I blame my tech background for being intensely suspicious of pretty much all AI. The AI developed by MIT for early detection of preliminary stages of breast cancer on mammograms that was trained on an extremely rigorously vetted and sanitized data set is probably the only breed of AI I would actually trust in medicine.

I once had ideas about creating a learning algorithm (not quite as complex as AI and not a black box) that uses data from medical professional input to generate suggestions for triage and protocols in emergency medicine. My idea was to feed it the triage notes, vitals, labs, diagnosis, and disposition with patient demographics (and NO PII) to create a statistical model that would look at the triage notes and the intake vitals to make a suggestion for triage level and empiric labs/testing to expedite care.

Obviously, the triage nurse (or any other staff member, really) could override it and input a higher level of triage because there’s no good way to reliably teach a machine gestalt or heuristics. A really experienced healthcare provider will almost always have a good sense for which patients are currently just compensating and will be crumping shortly. I just think having a statistical model that puts in empiric orders to get stuff started while the patient is still waiting to be brought back could expedite care a lot.

The thing that made me think of this is the fact that every time I have seen a kiddo come through the ER with vision changes that were not fixed by glasses, they had some kind of intracranial mass, and it would just make stuff go so much faster if the head CT was already done by the time the physician could actually see the patient. (Or patients that are on the border of meeting SIRS criteria having a bunch of labs already done.)

I need to find a way to set up email alerts or something when there’s updates on this kind of stuff. Since I’m looking at emergency med or primary care, this would be super relevant to my future practice.

I was very grateful that none of the cadavers we had at my medical school were John/Jane Does, and that we have a memorial service for the cadavers every year and invite the families to express gratitude.

I worked as a scribe and as an ER tech in a Level 1 peds hospital. I’m not even done with med school and I’ve already punched that card more times than I care to remember.

I thought the point was to be better than Hamas? Of course they mistreat detainees, but that doesn’t mean Israel gets a blank check to do the same. Also, many of the Palestinians currently being held by Israel without charges in indefinite detention are innocent civilians, including many from the West Bank. Israel has been illegally detaining and mistreating thousands upon thousands of Palestinians without any kind of due process or concern for human rights for decades. Pointing a finger at Hamas and saying “Look! They’re doing it too!! October 7th!!1!!” is not a valid argument for how Israel has been treating captive Palestinians for years.

The way that Hamas treats Palestinians is partially the responsibility of Netanyahu and the Likud given that they provided Hamas with material support to take power in the first place. Also, the fact that Israelis stormed an IDF base in protest of the punishment of IDF thugs that anally raped innocent Palestinians to death with rifles tells me a lot about what Israel thinks of all Palestinians, not just the ones that are actually part of Hamas.

Edit: Here’s an article describing the way the IDF treats doctors and paramedics. (Who are not members of Hamas) https://www.democracynow.org/2024/8/27/hrw_report

That’s the thing though…I think it is part of their due diligence to know what’s going on in their own business. If they can’t guarantee that it’s safe, they shouldn’t release it.

The c-suites have the ultimate power and therefore ultimate responsibility for whatever happens in their organization. Similar to how parents can be held criminally liable for their children’s actions. It’s just that much more incentive for them to make sure things are in order in their organization.

Also, Citizen’s United ruled that corporations are people, so they can be held to the same standards of responsibility as other people.

I think the threshold for proving the “reasonable person” standard for companies should be extremely low. They are a complex organization that is supposed to have internal checks and reviews, so it should be very difficult for them to squirm out of liability. The C-suite should be first on the list for criminal liability so that they have a vested interest in ensuring that their products are actually safe.

I’d accept that if the makers of the self-driving cars can be tried for vehicular manslaughter the same way a human would be. Humans carry civil and criminal liability, and at the moment, the companies that produce these things only have nominal civil liability. If Musk can go to prison for his self-driving cars killing people the same way a regular driver would, I’d be willing to lower the standard.

The nuclear industry is heavily regulated by the government via the NRC, but they impose even stricter regulations upon themselves. Solar and wind are cheaper, but they are less reliable. A grid comprised of a mix of solar and wind, bolstered by nuclear is the most effective and least environmentally harmful option that we currently have.

The emissions are negligible on the grand scheme of things, especially compared to fossil fuels. The manufacturing of solar panels isn’t the cleanest either.

MRI sometimes uses a non-radioactive contrast depending on what you’re trying to get images of. MRI is probably the safest imaging modality, but it’s very expensive, kind of difficult sometimes due to how long it takes, and isn’t useful for every kind of imaging that needs to be done.

They require the certificate to be installed to have access to the network.

I use Proton when I’m on my university’s campus because they switched to using EDUroam for the campus wifi. I used to be a Sys Admin at a different university a while back, and from what I know, EDUroam allows the IT department to monitor basically all of the traffic over the network. I don’t know exactly how deep that stuff goes, but if I was doing anything personal or sensitive like banking or whatever, I’d flip on the VPN on my personal computer. I also don’t have any personal accounts logged in on the school issued laptop because they have it loaded with institutional spyware. Once I graduate, I’ll blank the drive and reinstall the OS to have a decent Lenovo laptop on hand as a spare.

Edit to add: I use Proton because it was the least shady service that I could get for a reasonable price as a student. It is also helpful for finding textbooks. :)

That is a deeply unfortunate genetic mutation. As if life weren’t hard enough for them already.

Humans kind of have that with HPV. Get your vaccines!

A lot of “tumors” seen on wild animals are fungal infections from invasive fungal species brought by humans. It really sucks because fungal infections are very hard for mammalian immune systems to fight without help from antifungal medications.

I once got to meet a Tasmanian Devil baby at a zoo. The zookeeper was carrying him around in a little pouch to keep him comfy while his mom was getting a vet checkup. (The picture is one I found on google because the picture I took is buried in some backup folder from about 6 phones ago)

If the jewelery was given as a gift in good will, it would be worse to reject it or to accept it and never use it.