One time in med school, my attending said, “You don’t seem like you’re that interested in medicine,” and I said, “Yeah, that tracks.”

“I think there is a knowledge deficit that needs to be addressed.”

How do you all describe a ”six more weeks of winter” scenario now that “Groundhog Day” means a time loop?

Gravy a song:

“Gravy’s just another word for nothin’ left to ooze…”

New Episode!

Two Kavehs discuss Iran, the trauma of Trump’s threats and who says our name correctly.

Links: tinyurl.com/3k6dmm9y

Hi friends! The show now officially has Merch! Get it here!

Agenda is the plural of agendum

They should give Obama the Nobel peace prize again.

bsky.app/profile/cata...

Fully f@cking nuts.

<Savior wakes up, looks at phone, goes back to being dead.>

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"And what do you call this act?"
"The originalists!"

It’s actually less believable that they would accept the name of an American football play.

Holy shit, that is an incredibly preserved hadrosaur hoof

Yes, a positive pregnancy test gets an “abnormal” flag, even though most people would probably balk at describing pregnant people as “abnormal.” There is no good word for “outside of normal but not concerning.” Sometimes English is inadequate.

But skipping to the end

So, this is why we don’t just “test for everything.” We’re trying our best to do the most good for the most people. Those with undetected conditions and those who are healthy. 10/10

We consider how common the condition is, whether there is an effective treatment, the consequences of unnecessary treatment (and missed treatment), among other things. 9/n

Medical organizations generally do a lot of math and a lot of arguing (usually more arguing than math) to figure out which tests are effective to offer as screens. 8/n

If you do test positive you may get unnecessary treatment (think about the long list of side effects on every pharma ad before dismissing this) or invasive confirmatory testing. 7/n

Most tests, if applied to everyone without screening, will make lots of mistakes. So, if there is no reason to test you, there’s probably nothing wrong with you, AND there’s a significant chance that a test result is wrong. 6/n

The reason they seem to perform better than they do in your lived experience is that we usually test people who *already show some sign, symptom, or history* of that condition. Tests seem to be highly accurate partly because people unlikely to test positive are usually *screened out*. 5/n

Like most non-experts, you probably generally perceive lab tests to be close to 100% accurate. You might be surprised to learn that lab tests are often very far from perfect. 4/n

Most people who don’t have any symptoms also don’t have anything wrong with them. You are probably thinking “great, then the tests will be negative, and I’ll get reassurance.” 3/n

We’re all self centered when it comes to our health, so you’re probably imagining this scenario as “I have something and it is not being detected, and if I know about it then I can do something.” 2/n

If you’re looking for an explanation for why, here goes… (BTW, I’m a lab professional arguing against testing, so the answer is not that I’m trying to line my pockets) 1/n

Testing earlier, more often, for more things is not necessarily a good thing.

Pop-Tarts creates 'Super Stuffed' pastries with 50% more filling after years of customer demand: 'Drooling over this'

The time honored capitalistic trend of gradually making your product shittier and shittier until you can debut the original as a new product