I hear what you're saying... but people are people, and have the same weaknesses, desires, and sore spots whether they wear a badge or not. (Note: I've read many of your posts, KFG, and personally think you're a valuable contributor to this forum... so much of this isn't aimed at you... don't take it the wrong way)
Anyone who has ever dealt with the public has had one of those days: some jerk was rude to them, complained to their manager about something that wasn't their fault... basically treated them like human garbage. Cops get that on a regular, recurring basis... and only other cops seem to understand it. Is a cop really ineligible to receive common courtesy? I love the excuse that because a police officer was a little too authoritative with someone in the past, that now all cops are power-hungry jerks... change "cop" to "black" or "hispanic" and you have a bigot.
Look at some of the posts in this thread... "the only good policeman is a dead policeman" (that one got removed)... "I hate punk-ass chumps who get jobs as cops"..."This is a case of sloppy policework and power hungry or impatient officers." If you give a cop an attitude like that on your next encounter, it'll be a self-fulfilling prophecy all the way.
Cops need a little slack... they deal with antisocial punks all day long, and extending them some simple courtesy may be the first nice thing anyone's said to them all day (in fact, they'll probably wonder what you're up to, and react with suspicion). Cripes, you've had days like that... now imagine an entire career like that.
Of course, look at the usual slashtrolls: "f*ck the police... they're all worthless, and they signed up for that"... yeah, so insightful... To all you trolls: after your job gets outsourced to India and you default on the rent, picture a cop saying the same thing to you as he evicts you from your apartment.
talking works in the appropriate setting... but sometimes you need to get control of the situation quickly, particularly if there's potential violence involved.
I vividly remember one dashboard camera video of a traffic stop that resulted in a huge shootout, but began as a young man standing up for "his rights." The driver is out of the vehicle and off to the side of the road, talking with the officer. He's repeatedly telling the officer that he doesn't want to be frisked, or placed in the police cruiser, because he doesn't want to be "violated like that." The officer was very polite, and tried to explain everything to the young man... but that's not the scary part. The scary part is that on the tape you can see the young man's brother still in the vehicle, out of view of the officer, putting on body armor, retrieving weapons... time is not always on your side.
Conceptually it's similar to what we do with dynamic entries in SWAT; we move in rapidly, take total control, and overwhelm any resistance before they have a chance to think, plan, or regroup. I've not seen the video in this particular case, but I suspect the cop wanted to control as many variables as he could, and that means all parties involved, including the daughter. Additionally, the officer had no way of truly verifying their relationship... could have been pimp/prostitute, prostitute/john... even husband/wife. You'd be surprised how many wives of abusive husbands attack the cops, particularly when it becomes clear their old man is going to jail.
There is such a thing as taking "stand by your man" too far.
Some states do not allow a traffic stop by unmarked vehicles, for precisely the reasons you articulated (my prior law enforcement service was in such a state... traffic stops were ONLY by marked units).
Some states do allow unmarked cars... but you're exactly right about the danger... lonely road, by yourself, female, etc... I wouldn't stop either. What I would do is call 911 on your cell phone, advise them where you are, that you have a questionable police car following you, and you want to verify that they're legit. If it's not for real, they'll be very interested... there's few things cops hate worse than fake cops.
and then decide... the original link is a fairly slanted version of what happened (if it wasn't already dead you could check it... feel free to verify it when their site comes back up). I tried another link and found this site to be much more complete.
In short, the police officer got a call for a potential domestic violence or assault, attempted to question the man at the location who fit the description of the individual reportedly involved, and was met with a totally uncooperative attitude.
Let me tell you how a cop views this: virtually all of the people who hate cops have had prior run-ins with them... ie. they are some kind of scofflaw, or associate with such folks. When a cop gets a "f*ck you pig" attitude, his guard instantly goes up, and so do his antennae... you've stupidly just made yourself his adversary. The police officer in this case had reasonable suspicion that a crime had been committed... and when confronted with a possible suspect who was potentially violent, possibly intoxicated, and wouldn't even give his name, that officer had to act, so he detained the man.
What should he have done? Ignored the possible reported crime and just let him go? "Awww shucks, citizen... if you're not going to tell me your name then I guess I can't arrest you." Nobody gives their real name when arrested... we find out later who they are via fingerprints and witnesses.
Maybe it's my prior law enforcement background talking, but I really don't see the problem here. The law doesn't exist to hassle regular citizens... the officer needs to have reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed, and if he does, then he can detain to ascertain identity. An officer can ask you for your identity just walking down the street... but if you've done nothing wrong, you can say "no thank you" and keep walking. If he then physically pounces on you, that's being detained or arrested, and he'd better have grounds. If he doesn't, feel free to own him in court... I would.
Sheesh... as long as he's polite and just doing his job, what's wrong with telling a proactive police officer your name? There's something called common courtesy, and police officers should be eligible to receive it. Why is a cop ineligible? Because he works for "the man" instead of McDonalds? If you're innocent and a cop asks you your name, you could be an ass about it, insult the cop, smirk, and saunter away... but what would that prove? That you can be a smart-ass? Great... I'm sure your mother would be proud.
You're talking to the wrong guy. Even though I didn't start this thread, I will not apologize for pointing out the obvious double standard.
You're quite right though... Bush's intelligence has nothing to do with the accusations of the scientists in the article. Bush is not a scientist, doesn't pretend to be, and his science intellect is absolutely and totally irrelevant to the issue at hand. What recent president, excepting Carter, has had any serious science background? Better yet, can you show me a recent president who made his own scientific policy decisions without leaning heavily on advisers?
Bush's intellect is largely irrelevant, just as Gore's is irrelevant... they're just irrelevant for different reasons. Gore's IQ is irrelevant because he's not in office, and Bush's IQ is irrelevant because, like most presidents, he lacks scientific expertise/credentials, realizes it, and relies on advisers. Different reasons, same irrelevance on the science intellect point.
I'm not saying Bush isn't responsible for policy... He most definitely is, but that's not how this thread started. You can make a very strong argument that president Bush, as the man in the catbird seat, is ultimately responsible for all policy decisions... but that's different from deriding his intellect. He may have received bad counsel, but accepting counsel from the wrong people makes you a poor judge of character, not a moron. If he's guilty of anything, he's guilty of taking bad advice, and that's fairly common (ever go with a recommendation that turned out to be wrong? If so, then you're as dumb as Bush... welcome to the club)
You are trying to play politics by bringing Gore into this instead of discussing the merits of the accusations against the Bush administration.
