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Cannibal Nostalgia

Knight, who had worked as a meat slicer in abattoirs, skinned Price with such expertise and a steady hand that his skin, including that of his head, face, nose, ears, neck, torso, genital organs, and legs, was removed to form one pelt. “The excised parts of Mr. Price were then taken to the kitchen and at some stage, after she peeled and prepared various vegetables, she cooked Mr. Price’s head in a large pot with a number of vegetables she had prepared so as to produce a sickening stew,” he told the court. “The gruesome steaks were then arranged on plates together with the vegetables which she had baked and left as meals for the son and daughter of the deceased accompanied by vindictive notes.”

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I Concur Not

Med school matriculation has been artificially held steady “to keep down competition between doctors”, that’s also a load of crap

Medical School Accepted Applicants 1992-2001



1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001
17,465 17,361 17,318 17,357 17,385 17,313 17,373 17,421 17,536 17,456

Total change: -.5%

Medical School Matriculants, 1995-2006

1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006
16,252 16,201 16,164 16,170 16,221 16,301 16,365 16,488 16,541 16,648 17,003 17,370

Total change: +2.5%

Notice that without the grudging increase in 2005/2006, the net increase in medical school enrollments since 1991 would be essentially zero.

What effects does this have? As the US health industry expands, it must suck in more and more foreign medical graduates. This is one of the reasons why the ratio of doctors to population is so low in many countries – a huge proportion of their graduates emigrate to the US. These countries therefore see little incentive to expand spending on educating medical staff because of the high probability that they will simply leave, taking their training elsewhere. The US thus effectively off-books a huge education budget, often shifting the burden onto the poorest countries of the world.

As regards continuity of care, this is of course important. But medical journals are now increasingly full of studies analyzing at what point sleep deprivation tends to kill and injure more patients through physician error and lack of empathy than errors introduced through shift handover. And there is the problem of the high mortality and injury rate among interns and residents from vehicular accidents and workplace incidents.

I have yet to see many convincing papers that demonstrate that EU interns and residents kill more patients because of increased transfer rates due to their work hours being fixed at a much lower threshold than US interns and residents. Ideally, these are currently 58 hours per week max, and no more than 11 hours per day. One effect of implementing the new short hours (decreasing to 48 hours in 2009-20012) is a committment to a proportionate expansion in matriculating doctors.

The Nordic countries have long exceeded these restrictions with much shorter hours-per-week and maximum shift hours. Maybe someone can find out how this affects patient mortality and outcomes?

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Our Snippy 21st Century

Circumcision appears to reduce a man’s risk of contracting AIDS from heterosexual sex by half, United States government health officials said yesterday, and the directors of the two largest funds for fighting the disease said they would consider paying for circumcisions in high-risk countries.

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