Tonight! Yep. Student performances, a silence auction, plenty of food. 25 bucks is what we are asking, but if that is too much, please, just make a donation.
All the money goes directly into the student activities fund which the kids use for field trips, projects that benefit the whole community, guest instructors, charities, and other worthy things.
The whole affair starts revving up around five p.m. See you there.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Thursday, February 19, 2009
New President, New FDA chief....
Dan Carlat goes over the candidates. This very important. After years of the revolving door between industry and the Food and Drug administration there is a chance that someone actually critical of falsifying data, paying off doctors, and deceiving consumers might be appointed.
I’m not sure who I would pick. I personally know Dr. Steve Nissen and think he would be an fantastic choice, because he amply understands the challenges and imperfections of the FDA and has clear plans for fixing the agency. And, of course, it doesn’t hurt that he has never been afraid to call out drug companies for hiding inconvenient data about drug side effects. Dr. Nissen, if you’ll recall, was the one who broke the Avandia story . But he is hardly anti-pharmaceuticals. As chair of cardiovascular medicine of the Cleveland Clinic, he has conducted industry-funded research, and he has focused on using intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) imaging for treating coronary atherosclerosis. His disclosures are listed here, but note that he receives no personal income from these relationships, insisting that companies donate all honoraria to charity.
Susan Wood is another great choice. A heroine when it comes to women’s rights, Wood was the FDA’s Director of the Office of Women's Health until 2005, when she resigned on principle over the delay in approving “Plan B,” an emergency over–the–counter contraception (not to be confused with the “abortion pill,” RU-486). She is currently a professor in the School of Public Health at GW University. You can read up on her here and here. As far as I know, she has no financial relationships with any pharmaceutical company, and she is the only candidate who is not an M.D., for better or for worse.
Josh Sharfstein, who is currently head of the Baltimore Health Department, has an interesting psychiatric connection in that his father, Steve Sharfstein, is the former president of the American Psychiatric Association. Steve Sharfstein made a splash by publishing this column in which he urged clearer boundaries between physicians and industry enticements. Josh Sharfstein has an equally strong sense of ethics, and has in the past called Pfizer onto the carpet for improper promotion (he once alerted the New England Journal of Medicine that Pfizer was inviting docs to a “rack ‘em up and toss ‘em down” event including billiards and lots of alcohol). He has also worked on the staff of Representative Henry Waxman, who is now chair of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee. Sources tell me that he has no financial relationships with the pharmaceutical industry.
The only truly bizarre entry on Obama’s short list is Dr. Robert Califf, vice chancellor for clinical research and professor in the cardiology department at Duke. I have no problem with his experience and extraordinary academic achievements. And I hesitate to criticize a fellow grad of UCSF Medical School. But c’mon folks, look at these industry disclosures. He took money—lots of money--from 18 different pharmaceutical or device firms. Most of this was not for research, but for consulting and speaking, including CME. If Dr. Califf believes that it is ethical for physicians to help drug companies market their products, that’s his own business. But to elevate him to a position in which he is the country’s chief watchdog over unsafe medications and foods seems a dangerous move. With money from 18 drug companies padding his bank account, he will presumably spend most of his FDA career recusing himself from crucial decisions. Not a good idea.
I have good feeling about how this will end up.
I’m not sure who I would pick. I personally know Dr. Steve Nissen and think he would be an fantastic choice, because he amply understands the challenges and imperfections of the FDA and has clear plans for fixing the agency. And, of course, it doesn’t hurt that he has never been afraid to call out drug companies for hiding inconvenient data about drug side effects. Dr. Nissen, if you’ll recall, was the one who broke the Avandia story . But he is hardly anti-pharmaceuticals. As chair of cardiovascular medicine of the Cleveland Clinic, he has conducted industry-funded research, and he has focused on using intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) imaging for treating coronary atherosclerosis. His disclosures are listed here, but note that he receives no personal income from these relationships, insisting that companies donate all honoraria to charity.
Susan Wood is another great choice. A heroine when it comes to women’s rights, Wood was the FDA’s Director of the Office of Women's Health until 2005, when she resigned on principle over the delay in approving “Plan B,” an emergency over–the–counter contraception (not to be confused with the “abortion pill,” RU-486). She is currently a professor in the School of Public Health at GW University. You can read up on her here and here. As far as I know, she has no financial relationships with any pharmaceutical company, and she is the only candidate who is not an M.D., for better or for worse.
Josh Sharfstein, who is currently head of the Baltimore Health Department, has an interesting psychiatric connection in that his father, Steve Sharfstein, is the former president of the American Psychiatric Association. Steve Sharfstein made a splash by publishing this column in which he urged clearer boundaries between physicians and industry enticements. Josh Sharfstein has an equally strong sense of ethics, and has in the past called Pfizer onto the carpet for improper promotion (he once alerted the New England Journal of Medicine that Pfizer was inviting docs to a “rack ‘em up and toss ‘em down” event including billiards and lots of alcohol). He has also worked on the staff of Representative Henry Waxman, who is now chair of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee. Sources tell me that he has no financial relationships with the pharmaceutical industry.