No... I'm using Gore as a convenient foil to rebut an irrelevant point.
Worthless indeed... do try to direct your flames more appropriately in the future, AC.
I'm not a Bush hater or a Gore fan. You're being overly defensive. Paranoid I think it's called. Do you listen to Limbaugh a lot?
No... listen to Al Franken much?;)
Gore's choice of words was poor at best, and left the impression (I believe deliberately) that he indeed "created the internet," when at best he was a supporter of the project and little more. It's classic politician... take credit for as many things as you possibly can, even if your role was peripheral.
I like to give credit to the people who actually do the grunt work, not the political figurehead of the project, or the guy who helped appropriate a drop out of the federal budget bucket.
But as to your other point, I agree... grades are not always the best measure of intelligence... but you cannot use them to tear down one candidate while simultanously building up another. My point is this: if grades are the standard, then let's see how all our would-be-presidents measure up.
I personally find his statement that he "took the initiative in creating the internet" to be a grandiose attempt to take political advantage of the internet's popularity... He certainly was a supporter of the idea, but wrote none of the code, developed none of the protocols... he's trying to take credit for the hard work of a lot of scientists and engineers... I personally think that's obnoxious.
But that's not the issue. The parent poster attacked Bush's intelligence... I merely provided an equal-time counterpoint in the form of his previous challenger's record.
I also noticed you didn't refute anything I wrote, except to try to change the subject. If you're a Gore fan, Bush hater, or both, that's fine... but the parent poster attacked Bush's grades when his challenger's were as bad or worse.
They used Amphetamine (commonly referred to as Benzedrine or "bennies") and also Methamphetamine.
Their Methamphetamine prodution method lives on to this very day, in illicit clandestine drug labs... so-called "Nazi Dope" labs... named after the production method the Germans used for meth manufacture.
Most of the labs that law enforcement agencies clean up, particularly in the midwest, are Nazi Dope labs, primarily due to the easy availability of one of that production method's reagents (anhydrous ammonia).
Gore doesn't have a stellar academic record either, it's perhaps even a bit worse than Bush's (Bush at least completed grad school).
Gore made multiple C's at Harvard, also at least one D (in a science class, no less). Even worse, his grad school record from Vanderbilt is miserable... he received failing grades in five out of eight classes in the divinity school over the course of three semesters, and also failed to make it through Vanderbilt's law school (though he apparently left voluntarily to run for congress).
You can read it all in the Widipedia... text of Gore's page is here
happens pretty quickly after a couple of days... the human body absolutely needs sleep.
The human body really requires sleep to function adequately, and you can only accumulate a sleep deficit for a relatively short period of time before serious performace degredation occurs... The military has found that you can operate on 3-4 hours of sleep in a 24 hour period... but only for a few days in a row (4-5 max), and no amount of training will cancel out the performance deficit that results. Believe me... the military has tried all kinds of things to get around this.
When you are running a serious sleep deficit, you get slow, stupid, confused easily, you can't remember things, you suck at complex tasks... some people even hallucinate.
If you want a good example, you should check out somebody who's crashing after being on a methamphetamine run for a couple of days... part of it is simple physical exhaustion and neurotransmitter depletion from the drug... but a big part of it is simple sleep deprivation; they take days to recover.
The same thing happens to troops in the field, or troops in training (ask anyone who's ever been through Ranger camp how much sleep they got, and how numbed and stupid your mind gets after a couple of days).
Most modern special operators are pretty bright folks, who's jobs require a working brain... just being tough isn't enough. They need multitasking ability, and that's one of the first things you lose when you're really tired.
those drugs are only authorized in specific circumstances, and only to particular individuals.
For instance, pilots are authorized to take amphetamines for going "across the pond" (transatlantic flights), or for very long missions... they're not given routinely to anyone/everyone.
The worst of the negative effects that have been attributed to amphetamines are often dose and duration dependent. Paranoia, hallucinations, tremors, emotional instability... most of those come in people who have been using large doses, or for long periods of time. You can see these effects much earlier in someone with underlying mental illness (you wouldn't want to give these drugs to a bipolar or schizophrenic individual), but those people don't fly fighters.
I don't know what the final story will be on the pilots who bombed those canadian soldiers... but unless the pilot was an undiagnosed schizophrenic, I'd tend to doubt it was a drug-induced hallucination.
medicine did work out for me... it doesn't for everyone. I'll warn you now, before you actually get to medical school and accumulate the 100-200k of debt... medicine's not what you think it will be.
If you have doubts about it, go work for a bunch of different doctors... listen to them, and particularly ask them what they don't like about their jobs. Trust me, you'll get an earful. If they bring up anything that you particularly can't stand (or you're in the profession for the money), quit before you enter med school. It's a bit late to decide in your internship/residency that it isn't for you... you'll have too much debt at that point to quit. I know physicians who worked just long enough to pay off their med school loans, then quit and did something else.
As for the shooting question... it almost doesn't matter if you were justified in the shooting or not... killing another human being at close range is traumatic for virtually anyone. Even officers who were about to be killed/seriously injured have a rough time. It's not necessarily the circumstances (though those can certainly make it worse)... it's the act itself.
There's no "code," just a normal human aversion to pain.
There's something you'll find almost universally among people who have killed someone; they don't talk about it, and especially not with strangers. Even among peers, it's almost never brought up (it's usually considered incredibly rude to even ask that question). This circumspection is not because killing someone is secretly pleasurable or the initiation to some kind of exclusive club... it's because the experience is so traumatic for the person who pulled the trigger. Anyone who openly brags about people they've killed (particularly close range or knife kills) is 99% of the time either a sociopath, or full of bullshit (there are exceptions, but they are rare). You'll mostly find that guys who have done it for real don't talk about it, and that goes for military and police officers. Ever wonder why Vietnam vets, Special Forces, SEALs, etc have their own organizations and reunions? It's because, among other reasons, it's next to impossible to talk about some of those experiences with anyone who hasn't been there. The unfortunate part is that some of those folks are truly haunted by the memories, and they can benefit from sharing them (current PCID theory absolutely encourages it... pain shared is pain divided), but "shared" is the key word... empathy and validation are part of sharing, and are weighted by the listener's background... validation from someone with no clue or experience doesn't mean much to most people.
Unless they bring it up first, I'd advise never asking anyone that question; you're essentially asking them to relive a terrifying, horrific trauma. The best analogy I can make is that it's like casually asking a rape victim to describe, in detail, that experience...
