Docs turn to Botox to make ends meet
That’s the title of the article from The Seattle Times. At the Annual American Academy of Family Physicians where they usually talk about diabetes and high blood pressure there were ten continuing courses ranging from Chemical peels, facial fillers and Botox. The courses are so popular they have waiting lists. The Family Physicians like it but as one plastic surgeon said ‘patients don’t come to me to get a pap smear’. The main reason cited ...continue reading

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Bird Flu
HistoryPlagues have periodically spread across the world killing literally millions of people. There have been three major plagues that raced across the world. One in the 6th, 14th and seventeenth Centuries. The one in the 17th Century was known as the Bubonic Plague 1347-1351. It started in the crowded cities of Europe and was spread by fleas biting infected rats. It lasted for four years and wiped out half of the population of Europe, a total of 137 million people died. The causative organism was the bacteria Bubonic Pestes, a strain that we can easily eradicate with antibiotics today. Most of these people died of pneumonia.The most recent pandemics (an epidemic that has spread beyond a defined area to become world wide) were those 1918, 1957 and the Hong Kong flu of 1967-68. I will not dwell on the 1967 Hong Kong flu only to tell you that I personally was on R&R during the Viet-Nam conflict when I contracted it from there. I was in a delirious state for three days and my only recollection of those three days was that “I could see blue skies through the white ceiling”.   This 1918 pandemic ...continue reading

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