The only truly bizarre entry on Obama’s short list is Dr. Robert Califf, vice chancellor for clinical research and professor in the cardiology department at Duke. I have no problem with his experience and extraordinary academic achievements. And I hesitate to criticize a fellow grad of UCSF Medical School. But c’mon folks, look at these industry disclosures. He took money—lots of money--from 18 different pharmaceutical or device firms. Most of this was not for research, but for consulting and speaking, including CME. If Dr. Califf believes that it is ethical for physicians to help drug companies market their products, that’s his own business. But to elevate him to a position in which he is the country’s chief watchdog over unsafe medications and foods seems a dangerous move. With money from 18 drug companies padding his bank account, he will presumably spend most of his FDA career recusing himself from crucial decisions. Not a good idea.
I have good feeling about how this will end up.
Thursday, and a couple of reminders...
Musicians and other artists should be sure to check out the discussion on the TASmusicwblog.
And Remember: Our Annual Fundraiser is Friday Evening! Student performances, coffee, tea, and a silent auction.
And Remember: Our Annual Fundraiser is Friday Evening! Student performances, coffee, tea, and a silent auction.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Welcome, Wodens Day
There are quite a few interesting classes going on at TAS these days. They are small, and modest; some are very successful, with the students doing excellent work and making progress, some are mixed. There is a great deal of up and down in teaching (in anything) and today I am feeling both.
The long view is that one kid after another turns out beautifully. It takes time and it requires a teacher to have faith in the student. Without that, a young person can't get a sense of what is possible.
Do all people this age have such resistance to structure? Is writing so hard for even those without obvious difficulties? Why is it that most of the students in my psychology class are so clueless about writing outlines? Keeping the demands up is the other end of the dialectic: expectations are part of having faith in someone.
When I watch Elizabeth Quigley, who has taught for 35 years and never seems to head to the well and find it dry, I get a clear idea of what I have yet to understand. We have another wonderful person coming to present us with some new perspectives in April. And next week, we have a workshop in differential learning, in teaching to different abilities. Sometimes I resist the inservice "culture" of modern education. Much of it is professionalized hooey. But some of that resistance is plain old resistance on my own part, and very much in parallel with my students'.
In our psychology class we are currently discussing sexuality and gender. What a wonderful subject to discuss with 17 and 18 year olds. I frame the discussion, and try to point out what is down the road, both in a college gender studies class and in their lives and the mature and their relationships deepen. We speak frankly and in considerable detail. The students are motivated and insightful.
I think of the storm my own mother provoked in 1975 when she and a friend began teaching sex education at our parish in Stamford, Ct. Rumors swirled that they were anti-catholic, and actually lesbians. But they won, they kept teaching, and people came around.
We still have a long way to go. And biology apparently isn't helping:
...in a "shocking" finding, [Susan] Fiske (a researcher at Princeton) noted, some of the men studied showed no activity in the part of the brain [while viewing pictures of bikini clad women] that usually responds when a person ponders another's intentions.
This means that these men see women "as sexually inviting, but they are not thinking about their minds," Fiske said. "The lack of activation in this social cognition area is really odd, because it hardly ever happens."
Here is the National Geographic link. I found it in an Italian paper, which, of course, is festooned with pictures of scantily clad women. I am surprised it didn't receive more copy in the U.S. I am also surprised it was covered (as it were) in Italy.
The article doesn't say that such patterns in the brain are fixed, but rather that men who test as "hostile sexists" had quite different processing patterns. The implications of this are very interesting. Are they retrainable? Probably. Is there a history of trauma amongst the most "hostile" of these men? Or is there a relationship between learning new patterns and early disruption of attachment with a caretaker? Fascinating. But despite the deterministic tone of the article, i.e. standard issue simple-minded copy making, it is nothing of the sort. There is a subset of men whose attitudes are deeply ingrained and not counter balanced by the kind of processing usually seen in healthy, mature males.
The article doesn't say that such patterns in the brain are fixed, but rather that men who test as "hostile sexists" had quite different processing patterns. The implications of this are very interesting. Are they retrainable? Probably. Is there a history of trauma amongst the most "hostile" of these men? Or is there a relationship between learning new patterns and early disruption of attachment with a caretaker? Fascinating. But despite the deterministic tone of the article, i.e. standard issue simple-minded copy making, it is nothing of the sort. There is a subset of men whose attitudes are deeply ingrained and not counter balanced by the kind of processing usually seen in healthy, mature males.
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