I'm not trying to give you a hard time, I'm just trying to save you from deeply offending someone in the future.
For my own part, I've had one or two close calls, but I've never shot anyone; I hope to continue that streak.
I really, truly enjoy intensity, and for very short periods of time it feels good to get your pulse rate up... but there's a downside; adrenaline clouds your thinking, and wears you out quickly. That can be a problem... a big problem. I enjoy skydiving, but if you let the fear/ground rush/adrenaline get the better of you and you don't think (ie. when you get a line-over, dual deployment, or other sticky malfunction of your main chute), it can cost you your life. In the ER, it's the same situation... except if I get wrapped up in the drama and stop thinking, it might cost somebody else their life (or their mothers/fathers/childs' life). SWAT's the same deal with different costumes... get excited and stop thinking, inadvertantly shoot a suspect, or one of your teammates. There's a reason tactical/military teams rotate point-man on patrol... it requires so much of your attention and energy that it rapidly drains you.
Crises happen, but you can't get caught up in them and "feed the rush." Also, the same rule applies to the aftermath. The best example I can think of is when we lose a child: I and most of my staff are parents with children of our own, and there's nothing, no thought more horrifying than losing one's child. It's something that runs through all our minds after we lose one from an auto accident, SIDS, etc... and the most difficult part of my job is delivering that news. I've sat and cried with parents after deaths. I've also fled with police/security running interference after grief turned to anger (some people deal with tragedy differently, and I'll just leave it at that...) But back to my main point: I/we cannot let that situation impair us in any way... because the next patient needs us, sometimes just as urgently, and the patient/ambulances never stop coming. It's for professional longevity that Post-Critical Incident Debriefing has found its way into ERs in recent years; mostly it's for the patients, but also for the staff.
As for computers, after a crushing 12 hours in the ER, or a string of shifts, I'm quite happy to go home, sit in front of a computer, and shut out the world for a few hours. I appreciate the intellectual challenge that computers offer... compared to my primary profession, they fascinate me in a way wholly different from medicine. It may come as a surprise, but much of medicine is a very inexact science, with lots of variables, most of which are out of your direct control. Computers are different... ALL the variables are yours, and the answer to your problem is always there in front of you... you just have to discipline your mind to recognize it. There's so little in medicine that you directly control... sometimes it's nice to interact with an item/environment where the rules are set, the stakes aren't quite as high, and your ability to solve a problem is limited only by your attention span.
Pleasure to meet you too (I should note that I only attempt to rock, with very limited success).
Frankly, my life story isn't really that interesting, or even unique, aside from managing to cram a few incongruous vocations into a relatively short span of time. I am an ER physician, I've served in the military in several combat zones, I've been a civilian SWAT operator, and am a computer geek... but beyond that stuff, I'm really fairly milquetoast. That particular vocational combination is not unheard of, BTW... you can find people a good deal more famous than myself with almost that exact combination of skills... and some have been doing it better and cleaner for years. For instance, our current US Surgeon General (he's actually a professional acquaintance of mine) is a former Green Beret, decorated Vietnam vet, 15yr SWAT veteran, boarded trauma surgeon (I may have slightly better m4d 'puter 5killz that he does, but that's it) and a super guy... I'd raid a drug house with him anytime. Seriously... I appreciate your interest, but I'm not really anyone of any great note or importance.
I'm not sure how much help I can be on the MCAT. I should point out that it's been well over a decade since I took it, so they've probably changed it significantly in the interim. Apart from simple fund-of-knowledge issues, if you're not a great test-taker (a very valuable and usually acquired skill), I might recommend Kaplan or something of the sort... you'd be amazed the number of questions you can salvage just by understanding the test itself and why/how they ask certain types of questions. Some of those strategies can save you from throwing away questions you otherwise wouldn't know.
BTW, I have to hand it to you, posting your email address on Slashdot... hope your spam filters are tuned;)
IIAD, and I must say I've never even heard of the theory that you are expounding upon in your first paragraph... to be honest, it sounds a bit popular-science-esque, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt of that one; you being closer to the basic sciences than myself. I would appreciate a link or two though, if you don't mind.
As to the second point, it's not a matter of inserting a harmful gene (any geneticist who purposely introduced an oncogene via gene therapy would probably be burned alive by his colleagues), it's a matter of improperly expressing/suppressing existing genes. If your retroviral vector (or whatever method you use to introduce your desired gene) happens to hit a suppressor gene's promoter, or an oncogene's silencer region, you can end up with a neoplasm (and those promoter/silencer regions can be thousands of base pairs away). Even if it only hits one chromosome... what if you're a heterozygote for that particular oncogene (ala retinoblastoma)?
I think genetic therapy holds great promise... and my hat's off to the folks pioneering it, but we're a long way from safely allowing weightlifters to use gene therapy to bulk up.
is a real phenomenon... I've seen people go truly bonkers from high-dose steroids.
It seems to be dose-dependent, and your chance of developing it is independent of whether you've had it in the past (ie. just because you went nuts one time, doesn't mean you'll do it again). Your odds also seem to vary depending on why you're receiving the steroids, suggesting that the initial disease process plays a role.
It's also more common in women than men (no joke intended or implied).
Some people don't like steroids, but I do (having been prescribed them in the past)... they give you lots of energy, all your little aches and pains go away, and you feel good. (there is a certain amount of euphoria with steroids). But there's a downside... a big downside. Check any medical text (or the PDR) for the long-term side effects of steroid use. Go ahead, I'll wait.
Ok, you looking at it? Yeah... that's the list I'm talking about... the one that goes on for several pages (and includes "roid rage")... you don't want to get on the long-term steroid train unless you absolutely have NO alternatives. That said, properly applied in the proper dose and for the proper duration, they're great, helpful, and lifesaving drugs... one of the most useful drug classes in modern medicine's arsenal.
There exist entire categories of diseases based entirely on immune system problems.
Rheumatoid arthritis, mixed connective tissue disease, Lupus, etc... all are autoimmune, and are a result of the body's immune system attacking itself. These diseases can be devilishly difficult to diagnose and treat... there's a reason why Rheumatology is its own medical specialty. Some of the drugs the rheumatologists use are potentially nasty, and include transplant drugs, and chemotheraputic agents... not stuff for the faint of heart.
