How far do you want to go to live your dream?

Every cliched South Asian article on the burden of being South Asian and student/graduate of Medicine (Engineering, Dentistry, Pharmacy science) easily categorizes careers into science with money vs. glamour professions (with or) without money.

Veterinary medicine has always defied such categorizations.  A science -- with or without money, with glamour borrowed from the charisma of the species worked on  -- it is a profession that becomes what you decide to do with it.  It tests your ability to survive, be creative, grow up and grow out. (If you do all that before you grow old, you are lucky. If you do all that, and still grow old, you are luckier, as suggested by rumors of slightly high suicide rates among vets -- which may or may not have anything to do with career-related stress, burnout or success.)  Above all, this beautiful profession tests how far you would go to live your dream.

In the new world order, geographical distances hold little meaning, but the price that you pay to live (in) your dream, is no small feat. And even American veterinarians are beginning to understand what the rest of the world has always known--that vets do relatively well when the economy does well.  These debates have been going on inside the profession, forever, it seems, but now this New York Times article lays it all out neatly for future veterinarians (their parents), South Asians or not.  Don't let it scare you, instead allow it to inform you about respecting outside powers that effectively force a balance between dreams and reality.

High Debt and Falling Demand Trap New Vets

Puppy Love Can Cost You. 

The American Veterinary Medical Association's (AVMA) response to the article can be found here. 

The instinct to eat animal protein

The hungry doe that I met at the campground certainly had no idea about any of this evolution business. She didn’t know about differing levels of protein, iron, or salt. She smelled a steak cooking, she wanted to eat it, and it wound up in her mouth. Come to think of it, this was pretty much the same reason why I started eating meat after growing up as a vegetarian.
--Jackson Landers, When herbivores attack! Plant-eaters' secret meat snacks, Slate.com

Somewhat of a sensational title for an article, but a moderately-referenced article that summarizes several known case reports in one-liners for busy readers interested in evolutionary explanations for nutritional niches as well as breaches.  Like Jackson Landers confesses, I too was raised vegetarian but started eating meat early in life, despite the guilt, the fear, and the confusions, because, as the adult in me rationalizes, my body, more so than the principled adults responsible for my welfare, knew when it needed the protein it lacked.  Divya, my 8-year old vegetarian-leaning daughter, goes through periodic cycles of requests for ham sandwiches, chicken curries, fried eggs, or tuna salads, unprompted by the more omnivorous members of the family.  Legacy (the dog), whom some might consider the most carnivorous member of the family, chomps on grass every 3rd day, and especially when given boiled meats and a bone to gnaw on.  These are but anecdotal suggestions from my family's experience that nature can hardly afford to be rigid, as survival is such a flimsy exercise with no guarantees on outcomes as well as the means to those outcomes.

But most vegetarians I meet, like the doe that Landers met, are not rationalizing their decisions and choices in evolutionary terms.  They invoke ethics, morality, religion, animal rights (or lack thereof), culture, reluctance to kill, disgust about killing, sense of right (vs. wrong) and several more socially constructed arguments including social politics and agricultural economics. While each of these stances interest and engage the comfortable, grateful, and balanced omnivore in me, I am quite appalled when people bring no curiosity, knowledge or questions about the role of biology or evolution to the discussion table. In certain circles, judgements about the meat-eating habits of other human beings, even whole societies, based on uninformed opinions are quite the norm. And opposition to meat-eating, either in the form of gentle persuasion or outright disapproval, is on the rise.

It seems like the title of Landers' article has been changed to something more mild and appropriate such as 'Bambi ate Thumper: Why herbivores sometimes eat meat.'    
 

Managing Growth in Medical Education

Raghavan M, Martin BD, Ripstein I, Sandham JD.

University of Manitoba Faculty of Medicine.

Abstract of article published in the Journal of the International Association of Medical Science Educators in 2010.

In response to concerns about future physician shortage, urgent calls have been issued in the USA and Canada to increase medical student positions by 20-30% from current numbers. Yet very little information has been published on how to successfully plan for and manage medical school expansions.

Between 2000 and 2008, the University of Manitoba gradually managed a 53% expansion in Undergraduate Medical Education (UGME) class-size. The latest installment of UGME expansion occurred in 2008-09, amidst concurrent growth in Postgraduate Medical Education. In the same year, a program to evaluate and educate international medical graduates expanded 58% and, a new Physician Assistant Education Program was implemented. To meet the challenge of maintaining quality education for all learners and to appropriately plan for resource development, a systematic inventory of teaching responsibilities and an analysis of the gap between teaching capacity in 2007-08 and future demands were done. Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, pre-clinical teaching was expressed in instructor-hours while clinical teaching was expressed as learner-weeks in clinical teaching units.

