Resolutions

Happy New Year,

This 2008 I hope to be a good year. The last was surely memorable. The next should live up to its sisters and brothers. The year started with a book by an incredible writer by the name of Atul Gawande.

This man is a cool man. He proposes the following five suggestions to live a better life as a doctor of medicine, but this should apply to life:

1. Ask unscripted questions
2. Change
3. Don't Complain
4. Count Something
5. Write
   

He has written two books: complications and better. Both are notes on the act or better yet art of medicine. Dr. Gawande writes through many questions and ideas. Some have a clear point in noting improvements in medicine (how did Warren Warwick establish the best CF clinic in the country) and others are more theoretical in scope (should medicine push to save without assuring some quality of life after care - Dr. Gawande discussed the difficulties faced by the heroic men and women coming back from Iraq with previously un-treatable injuries and now leading lives with disfigured bodies).

Interestingly and relevantly, the most recent issue of Chemical and Engineering News highlights a new polymer that is potentially well suited to connect live tissue with artificial limbs. PEDOT or poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) should be able to carry electric current from biological ions in tissue to synthetic electrons in artificial limbs. This technology is being developed by Biotectix, a University of Michigan spin off company.

A joke at every end:

What did the momma Buffalo say to her son when he went to college?

BiSon