By the same token, when you start monkeying around with DNA, you need to be careful what genes you activate or deactivate... Cancer is fundamentally a genetic disease, and a real possibility if you get an unregulated growth gene (or you inadvertantly turn off a suppressor gene). Cancers are funny things; they can even respond to simple hormones... precisely why women with a breast cancer history aren't advised to receive hormone replacement therapy.
Gene therapy has had some successes, but it's really in its infancy... I'd be awfully leery about using it just to bulk up at the gym. On the other hand, if you have a lethal genetic defect, and you're going to die without it, have at it. Forget Hans and Franz... you can find quite a few patients with potentially lethal genetic diseases (Cystic Fibrosis, etc) who'd be much better candidates for gene therapy than some weight-lifter.
It bears repeating... using it for simple body-building is absolutely foolhardy... instead of growing big pectoral muscles, you might inadvertently be growing yourself a big fat tumor... that'll look great at the beach.
Marfan's syndrome is a genetic defect in the gene that codes for Fibrillin, a major component of microfibrils in the body's connective tissues. Much of the pathologic consequences are noted in the eye and the aorta... the former location gets dislocations of the lens, and the latter location develops large (fatal if undiagnosed) aortic aneurysms. Marfanoid patients also tend to be tall, and have a lot of laxity in their joints, primarily because of their weakened connective tissues.
If you have weaker connective tissue than normal, it would probably be counterproductive to have greatly increased muscle mass.
I'm not picking on you, just pointing out that it might not be exactly what a Marfan's patient really needs... It might be useful in some kinds of muscular dystrophies, but the most common kinds have defective myofibrils... creating more non-functional muscle wouldn't appear to help them very much.
It sounds great in theory, but there are all kinds of potential problems with rapidly and artificially increasing strength that way.
If you increase strength very rapidly without allowing for the corresponding tendons and bone to adapt to the greater muscle mass, you can cause tendon ruptures and stress fractures (already well-known phenomenon in athletes). The body can adapt to all kinds of derangements if you give it enough time, but too much too fast? Bad news. I've seen people come in to the hospital with a hemoglobin level of 5, still walking (slowly) and talking. Now, that's theoretically too low to survive on, but if it happens over a long enough period of time, your body can adapt. If you take a normal person and immediatly bleed them down to a hemoglobin of 5, they'll die.
Plus, if you are turning over too much muscle tissue too fast and don't stay adequately hydrated, you can clog your kidneys and end up in renal failure. This happens periodically when some untrained amateur athelete tries an Ironman without adequate conditioning.
The human body is an amazing machine, but you have to be careful monkeying around with it... athletes may be after performance, but anyone who volunteers to be a guinea pig for this stuff needs his head examined.
Don't project the original poster's angst on me, my man... I have zero emotional investment in this man's incident. What I did, however, was point out the illogic and foolishness of his behavior.
The original AC called his doctor a moron, and accused him of malpractice... excuse me, but what expertise does he have to judge either his doctor's intelligence, or his professional competence? Does he somehow gain this right because of his superficial knowledge? Because he read some information on the internet and went of half-cocked?
I'm really tickled by the number of people on Slashdot who deride "lusers" who call tech support with no clue what they're doing... but when in the same knowledge-deficit situation themselves, feel they have the right to insult their physician and impugn his professional reputation.
Sorry, pal... but the original AC talked a bunch of trash and showed his ass, all without the slightest clue regarding the physiology, immunology, or pharmacology of his child's condition... I'm simply the guy calling him on it.
There's a reason why administrators don't give regular users root access on their servers... because people with superficial knowledge tend to do dumb things when they don't know what they're doing.
Second verse, same as the first.
Read the parent post
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They aren't giving you full service I agree... but read the parent poster's own words.
he perscribed a drug I'd never heard of. My wife called and I told her I'd look it up on the internet.
It sounds to me like the poster wasn't even present at the doctor's office, so he doesn't have any idea what was discussed or not discussed. Why do you think doctors document everything? I can't tell you how many patients forget everything I told them five minutes after they leave... printed discharge instructions are a Godsend for us, and they prevent people from coming back on us, claiming "he never told me that!" I've had patients do that many times, and when I get an irate phone call from the administrator/spouse/family/doctor, I read it right back to them straight out of their chart. I don't like doing that, but it's the only way I can protect myself.
What a moron. It verged on malpractice. But what could you do? Doctors stick up for each other, and I would end up looking like the idiot
He said it, I didn't. Then again, I don't know what else you call someone like that, who attacks his doctor without even a basic understanding of the disease process or its proper treatment...
Incorrect
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Hypochondriasis exists along a spectrum of psychiatric disorders, known as the Factictious disorders, where patients seek out care for imagined illnesses.
One of the keys is that they seek out care... with the extreme example being Munchausen's syndrome; patients who seek out the sick role so avidly that they fake illnesses, have unnecessary surgeries done, etc... they often harm themselves just to get medical care, and eagerly submit to any and all tests/interventions, including risky surgery.
Along that same continuum are the hypochondriacs... they often seek out care for imagined or fear illnesses, but it's different from a Munchausen's patient... hypochondriacs see doctors out of fear/anxiety rather than a desire to assume the sick role.
Besides their tendency to seek out medical care, they also have in common (all the somatoform disorders) the characteristic of being very resistant and difficult to treat. You can't confront them, you can't reassure them... they are utterly convinced they have a serious disease. Every doctor has a handful of these patients, particularly hypochondriacs (Munchausen's patients are much rarer), and they can be very frustrating to treat, primarily because they virtually never get better.
What the doctor was trying to do was treat your son's poison ivy by attacking the mechanism by which it is mediated.
You DID know that poison ivy is a hypersensitivity reaction, didn't you? Your own immune system causes the rash and symptoms. The rash of Poison Ivy is caused by a delayed, type IV hypersensitivity reaction (cell-mediated) to the oil of one of several species in the Toxicodendron genus. There is no way to treat poison ivy, except to temporarily suppress that particular immune response, often with steroids or other drugs. Then again, you could just wait... as you discovered. Poison ivy goes away if you give it enough time... but I can't tell you the number of people I see who demand that I do something about their symptoms right now.
If your son had a bad enough case that he was sent to a dermatologist, then your doctor may have been right on the money.
You have every right to do what you did... but don't accuse your doctor of malpractice; you're indicting him on an issue you clearly don't understand. You are exactly the type of person they are referring to in this article.
Then again, if we didn't have AC's talking smack, this wouldn't be slashdot.
Slashdot Mirror
I left my department a year ago.
