I’m repeating my reply to someone else in the thread so hopefully more people can see it:

I looked it up and read through the NIH paper that did a review of available information about it. It’s essentially a recreational drug that can be formed in your body when you take methylphenidate and alcohol at the same time.

I will put out this caution though: there were a lot of reports of bad trips, worsened focus/cognition, dangerous side effects like increased heart rate and body temperature, and there was a very high rate of addictive responses. So it may sound like fun, but you’re running the risk of causing yourself a lot of problems and using Ethylphenidate (or methylphenidate plus alcohol) may make your regular ADHD meds less effective and lead into addiction problems.

TL;DR: This is a dangerous, bad idea and as a medical student with a decent understanding of pharmacology, I do NOT recommend doing this.

I looked it up and read through the NIH paper that did a review of available information about it. It’s essentially a recreational drug that can be formed in your body when you take methylphenidate and alcohol at the same time.

I will put out this caution though: there were a lot of reports of bad trips, worsened focus/cognition, dangerous side effects like increased heart rate and body temperature, and there was a very high rate of addictive responses. So it may sound like fun, but you’re running the risk of causing yourself a lot of problems and using Ethylphenidate (or methylphenidate plus alcohol) may make your regular ADHD meds less effective and lead into addiction problems.

As a woman and a DO medical student, I have been pushing back on this stuff when I see it and have been challenging my classmates and professors if they are being assholes about anything.

We weren’t graded on the quality of our dissections, but the exams were based on how good the dissection was. We would have a set of assigned anatomical structures to expose and/or dissect in a given unit, and then the practical exam used our dissections. They would stick a pin in something and you had to write in the name of the structure, what nerve/nerve root innervated that structure, what was it’s blood supply, or what structures should be above or below it, etc. The year before mine got absolutely screwed on one exam because almost no one finished all the assigned dissections, so the professor just stuck a pin on the outside of the cadaver with one of the questions above.

Personally, I was obsessively meticulous about my dissections and when my tankmates (other students assigned to the same cadaver) messed something up, I would get very frustrated with them. I would come in on weekends to carefully expose and clean individual arteries and nerves for hours at a time. The main anatomy professor kept asking me what kind of surgeon I wanted to be, but I’m a horrid little gremlin that likes night shift and hanging out in hospital basements, so I want to go into emergency medicine.

She did get Nobel prizes in Physics and Chemistry, so you’re both right!

Thankfully, the extent of the religion in the education is in the ethics discussions and strong recommendations to discuss spirituality and religion with your patients because faith communities are “very important”. The religion does not make it into any of the actual medicine or science.

It’s not dirt as much as it’s surprise pocket sand/glitter that sticks to absolutely everything and is impossible to get rid of.

Robert Evans just did a 4 part series on RFK Jr. and it is fascinating. Links below (on spotify because that’s what I’ve got, sorry)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

I highly recommend the Behind the Bastards podcast overall. It’s a great way to get your heart rate and blood pressure up to really enhance your cardio workouts or stay awake on long road trips. You will be intensely angry at everything, but it helps. :)

I accidentally ended up at a religious university for medical school and you better believe I’ve gotten in numerous fights with the law and ethics professor (who, to be fair, is actually a MD/JD) regarding the prescribed conservative religious approach to the ethics discussions. I absolutely did not change his mind, but I did get a bunch of my classmates to start asking questions by putting myself out there and challenging the professor on their BS.

Edit: I should clarify that these fights were on mic in the recorded lectures, so there’s a hard record of my arguing with him.

Pray tell…what are these “normal” things you think suburban women worry about? I suppose it is abnormal on a global scale for them (us) to have to worry about it because it’s a non-issue in actually civilized countries.

That’s part of the problem. Obesity and malnutrition go hand-in-hand in this country because healthy foods are more expensive and more difficult to procure and prepare for people who are just scraping by. People will rant and holler about how poor people are so stupid for buying and eating fast food when buying ingredients and cooking can be cheaper and is definitely healthier, but that does not account for the people who are working 2 or 3 jobs to make ends meet and they simply do not have time for grocery shopping and cooking. There’s also the astonishingly dystopian reality of “food deserts” where there are people who don’t have access to actual grocery stores that sell fresh produce and meat. There are plenty of neighborhoods and even entire towns in America that do not have a store where they can buy fresh food, and even more where they don’t have access to affordable fresh food. It’s abominable.

As a medical professional, I see patients with tons of health problems including obesity, diabetes, hypertension, metabolic syndrome…the list goes on…and they simply do not have reliable, functional access to the healthier diet that would go a long way towards fixing those health problems. There are morbidly obese children with diseases like pellagra because of vitamin deficiencies, or obese people with muscle wasting because the food they have access to is mostly carbs and fat with very little protein. It is so frustrating and appalling to me that people on the outside of these situations look down on people struggling with obesity and diabetes and whatnot as if those people had any meaningful control over their situations.

