Carl Setzer

Re: " An Infection, Unnoticed, Turns Unstoppable " Brief summation: boy gets infection via a superficial seeming injury. Multiple medical professionals fail to catch it as it escalates, eventually killing the boy.  Reading this piece in the NYTimes is painful. As a parent, these stories rattle your paranoia. Parenthood seems to be that thing which shakes us from a "it can't happen to me" attitude. Yet my parental paranoia wasn't the only issue raised. I left wondering what could've been done differently, or, more specifically, how could technology help to prevent such tragedy. Some key data were missed in the process, in particular several key elevated levels ("His bands were 53% (normal high is 15%); absolute neutrophils were 13.5 (normal high is 8.5); absolute bands were 7.8 (normal high, 4.2). On the other hand, a blood value associated with viral infection was low. His lymphocytes were 3% (normal low, 28%).") were, for whatever reason...

Just watched a spot for a prescription eye-lash grower. Watching it makes me think of the treatments for gas, hair-loss, and all sorts of trivial ailments. Seems rather superfluous and silly. Clearly, even such a noble endeavor as medicine looses its ethical compass in the face of profit. How do we get treatments developed for serious diseases that don’t have large markets? The invisible hand won’t bring them about. A disease, no matter how dreadful its affects and the suffering it causes, that only has a minute number of “customers” won’t attract the medical industrial complex. Is there any way to build these treatments, products? To alleviate these diseases and mitigate suffering? This ethical concern is one, unspoken, draw for me towards a nationalized (perhaps globalized?) system. I hope that we could find a non-socialized system.

I had a lovely interview this afternoon and feel good about how it went. However, this is balanced with the knowledge that many others have also been interviewed. Though it is for a position that I would be excited to get, I'm not all angsty. I'm just not too worried about the whole unemployed thing right now. However, that's due to luck, and some skill (I guess). Savings will hold out for a bit yet, and my wife works...and it's quite unlikely she'll loose her job (she teaches junior high special ed...I shudder at the thought). Our worst case scenario is a radical lifestyle shift. Perhaps losing one of the cars (and it's payment), and dropping such things as cable (the horror!). And I'm not so hell-bent on working. Work, for me, is more about contributing and making an impact. That, truly, is a luxury. Reminds me of my grandfather. He was "retired" (acted upon him, not of his choice) when I was about 12. His life was wrapped up in his job. He was i...