I hear what you're saying... but people are people, and have the same weaknesses, desires, and sore spots whether they wear a badge or not. (Note: I've read many of your posts, KFG, and personally think you're a valuable contributor to this forum... so much of this isn't aimed at you... don't take it the wrong way)
Anyone who has ever dealt with the public has had one of those days: some jerk was rude to them, complained to their manager about something that wasn't their fault... basically treated them like human garbage. Cops get that on a regular, recurring basis... and only other cops seem to understand it. Is a cop really ineligible to receive common courtesy? I love the excuse that because a police officer was a little too authoritative with someone in the past, that now all cops are power-hungry jerks... change "cop" to "black" or "hispanic" and you have a bigot.
Look at some of the posts in this thread... "the only good policeman is a dead policeman" (that one got removed)... "I hate punk-ass chumps who get jobs as cops"..."This is a case of sloppy policework and power hungry or impatient officers." If you give a cop an attitude like that on your next encounter, it'll be a self-fulfilling prophecy all the way.
Cops need a little slack... they deal with antisocial punks all day long, and extending them some simple courtesy may be the first nice thing anyone's said to them all day (in fact, they'll probably wonder what you're up to, and react with suspicion). Cripes, you've had days like that... now imagine an entire career like that.
Of course, look at the usual slashtrolls: "f*ck the police... they're all worthless, and they signed up for that"... yeah, so insightful... To all you trolls: after your job gets outsourced to India and you default on the rent, picture a cop saying the same thing to you as he evicts you from your apartment.
Yes... how does that feel again?
talking works in the appropriate setting... but sometimes you need to get control of the situation quickly, particularly if there's potential violence involved.
I vividly remember one dashboard camera video of a traffic stop that resulted in a huge shootout, but began as a young man standing up for "his rights." The driver is out of the vehicle and off to the side of the road, talking with the officer. He's repeatedly telling the officer that he doesn't want to be frisked, or placed in the police cruiser, because he doesn't want to be "violated like that." The officer was very polite, and tried to explain everything to the young man... but that's not the scary part. The scary part is that on the tape you can see the young man's brother still in the vehicle, out of view of the officer, putting on body armor, retrieving weapons... time is not always on your side.
Conceptually it's similar to what we do with dynamic entries in SWAT; we move in rapidly, take total control, and overwhelm any resistance before they have a chance to think, plan, or regroup. I've not seen the video in this particular case, but I suspect the cop wanted to control as many variables as he could, and that means all parties involved, including the daughter. Additionally, the officer had no way of truly verifying their relationship... could have been pimp/prostitute, prostitute/john... even husband/wife. You'd be surprised how many wives of abusive husbands attack the cops, particularly when it becomes clear their old man is going to jail.
There is such a thing as taking "stand by your man" too far.
Don't worry, that whole puberty thing will be over before you know it.
to know your local and state laws.
Some states do not allow a traffic stop by unmarked vehicles, for precisely the reasons you articulated (my prior law enforcement service was in such a state... traffic stops were ONLY by marked units).
Some states do allow unmarked cars... but you're exactly right about the danger... lonely road, by yourself, female, etc... I wouldn't stop either. What I would do is call 911 on your cell phone, advise them where you are, that you have a questionable police car following you, and you want to verify that they're legit. If it's not for real, they'll be very interested... there's few things cops hate worse than fake cops.
and then decide... the original link is a fairly slanted version of what happened (if it wasn't already dead you could check it... feel free to verify it when their site comes back up). I tried another link and found this site to be much more complete.
In short, the police officer got a call for a potential domestic violence or assault, attempted to question the man at the location who fit the description of the individual reportedly involved, and was met with a totally uncooperative attitude.
Let me tell you how a cop views this: virtually all of the people who hate cops have had prior run-ins with them... ie. they are some kind of scofflaw, or associate with such folks. When a cop gets a "f*ck you pig" attitude, his guard instantly goes up, and so do his antennae... you've stupidly just made yourself his adversary. The police officer in this case had reasonable suspicion that a crime had been committed... and when confronted with a possible suspect who was potentially violent, possibly intoxicated, and wouldn't even give his name, that officer had to act, so he detained the man.
What should he have done? Ignored the possible reported crime and just let him go? "Awww shucks, citizen... if you're not going to tell me your name then I guess I can't arrest you." Nobody gives their real name when arrested... we find out later who they are via fingerprints and witnesses.
Maybe it's my prior law enforcement background talking, but I really don't see the problem here. The law doesn't exist to hassle regular citizens... the officer needs to have reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed, and if he does, then he can detain to ascertain identity. An officer can ask you for your identity just walking down the street... but if you've done nothing wrong, you can say "no thank you" and keep walking. If he then physically pounces on you, that's being detained or arrested, and he'd better have grounds. If he doesn't, feel free to own him in court... I would.
Sheesh... as long as he's polite and just doing his job, what's wrong with telling a proactive police officer your name? There's something called common courtesy, and police officers should be eligible to receive it. Why is a cop ineligible? Because he works for "the man" instead of McDonalds? If you're innocent and a cop asks you your name, you could be an ass about it, insult the cop, smirk, and saunter away... but what would that prove? That you can be a smart-ass? Great... I'm sure your mother would be proud.
You're talking to the wrong guy. Even though I didn't start this thread, I will not apologize for pointing out the obvious double standard.
You're quite right though... Bush's intelligence has nothing to do with the accusations of the scientists in the article. Bush is not a scientist, doesn't pretend to be, and his science intellect is absolutely and totally irrelevant to the issue at hand. What recent president, excepting Carter, has had any serious science background? Better yet, can you show me a recent president who made his own scientific policy decisions without leaning heavily on advisers?
Bush's intellect is largely irrelevant, just as Gore's is irrelevant... they're just irrelevant for different reasons. Gore's IQ is irrelevant because he's not in office, and Bush's IQ is irrelevant because, like most presidents, he lacks scientific expertise/credentials, realizes it, and relies on advisers. Different reasons, same irrelevance on the science intellect point.
I'm not saying Bush isn't responsible for policy... He most definitely is, but that's not how this thread started. You can make a very strong argument that president Bush, as the man in the catbird seat, is ultimately responsible for all policy decisions... but that's different from deriding his intellect. He may have received bad counsel, but accepting counsel from the wrong people makes you a poor judge of character, not a moron. If he's guilty of anything, he's guilty of taking bad advice, and that's fairly common (ever go with a recommendation that turned out to be wrong? If so, then you're as dumb as Bush... welcome to the club)
You are trying to play politics by bringing Gore into this instead of discussing the merits of the accusations against the Bush administration.