The methodology and the guiding principle that data should be expressed numerically using common units across all departments and programs, aided in unequivocally identifying scarce resources and competing needs. The results, allowing for a Faculty-wide accounting of future commitments, set in motion a teaching-based pro-rating system to allocate funding across departments in a transparent manner. Our methodological approach and experience will be of interest to faculty and administration involved in expansion of health professionals’ education.

Reference: Raghavan M, Martin BD, Ripstein I, Sandham JD. Managing growth in medical education. JIAMSE 2010; 20 (2): 143-152. [Link]

Christian the lion

There is a video gone wild, I mean, viral that depicts the heart-warming scene when Christian the lion reunites after a year-long gap with his human foster parents.

Christian was a lion originally purchased by Australians John Rendall and Anthony "Ace" Bourke from Harrods department store of London in 1969 and ultimately reintroduced to the African wild by conservationist George Adamson. One year after George Adamson released Christian to the wild, his former owners decided to go looking for him to see whether Christian would remember them. Surprisingly, he did, and with him were two lionesses who accepted the men as well. [Wikipedia entry]

It is still mind-boggling to me that people could actually buy a lion cub at Harrods of all places. The scourge of current day pet stores seems mild compared to the department store of the 60s.

Christmas shopping list:

1. Blue-eyed doll for Sara, check.
2. Football for John, check.
3. Tool kit for Adam, check.
4. Baking set for Mary, check.
5. One bonnie lion cub for Noah, check.

More about Harrods' contemporary contribution to the human-animal bond can be found here. I am not sure which is worse: the past or the present.

Fatal dog attacks in Canada

Approximately 15 deaths per year, on average, are attributed to dog-bite injuries in the United States. Victims are usually children. With an average of 1 to 2 deaths per year attributed to fatal attacks by dogs, the pattern in Canada appears to be somewhat similar to that in the United States. However, there are several differences in the epidemiology of dog-bite related deaths between the two countries. Here is the abstract from a study on fatal dog attacks in Canada (Can Vet J 2008;49:373–378) that highlights the differences. [Link]

Dr. Sheela Basrur, voice of reason during Toronto's SARS crisis

Dr. Sheela Basrur, the public health doctor, who appears to have calmed and charmed Canada even while Toronto was reeling under the fearful SARS crisis, passed away on June 2, 2008. She was only 51.

I am touched by how much Dr.Basrur seems to mean to Canada at a national level and to the average Canadian. Having lived in the US, I find it hard to imagine similar levels of warmth, public affection and emotions extended towards a public health professional/doctor over there (think CDC) even if they had worked through something as new and scary as SARS. Several factors have aligned together in her case, of course, but not least of which is the comparative smallness of the Canadian population that seems to tap into a 'close-knit community' feel when needed.

A female co-worker remembers bumping into her one day during the crisis as she emerged from a washroom. The co-worker told Dr. Basrur that she looked great and the doctor responded by saying she felt so tired.
“And I said Sheela, you're great,” said the co-worker. “The whole city loves you and is counting on you. And this morning on the radio I heard the host of the morning show say that he knew it was OK to go out because the little doctor with the glasses said it was.”

[Link]

Toronto Star has a picture gallery and a collection of videos on their site [Link].

I was living in the US during Toronto's SARS crisis, so the first time I heard her voice over the radio was only about a few months ago. She was talking about her cancer and her experience of the health care system as a patient. She was so candid, calm and composed despite probably knowing that the prognosis for her was not good. I felt immense respect and yes, affection, for this stranger whom I have never personally known. You can listen to parts of this interview on the June 2 show of 'As It Happens.' [Link]

As a mother myself, I could not hold back the rush of emotions that swept through my body when I read yesterday that her daughter is only 16 years old.

Of interest to public health and medical students: how her travels to Nepal and India shaped her extraordinary career in public health [Link].

Pets as sentinels

Our cats and dogs, our companion animals, live in our homes, picking up the same chemicals we pick up. If we expect some of those chemicals to affect our health adversely, we can expect to see similar effects in our pets too. Not only that, but as their life spans are shorter (i.e., they age at a faster rate) the endpoints we are concerned with may manifest themselves sooner in our pets than in us.

But first, we need to show that pets actually pick up some chemicals in their systems. Which is what several groups have done in the past. Several more will undoubtedly continue to carry on such work. Read and hear about one such recent effort. [Link]