding for anthropology and other humanities disciplines as a waste of taxpayer money. “I want that money to go to degrees where people can get jobs in this state,” Scott said in a radio interview earlier this month.

Read the full text here: Is a liberal arts degree worth it?

–Michael M.

From: Service Account Cmoffice [cmoffice@louisville.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2011 12:59 PM
To: Service Account Cmoffice
Subject: Message from University Administration re: hospital announcement

Colleagues,

Many of you have asked questions related to the merger among University Hospital, Jewish Hospital & St. Mary’s HealthCare and Saint Joseph Health System. As many more people should. One of the more consistent questions has surrounded the continued provision of ALL reproductive health services for ALL women. Today we have some good news to announce: The University of Louisville is expanding our current relationship with Baptist Hospital East to include all reproductive services, including tubal ligations, which will no longer be offered at University Hospital following the merger. So who made this decision? The Catholics? Are you saying that tubals are no longer something UofL can do because it doesn’t “fit” with the worldview of the Catholic Church? I’m a protestant, and I doth protest that, if this decision was made on a religious platform and not on what best benefits the community’s need, this is an egregious decision and sad for the future of public health in Jefferson County.

School of Medicine Dean Edward Halperin and we promised from day one of the merger talks that UofL doctors would continue to provide all reproductive services for women following the merger.  Today’s action fulfills that promise as UofL physicians will continue to deliver babies and perform tubal ligations at Baptist East. All women – insured and uninsured – will have access to the new facility and its services. Wow! That is total bullshit. I don’t think introducing a plan to completely remove obstetrics from UofL Hospital and attaching obstetrical care to an east end hospital is really what everyone considers to be a victory for women in this case. In fact, the idea that this is an acceptable alternative is just shitty all the way around. It disgusts me, Mr. Ramsey, that you would even go this route in trying to justify this position. Who are you trying to convince when it comes to owning that this new partnership with BE is fulfilling a promise? Yourself?

The services offered at Baptist East will be in addition to the services offered at University Hospital, JHSMH and St. Joseph facilities.

Women throughout our community also will be able to obtain transportation assistance to Baptist East through a program similar to one that provides assistance to University Hospital and the University of Louisville Ambulatory Care clinics. What happens when it’s 3:30 AM? Do the women in labor just call a cab? Or do they call an ambulance because they don’t have to pay the fare upfront? Do you already see how that destabilizes public health and safety by needlessly dumping non-emergency patients on pre-hospital providers?

This partnership between UofL and Baptist East will take effect once the merger between UofL Hospital and our partners is completed. In the interim, reproductive services currently offered at University Hospital will continue at that location. In that case, I guess we just have to hope that the idiocy of this merger is its own undoing and that obstetrics stays at UofL Hospital.

This partnership ensures that the University of Louisville will fulfill its commitment to continue to offer a full array of reproductive services for all women in our region. And it ensures that the important decision on where to receive care, appropriately, will be made by patients and their physicians.  As long as that decision is always to send them to Baptist East. It’s not like the merger is adding services, it’s just uprooting them. You can’t chop down one tree and replant it on the other side of the yard because you want two trees.

More information on the partnership is attached and will be available on UofL Today.

Thank you for your support and your patience as we continue to develop this complicated but vital partnership for our community. The pleasure was definitely all yours.

Quick! Name three people out of touch with reality:

James R. Ramsey, President

Shirley C. Willihnganz, Executive Vice President and University Provost

David L. Dunn, Executive Vice President for Health Affairs

-Michael M.

“How are you today?” smiles George.

Preoccupied, Joe replies with a non-trite answer.

“Now that you ask, George, my new puppy has parvovirus, so I am afraid that he might be dead when I get home.”

Poor Joe and his puppy problems.

Horrified, George just keeps walking with his same 09:15 AM smile and makes a mental note to just smile at Joe from here on out.

As far as it goes with Bioethics and the Medical Humanities, it’s just about orienting yourself with the terminology. Bioethics is defined as the ethics of biological and medical research. That’s it. Cut and dry. If you poke around on the Internet, you will find competing versions of that what bioethics truly is. I like the aforementioned definition because it is succinct. The medical and biological fields are fraught with ethical dilemmas. Organ harvesting and donation; genetic counseling as a preventative measure in family planning; stem cell research and cloning; dealing with terminal illness and death and dying; public health outreach to minorities; religious and personal reservations that affect long-term care plans; and just about anything you can name that can be thought of as controversial can probably find a seat at the table of bioethics.