No... I'm using Gore as a convenient foil to rebut an irrelevant point.
Worthless indeed... do try to direct your flames more appropriately in the future, AC.
I'm not a Bush hater or a Gore fan. You're being overly defensive. Paranoid I think it's called. Do you listen to Limbaugh a lot?
No... listen to Al Franken much?
Gore's choice of words was poor at best, and left the impression (I believe deliberately) that he indeed "created the internet," when at best he was a supporter of the project and little more. It's classic politician... take credit for as many things as you possibly can, even if your role was peripheral.
I like to give credit to the people who actually do the grunt work, not the political figurehead of the project, or the guy who helped appropriate a drop out of the federal budget bucket.
But as to your other point, I agree... grades are not always the best measure of intelligence... but you cannot use them to tear down one candidate while simultanously building up another. My point is this: if grades are the standard, then let's see how all our would-be-presidents measure up.
I personally find his statement that he "took the initiative in creating the internet" to be a grandiose attempt to take political advantage of the internet's popularity... He certainly was a supporter of the idea, but wrote none of the code, developed none of the protocols... he's trying to take credit for the hard work of a lot of scientists and engineers... I personally think that's obnoxious.
But that's not the issue. The parent poster attacked Bush's intelligence... I merely provided an equal-time counterpoint in the form of his previous challenger's record.
I also noticed you didn't refute anything I wrote, except to try to change the subject. If you're a Gore fan, Bush hater, or both, that's fine... but the parent poster attacked Bush's grades when his challenger's were as bad or worse.
As I said... in the interest of fairness.
They used Amphetamine (commonly referred to as Benzedrine or "bennies") and also Methamphetamine.
Their Methamphetamine prodution method lives on to this very day, in illicit clandestine drug labs... so-called "Nazi Dope" labs... named after the production method the Germans used for meth manufacture.
Most of the labs that law enforcement agencies clean up, particularly in the midwest, are Nazi Dope labs, primarily due to the easy availability of one of that production method's reagents (anhydrous ammonia).
Just FYI.
Gore doesn't have a stellar academic record either, it's perhaps even a bit worse than Bush's (Bush at least completed grad school).
Gore made multiple C's at Harvard, also at least one D (in a science class, no less). Even worse, his grad school record from Vanderbilt is miserable... he received failing grades in five out of eight classes in the divinity school over the course of three semesters, and also failed to make it through Vanderbilt's law school (though he apparently left voluntarily to run for congress).
You can read it all in the Widipedia... text of Gore's page is here
happens pretty quickly after a couple of days... the human body absolutely needs sleep.
The human body really requires sleep to function adequately, and you can only accumulate a sleep deficit for a relatively short period of time before serious performace degredation occurs... The military has found that you can operate on 3-4 hours of sleep in a 24 hour period... but only for a few days in a row (4-5 max), and no amount of training will cancel out the performance deficit that results. Believe me... the military has tried all kinds of things to get around this.
When you are running a serious sleep deficit, you get slow, stupid, confused easily, you can't remember things, you suck at complex tasks... some people even hallucinate.
If you want a good example, you should check out somebody who's crashing after being on a methamphetamine run for a couple of days... part of it is simple physical exhaustion and neurotransmitter depletion from the drug... but a big part of it is simple sleep deprivation; they take days to recover.
The same thing happens to troops in the field, or troops in training (ask anyone who's ever been through Ranger camp how much sleep they got, and how numbed and stupid your mind gets after a couple of days).
Most modern special operators are pretty bright folks, who's jobs require a working brain... just being tough isn't enough. They need multitasking ability, and that's one of the first things you lose when you're really tired.
those drugs are only authorized in specific circumstances, and only to particular individuals.
For instance, pilots are authorized to take amphetamines for going "across the pond" (transatlantic flights), or for very long missions... they're not given routinely to anyone/everyone.
The worst of the negative effects that have been attributed to amphetamines are often dose and duration dependent. Paranoia, hallucinations, tremors, emotional instability... most of those come in people who have been using large doses, or for long periods of time. You can see these effects much earlier in someone with underlying mental illness (you wouldn't want to give these drugs to a bipolar or schizophrenic individual), but those people don't fly fighters.
I don't know what the final story will be on the pilots who bombed those canadian soldiers... but unless the pilot was an undiagnosed schizophrenic, I'd tend to doubt it was a drug-induced hallucination.
medicine did work out for me... it doesn't for everyone. I'll warn you now, before you actually get to medical school and accumulate the 100-200k of debt... medicine's not what you think it will be.
If you have doubts about it, go work for a bunch of different doctors... listen to them, and particularly ask them what they don't like about their jobs. Trust me, you'll get an earful. If they bring up anything that you particularly can't stand (or you're in the profession for the money), quit before you enter med school. It's a bit late to decide in your internship/residency that it isn't for you... you'll have too much debt at that point to quit. I know physicians who worked just long enough to pay off their med school loans, then quit and did something else.
As for the shooting question... it almost doesn't matter if you were justified in the shooting or not... killing another human being at close range is traumatic for virtually anyone. Even officers who were about to be killed/seriously injured have a rough time. It's not necessarily the circumstances (though those can certainly make it worse)... it's the act itself.
There's no "code," just a normal human aversion to pain.
There's something you'll find almost universally among people who have killed someone; they don't talk about it, and especially not with strangers. Even among peers, it's almost never brought up (it's usually considered incredibly rude to even ask that question). This circumspection is not because killing someone is secretly pleasurable or the initiation to some kind of exclusive club... it's because the experience is so traumatic for the person who pulled the trigger. Anyone who openly brags about people they've killed (particularly close range or knife kills) is 99% of the time either a sociopath, or full of bullshit (there are exceptions, but they are rare). You'll mostly find that guys who have done it for real don't talk about it, and that goes for military and police officers. Ever wonder why Vietnam vets, Special Forces, SEALs, etc have their own organizations and reunions? It's because, among other reasons, it's next to impossible to talk about some of those experiences with anyone who hasn't been there. The unfortunate part is that some of those folks are truly haunted by the memories, and they can benefit from sharing them (current PCID theory absolutely encourages it... pain shared is pain divided), but "shared" is the key word... empathy and validation are part of sharing, and are weighted by the listener's background... validation from someone with no clue or experience doesn't mean much to most people.
