scigirl

Yes, yes, I'm now an ID'ist. Thanks to the Indoctrination of the Cult known as "Medical School," I am happy to pronounce my firm belief in a Creator. I now have faith that in addition to having an inordinate fondness for beetles, this Great Being also has a passion for the bank accounts of surgeons and many other health care professionals. For that, His name should be glorified and worshipped.

Proof? Take the gall bladder for example. It may have served a digestive purpose when we were a feast or famine society. But now - its sole purpose is to store gall stones and get inflamed, which nets an annual $6 billion for the health care industry in the United States alone. Can we say - proof of intelligent design? Yes, I think we can! Glorify His name!

Another example is the appendix. Immune organ, shimune borgan. This piece of tissue solely exists to allow surgeons to buy Corvettes, since it is the most common acute abdominal condition that sees a scalpel. Praise His glorified righteousness!

Oh, and did I mention the prostate gland? Hmm, let's put a mass of tissue that surrounds the urethra in men, and THEN - let's give it a cool trait of swelling up so that the urethra gets blocked! Bless and glorify the one who made us!

The Great One is also fairly fond of gastroenterologists (like our famous Dr Rick) since He made the lower esophageal "sphincter" not really a sphincter at all (that's Oesophagus for you non-yanks). This way, it never really closes, and acid can just reflux back into this cleverly designed organ. Another smart feature of the food tube is that it has no natural protection against this acid with which it comes into such close proximity. Therefore it's either forced to get inflamed and cause reflux disease (netting the health care industry billions of dollars), or it turns into intestinal cells and grows tumors. Or in some lucky individuals - it does both.

However, the Creator was not as kind to psychiatrists. Clearly, He's angered that a field that used to fall under theologians is now being taken over by medical professionals. For this reason, the Creator punishes these MDs by dooming them forever to be the target of endless cocktail party jokes. Also, He made brain neurotransmitters so redundant that you can't treat any psychiatric condition without inducing a whole host of side effects. What puzzles me though is that shrinks have, by far, the best stories ever. Like Dr. D who had a patient scenario that went like this**:

Dr: Do you see anything that other people don’t see?
Pt: You mean like a bat?
Dr: Um….yeah, yeah, like a bat. Do you see bats?
Pt: No.
Dr: Uhh, what else don’t you see?
Pt: Rats. And Satan.

They do always say that the Creator works in mysterious ways.

Well there you have it – the proclamation of my newfound faith. I worship Him and study his Creation daily now. In mid June I must pass a difficult test of faith (aka the
USMLE Step One ). Then I enter the rite of passage, which involves a short white coat and a lot of wandering around. Not in a desert, but in a maze of hospital corridors. We also say mantras which are not unlike ones said by the Catholics – short, easy to mumble, and they make no sense whatsoever to a casual observer. For example, “C3 C4 C5. . . Keeps the diaphragm alive.�?

I hope that you can all still see me as a “freethinker�? even though I have converted to a new faith, and that you won’t try to de-convert me (at least until I’ve paid off my very expensive tithing).

scigirl

**This was an actual psych interview.

Godless Wonder

:notworthy:

Regarding the "like a bat?" comment . . . I wonder if the patient was inferring that bats don't "see" because they're blind, yet they "see" just not like people, they "see" with sound?

dr: Do you see what other people don't see?

Pt: You mean, (Do I see in) like (manner of) a bat? (see in the dark, by other means than light like, e.g. by sound, in a manner which other people don't see, like a bat?)

dr: do you see bats?

pt: (What? of course not! What the hell is this doctor talking about?) No.

Viti

Best of luck to you in your new religion SciGirl! I seem to donate to it quite frequently

Oolon Colluphid

I have it on good authority that the gall bladder was invented by the late Doctor Samuel Gall. Who also invented gargling, “which prior to that time had been practiced only furtively by a remote tribe in the Andes who passed the secret down from father to son as part of their oral tradition.�?

Duvenoy

Now I know!

'ID' really stands for, 'Intoxicated Doctors', not 'Interesting Drugs' as I'd once thought, although many of the most respected IDists appear to be on them. The drugs that is, not the doctors.

An aside having nothing to do with the topic: bats can see with their eyes quite well enough, thank you.

Congrats scigirl, and may the coffee in the corridors you wander be better than that found at the VA.

doov

Tenek

Was that the guy who majored in animal husbandry until they caught him at it one day?

Principia

This is for your entertainment, scigirl, while you study for the boards. That's right, he's billed as Dr. ID (no, Virginia, that doesn't stand for Dr. Infectious Diseases ... ), by those IDiots who want the masses to praise the glory of those irreducibly complex systems in our body.

For instance, in the latest episode, Dr. ID teaches us: Maybe Dr. ID should stick to medicine.

PS: Where's the Defender of Behe, Truth, and the American Way? I want to know if Dr. ID got Behe's definition of Irreducibly Complex right.

PPS: I actually think that debunking this guy's rants makes good material for Oolon's list.

Undercurrent

I know that when I found out that John Ashcroft's gall bladder was inflamed, and he was in excruciating pain, I thought to myself, "maybe there is a god."

scigirl

Hmm I never thought about it that way . . . good point! Of course, this doesn't explain his attempt to fly off the roof because he thought he had wings.

scigirl

There's a couple coffee shops around the hospital area. And of course there's always the good expensive coffee that the pharmaceutical reps bring in. Too bad I have morals - I'll have to leave them at home on those days so I can drink the coffee without remorse!