There is a great quote about the discipline from Orrin Hatch. Hatch is a Republican senator from Utah. Concerning stem cell research, he says:

“I understand that many have ethical and moral reservations about stem cell research, but for the same reason I describe myself as pro-life, I embrace embryonic stem cell research because I believe being pro-life is not only caring for the unborn but also caring for the living.”

Think about what Hatch is saying in this passage. He asserts himself as:

1) Knowledgeable about the controversy of stem cell research

2) Opposed to abortion

3) A proponent of using embryos for medical research

Knowing the little bit we know from the introduction given about who Hatch is, are any of these three points incompatible with the other? If so, why? Answering those questions is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to applying bioethics to healthcare controversies. And what we do as bioethicists and students training in the field is try to define why something is “right” or “wrong” with the knowledge that far less than 1% of such topics will ever have definite answers. Of course, that’s the fun of the discipline, too.

–Michael M.

Anyone is welcomed to submit posts, comment of posted entries, and challenge the culture of Bioethics with thoughtful opinions and ideas. This is a blog that is meant to both enlighten and persuade others of your opinions. Conversely, this is not a blog to attack other’s points-of-view, nor is it meant to be used as an official resource for student work in Bioethical seminars.

If you would like to contribute to our blog, please submit any pieces of writing to the following address: uofl.bioethics@gmail.com. Blog entries should not be greater in length than 500 words. Potential posts that could be added to the blog are well written, lack hearsay, show eloquence and thoughtful to the topic, and stay on task with the flavor of the blog.

Please visit often, and we look forward to reading what you submit and what you post as a follow-up to other already established blog entries.

The gang at uoflbioethics.wordpress.com

I hate to blame people that have good ideas and execute them well, but this is Christopher Nolan’s fault. He knocked it out of the park on Batman Begins and The Dark Knight – because he had a good idea. Because he made sure that a solid, coherent script got written for each movie. Because he stocked his films with competent-to-fantastic actors. Because he orchestrated events around what served the story. Because he made good goddamn movies.

But, sadly, the industry doesn’t see that – they see that they took a franchise and rebooted it, made it more serious and quasi-realistic, and more importantly than anything else, made it “darker,” and “grittier.” And that’s all that they’ll do here. They’ll skip story, and character, and plot that anyone will actually give a shit about, and instead as a means to get at those aforementioned cool buzzwords they’ll just, I dunno, shorten the film’s title so that it somehow seems more badass. Instead of The Fantastic Four, it’ll just be THE FOUR. Because fuck Fantastic, that corny shit’s for retards! THEY DON’T NEED FANTASTIC, THEY’RE JUST THE FOUR.

And they’ll all wear leather jackets and have five o’clock shadows and maybe occasional substance abuse issues, and from time to time they’ll stare off into the middle distance and that will be the point that you’ll know, sitting in the theater, that these characters are tortured and gritty and real and fuck you, we rebooted it!

Not to mention the branding for this stuff is suspect. Seventh Generation? Really? This is seventh generation toilet paper? This suggests that this paper has wiped seven asses and it is about to be eight. Is there Eighth Generation toilet paper? If so, can I send my used sheets in? Awful! Just awful…

I’m open to title suggestions for this article. I had a hard time choosing:

- Shitty Ideas

- Going Green When Going Brown

- Seventh Generation My Ass

- Green ‘Bowel’ Movement

I am not talking about verbal diarrhea but real SHIT. Given our well defined infra-structure, collecting SHIT is not big shit at all. With our well convoluted ducts and channels, it can all flow to a giant shit hole and the resultant METHANE GAS converter will provide some RELIEF for our energy scarce land.

So at last we really have something concrete to offer to our nation.

No shit … I mean .. .let’s shit!

PS: On Hindsight (no punt intended here), there is really such a thing as ASS POWER.

WHAT THE SHIT!

Cheers

Mikey