One of my attending physicians in the family medicine clinic described it as “regular, small-town Midwest problems”. Often, the best we can do is recommend that they try to get more fruits and vegetables, whole grains, fish or chicken instead of red meat…but we also prescribe multivitamins and weight loss, diabetes, and hypertension medications because insurance will at least help pay for those. Honestly, health insurance companies could save literal billions of dollars if they offered rebate programs for healthy food and supported local farmers’ markets or something. Diet and exercise will lower someone’s high blood pressure 5 times as much as most of the medications will.

Well, time to Godwin’s Law this discussion I guess.

What you’re suggesting is an expectation for physicians to do something akin to actively defying the Nazi regime to hide/evacuate/personally protect vulnerable people who the Nazis are trying to round up. The people in Nazi Germany who put their lives and livelihoods on the line to help shield people from the concentration camps are unequivocally heroes in every sense of the word.

It is unreasonable to expect, much less demand true heroism from people who are trying to live their lives. Right now, the penalties for performing an illegal abortion in Texas are loss of your medical license and a minimum of 5 years’ imprisonment, and maximum of 99 years’ imprisonment, as well as a $100,000 fine per instance. (They are very generous though, in that if the fetus miraculously survives, it’s only a second degree felony that carries a mandatory sentence of 2 to 20 years).

You are effectively insisting that physicians put in this position must put their entire profession, career, livelihood, and potentially even their life on the line in the hopes that the politically selected prosecutor elects to not pursue charges. That’s a hell of a gamble without even beginning to consider the impact of the loss of a physician would have on their community.

This is a political problem with a political solution, but despite my own intentions and moral convictions, I would never presume to insist that another physician puts everything on the line to stand up to the modern Nazi party. (because, let’s be honest, that’s what the GOP is now.)

You’re agreeing that this is a political problem, but you’re still putting the impetus and responsibility on the physician in that situation. If we’re using the trolley problem as an example, the person holding the switch to choose between the 5 people in harm’s way, or actively switching it to one person who currently isn’t in harm’s way…the switch just changes the track direction. That person doesn’t have access to brakes, or a “derail” option. The physician in that situation has to choose between actively leaving one person in harm’s way, or allowing many people to suffer down the line.

Personally, I don’t have kids, I’m not going to have kids, and it’s just me and my husband. I don’t have a whole family of lives to ruin by getting into legal trouble by running afoul of this, but I don’t blame the physicians who do have a lot to lose. Also, I know enough about the legal system and how medical documentation and coding work to make it tough for the hypothetical prosecutor to pin things on me. Hell, I’m still a student and I’m thinking up ways to play this horrible game they’ve set up, and I think some of my solutions will be pretty clever if I ever have to use them. I will not be sharing any of those ideas, but I have quite a few of them.

You do realize that the traditional Hippocratic and Osteopathic oaths forbid abortions, right? A lot of physicians adhere to more modern versions, but if you’re going by the traditional Hippocratic oath, you’re just talking out your ass about something you don’t actually understand the context and consequences of.

Edit: It appears that I should clarify some things. I do not agree with the original Hippocratic or Osteopathic oaths. I refuse to take them, and have instead written my own for myself and my firmly held beliefs. Abortion and euthanasia are expressly forbidden by the original oaths, and there are still quite a few physicians that point to those oaths to excuse themselves from violating conservative religious beliefs on those topics. I support the right to abortions, and the right to die with dignity. It’s still important to recognize that the original oaths that many physicians (old and new) ascribe to forbid these, and that they will use those oaths as an excuse to violate patients’ rights in favor of their own beliefs.

So, is this you saying that you will put your freedom and your family at risk to help someone?

To be clear, I am a third year medical student that wants to go into emergency medicine, and I’m already looking for ways to challenge this kind of bullshit to protect my patients. Thankfully, I live in a state that has actually set itself up as a refuge for reproductive healthcare (Minnesota), but I’d just get more creative about it if I lived somewhere else.

I’ll put my money where my mouth is…would you? I want an actual, honest answer that takes your own life and situation into consideration.

I have an orange kitty, and while he is a very sweet dumb baby that never gets a turn with the brain cell, he is still vastly more intelligent than that sorry excuse for a person.

Oh yah, that’s a good excuse for a Fargo re-watch.

I’m a transplant to the Midwest, and I catch myself using it as a “get someone’s attention” noise sometimes.

Well, we are the North Star State.

And they are not mutually exclusive.