Mastodon Pal-Pourri ~ Pallimed

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Pal-Pourri

Nominee for best article title for 2008
Live Fast, Die Young, Leave a Good-Looking Corpse. David M. Burns, MD Arch Intern Med. 2008;168(18):1946-1947.
Winner for 2005
Palliative Trajectory Markers for End-Stage Heart Failure. Or "Oh Toto. This doesn't look like Kancerous!" Turris M, Rauscher C. Can J Cardiovasc Nurs. 2005;15(2):17-25.
(HT: A. Wollesen)

Feel free to email us any other good titles you find.

Medical Marijuana
Yesterday, Michigan voters approved Proposal 1 which allows medical marijuana to be prescribed for pain, nausea and other symptoms for any medical condition determined to be 'debilitating.' Two interesting quirks about the actual law. In the titles/subject headers marijuana is spelled with a 'j', in the body of the document the 'j' is replaced with an 'h.' I had never seen it spelled 'marihuana' before. But Wikipedia says it can be so there you go. The other quirk is that it lists 'nail patella' as a debilitating condition. I feel like a bad internist that I had to look this up, since I had never heard of it. I did not find a lot of information about intractable pain and NPS, but it is curiously prominently listed in the Michigan law.

Bonus Quiz
Can you name the 13 states that medical marijuna is legal in without resorting to Google? Give your best try in the comments section.

Medscape Interview of Pallimed Authors
For the Grand Rounds a few weeks ago we were interviewed by one of the coordinators. If you want to read about how Drew, Tom and I got into palliative medicine feel free to check it out, although you will need a user name and password to access it. (free)

More on Washington Death With Dignity Main Supporter
NY Times Magazine published an article in December 2007 on Booth Gardner, founder of the Washington State I-1000 initiative for Physician Assisted Suicide and some background into his motivation for proposing the legislation.{{en|Dr.

Freakonomics Blog Reviews the Economics of Managed Death
But curiously leaves out anything about the high quality, person-centered system wide cost-savings care found with hospice. The post is short and really more of a stem and a question for commenters to expound upon, which I would encourage you to read.

Kinda Creepy and Weird File
After giving up his euthanasia advocacy, Jack Kevorkian ran (and lost) as an independent for a House of Representative's seat in Michigan. This isn't really all that creepy or weird until you go to the Detroit News website to read the article and get 5 vignettes of Kevorkian's car, bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom. With bad puns on the vignette titles: "Driving with Dr. Death." [Groan] and the "I'm just hanging out with my slightly eccentric older friend" music, it just gives it this surreal aura. This was an interesting choice for web content by the newspaper.

Most interesting exchange:
Kevorkian: "Death is the enemy. Like hell it is! Death is natural! How can something natural be the enemy?
Reporter: "Yeah, but so are hemmorrhoids and I don't like those either."

Hopefully this will be the last of the medically hastened death news for a while. I need to get back to some of Pallimed's reguarly scheduled programming.

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