Unless they bring it up first, I'd advise never asking anyone that question; you're essentially asking them to relive a terrifying, horrific trauma. The best analogy I can make is that it's like casually asking a rape victim to describe, in detail, that experience...
I'm not trying to give you a hard time, I'm just trying to save you from deeply offending someone in the future.
For my own part, I've had one or two close calls, but I've never shot anyone; I hope to continue that streak.
is great, even addictive.
I really, truly enjoy intensity, and for very short periods of time it feels good to get your pulse rate up... but there's a downside; adrenaline clouds your thinking, and wears you out quickly. That can be a problem... a big problem. I enjoy skydiving, but if you let the fear/ground rush/adrenaline get the better of you and you don't think (ie. when you get a line-over, dual deployment, or other sticky malfunction of your main chute), it can cost you your life. In the ER, it's the same situation... except if I get wrapped up in the drama and stop thinking, it might cost somebody else their life (or their mothers/fathers/childs' life). SWAT's the same deal with different costumes... get excited and stop thinking, inadvertantly shoot a suspect, or one of your teammates. There's a reason tactical/military teams rotate point-man on patrol... it requires so much of your attention and energy that it rapidly drains you.
Crises happen, but you can't get caught up in them and "feed the rush." Also, the same rule applies to the aftermath. The best example I can think of is when we lose a child: I and most of my staff are parents with children of our own, and there's nothing, no thought more horrifying than losing one's child. It's something that runs through all our minds after we lose one from an auto accident, SIDS, etc... and the most difficult part of my job is delivering that news. I've sat and cried with parents after deaths. I've also fled with police/security running interference after grief turned to anger (some people deal with tragedy differently, and I'll just leave it at that...) But back to my main point: I/we cannot let that situation impair us in any way... because the next patient needs us, sometimes just as urgently, and the patient/ambulances never stop coming. It's for professional longevity that Post-Critical Incident Debriefing has found its way into ERs in recent years; mostly it's for the patients, but also for the staff.
As for computers, after a crushing 12 hours in the ER, or a string of shifts, I'm quite happy to go home, sit in front of a computer, and shut out the world for a few hours. I appreciate the intellectual challenge that computers offer... compared to my primary profession, they fascinate me in a way wholly different from medicine. It may come as a surprise, but much of medicine is a very inexact science, with lots of variables, most of which are out of your direct control. Computers are different... ALL the variables are yours, and the answer to your problem is always there in front of you... you just have to discipline your mind to recognize it. There's so little in medicine that you directly control... sometimes it's nice to interact with an item/environment where the rules are set, the stakes aren't quite as high, and your ability to solve a problem is limited only by your attention span.
Pleasure to meet you too (I should note that I only attempt to rock, with very limited success).
;)
Frankly, my life story isn't really that interesting, or even unique, aside from managing to cram a few incongruous vocations into a relatively short span of time. I am an ER physician, I've served in the military in several combat zones, I've been a civilian SWAT operator, and am a computer geek... but beyond that stuff, I'm really fairly milquetoast. That particular vocational combination is not unheard of, BTW... you can find people a good deal more famous than myself with almost that exact combination of skills... and some have been doing it better and cleaner for years. For instance, our current US Surgeon General (he's actually a professional acquaintance of mine) is a former Green Beret, decorated Vietnam vet, 15yr SWAT veteran, boarded trauma surgeon (I may have slightly better m4d 'puter 5killz that he does, but that's it) and a super guy... I'd raid a drug house with him anytime. Seriously... I appreciate your interest, but I'm not really anyone of any great note or importance.
I'm not sure how much help I can be on the MCAT. I should point out that it's been well over a decade since I took it, so they've probably changed it significantly in the interim. Apart from simple fund-of-knowledge issues, if you're not a great test-taker (a very valuable and usually acquired skill), I might recommend Kaplan or something of the sort... you'd be amazed the number of questions you can salvage just by understanding the test itself and why/how they ask certain types of questions. Some of those strategies can save you from throwing away questions you otherwise wouldn't know.
BTW, I have to hand it to you, posting your email address on Slashdot... hope your spam filters are tuned
Greetings, future colleague.
IIAD, and I must say I've never even heard of the theory that you are expounding upon in your first paragraph... to be honest, it sounds a bit popular-science-esque, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt of that one; you being closer to the basic sciences than myself. I would appreciate a link or two though, if you don't mind.
As to the second point, it's not a matter of inserting a harmful gene (any geneticist who purposely introduced an oncogene via gene therapy would probably be burned alive by his colleagues), it's a matter of improperly expressing/suppressing existing genes. If your retroviral vector (or whatever method you use to introduce your desired gene) happens to hit a suppressor gene's promoter, or an oncogene's silencer region, you can end up with a neoplasm (and those promoter/silencer regions can be thousands of base pairs away). Even if it only hits one chromosome... what if you're a heterozygote for that particular oncogene (ala retinoblastoma)?
I think genetic therapy holds great promise... and my hat's off to the folks pioneering it, but we're a long way from safely allowing weightlifters to use gene therapy to bulk up.
is a real phenomenon... I've seen people go truly bonkers from high-dose steroids.
It seems to be dose-dependent, and your chance of developing it is independent of whether you've had it in the past (ie. just because you went nuts one time, doesn't mean you'll do it again). Your odds also seem to vary depending on why you're receiving the steroids, suggesting that the initial disease process plays a role.
It's also more common in women than men (no joke intended or implied).
Some people don't like steroids, but I do (having been prescribed them in the past)... they give you lots of energy, all your little aches and pains go away, and you feel good. (there is a certain amount of euphoria with steroids). But there's a downside... a big downside. Check any medical text (or the PDR) for the long-term side effects of steroid use. Go ahead, I'll wait.
Ok, you looking at it? Yeah... that's the list I'm talking about... the one that goes on for several pages (and includes "roid rage")... you don't want to get on the long-term steroid train unless you absolutely have NO alternatives. That said, properly applied in the proper dose and for the proper duration, they're great, helpful, and lifesaving drugs... one of the most useful drug classes in modern medicine's arsenal.
There exist entire categories of diseases based entirely on immune system problems.
Rheumatoid arthritis, mixed connective tissue disease, Lupus, etc... all are autoimmune, and are a result of the body's immune system attacking itself. These diseases can be devilishly difficult to diagnose and treat... there's a reason why Rheumatology is its own medical specialty. Some of the drugs the rheumatologists use are potentially nasty, and include transplant drugs, and chemotheraputic agents... not stuff for the faint of heart.
By the same token, when you start monkeying around with DNA, you need to be careful what genes you activate or deactivate... Cancer is fundamentally a genetic disease, and a real possibility if you get an unregulated growth gene (or you inadvertantly turn off a suppressor gene). Cancers are funny things; they can even respond to simple hormones... precisely why women with a breast cancer history aren't advised to receive hormone replacement therapy.
Gene therapy has had some successes, but it's really in its infancy... I'd be awfully leery about using it just to bulk up at the gym. On the other hand, if you have a lethal genetic defect, and you're going to die without it, have at it. Forget Hans and Franz... you can find quite a few patients with potentially lethal genetic diseases (Cystic Fibrosis, etc) who'd be much better candidates for gene therapy than some weight-lifter.
It bears repeating... using it for simple body-building is absolutely foolhardy... instead of growing big pectoral muscles, you might inadvertently be growing yourself a big fat tumor... that'll look great at the beach.
For someone with Marfan's syndrome.
Marfan's syndrome is a genetic defect in the gene that codes for Fibrillin, a major component of microfibrils in the body's connective tissues. Much of the pathologic consequences are noted in the eye and the aorta... the former location gets dislocations of the lens, and the latter location develops large (fatal if undiagnosed) aortic aneurysms. Marfanoid patients also tend to be tall, and have a lot of laxity in their joints, primarily because of their weakened connective tissues.
If you have weaker connective tissue than normal, it would probably be counterproductive to have greatly increased muscle mass.
I'm not picking on you, just pointing out that it might not be exactly what a Marfan's patient really needs... It might be useful in some kinds of muscular dystrophies, but the most common kinds have defective myofibrils... creating more non-functional muscle wouldn't appear to help them very much.
It sounds great in theory, but there are all kinds of potential problems with rapidly and artificially increasing strength that way.
If you increase strength very rapidly without allowing for the corresponding tendons and bone to adapt to the greater muscle mass, you can cause tendon ruptures and stress fractures (already well-known phenomenon in athletes). The body can adapt to all kinds of derangements if you give it enough time, but too much too fast? Bad news. I've seen people come in to the hospital with a hemoglobin level of 5, still walking (slowly) and talking. Now, that's theoretically too low to survive on, but if it happens over a long enough period of time, your body can adapt. If you take a normal person and immediatly bleed them down to a hemoglobin of 5, they'll die.
Plus, if you are turning over too much muscle tissue too fast and don't stay adequately hydrated, you can clog your kidneys and end up in renal failure. This happens periodically when some untrained amateur athelete tries an Ironman without adequate conditioning.
The human body is an amazing machine, but you have to be careful monkeying around with it... athletes may be after performance, but anyone who volunteers to be a guinea pig for this stuff needs his head examined.
Don't project the original poster's angst on me, my man... I have zero emotional investment in this man's incident. What I did, however, was point out the illogic and foolishness of his behavior.
The original AC called his doctor a moron, and accused him of malpractice... excuse me, but what expertise does he have to judge either his doctor's intelligence, or his professional competence? Does he somehow gain this right because of his superficial knowledge? Because he read some information on the internet and went of half-cocked?
I'm really tickled by the number of people on Slashdot who deride "lusers" who call tech support with no clue what they're doing... but when in the same knowledge-deficit situation themselves, feel they have the right to insult their physician and impugn his professional reputation.
Sorry, pal... but the original AC talked a bunch of trash and showed his ass, all without the slightest clue regarding the physiology, immunology, or pharmacology of his child's condition... I'm simply the guy calling him on it.
There's a reason why administrators don't give regular users root access on their servers... because people with superficial knowledge tend to do dumb things when they don't know what they're doing.
Second verse, same as the first.
They aren't giving you full service I agree... but read the parent poster's own words.
he perscribed a drug I'd never heard of. My wife called and I told her I'd look it up on the internet.
It sounds to me like the poster wasn't even present at the doctor's office, so he doesn't have any idea what was discussed or not discussed. Why do you think doctors document everything? I can't tell you how many patients forget everything I told them five minutes after they leave... printed discharge instructions are a Godsend for us, and they prevent people from coming back on us, claiming "he never told me that!" I've had patients do that many times, and when I get an irate phone call from the administrator/spouse/family/doctor, I read it right back to them straight out of their chart. I don't like doing that, but it's the only way I can protect myself.
What a moron. It verged on malpractice. But what could you do? Doctors stick up for each other, and I would end up looking like the idiot
He said it, I didn't. Then again, I don't know what else you call someone like that, who attacks his doctor without even a basic understanding of the disease process or its proper treatment...
Hypochondriasis exists along a spectrum of psychiatric disorders, known as the Factictious disorders, where patients seek out care for imagined illnesses.
One of the keys is that they seek out care... with the extreme example being Munchausen's syndrome; patients who seek out the sick role so avidly that they fake illnesses, have unnecessary surgeries done, etc... they often harm themselves just to get medical care, and eagerly submit to any and all tests/interventions, including risky surgery.
Along that same continuum are the hypochondriacs... they often seek out care for imagined or fear illnesses, but it's different from a Munchausen's patient... hypochondriacs see doctors out of fear/anxiety rather than a desire to assume the sick role.
Besides their tendency to seek out medical care, they also have in common (all the somatoform disorders) the characteristic of being very resistant and difficult to treat. You can't confront them, you can't reassure them... they are utterly convinced they have a serious disease. Every doctor has a handful of these patients, particularly hypochondriacs (Munchausen's patients are much rarer), and they can be very frustrating to treat, primarily because they virtually never get better.
What the doctor was trying to do was treat your son's poison ivy by attacking the mechanism by which it is mediated.
You DID know that poison ivy is a hypersensitivity reaction, didn't you? Your own immune system causes the rash and symptoms. The rash of Poison Ivy is caused by a delayed, type IV hypersensitivity reaction (cell-mediated) to the oil of one of several species in the Toxicodendron genus. There is no way to treat poison ivy, except to temporarily suppress that particular immune response, often with steroids or other drugs. Then again, you could just wait... as you discovered. Poison ivy goes away if you give it enough time... but I can't tell you the number of people I see who demand that I do something about their symptoms right now.
If your son had a bad enough case that he was sent to a dermatologist, then your doctor may have been right on the money.
You have every right to do what you did... but don't accuse your doctor of malpractice; you're indicting him on an issue you clearly don't understand. You are exactly the type of person they are referring to in this article.
Then again, if we didn't have AC's talking smack, this wouldn't be slashdot.