If you’ve never actually watched a child die from a preventable cause, I can see why you would be more willing to give up on fighting the parents on these things. I worked at a pediatric level 1 trauma emergency room before starting medical school. I have watched far too many children die because of some stupid mistake/decision their parent made to be willing to let it go.

Having to do chest compressions on a baby that went into respiratory arrest then cardiac arrest because of a vaccine preventable illness does something to you…and if it doesn’t? Something is seriously wrong with you.

Yeah, but it’s not the baby’s fault their parents are kool aid swilling morons.

Yeah, I like the idea of keeping them here to live in the hellhole they’re making. It’s bullshit that they get to turn this country into a nightmare and bop off to tropical vacations while we try to keep people from dying from their shitty decisions. (I work in healthcare and get to try to convince people to get vaccines. It’s a painful conversation to have multiple times a day.)

I’m in a similar boat, but I have a couple Democrats in my state that I think are good eggs. For one, Tim Walz has been an amazing governor and I really hate what the Harris campaign did to him and his reputation. Also, Ilhan Omar and Peggy Flanagan are pretty nifty all around. Outside Minnesota, AOC seems pretty decent to me and I have high hopes for Mamdani (although, he explicitly identifies as a Democratic Socialist)

I’ve met a POC transwoman who was a sex worker and receiving Medicaid that showed up to her medical appointment in a bedazzled MAGA tank top in 2019. She was…interesting.

Nier: Automata has a special place in my heart and I’m seriously considering getting a tattoo of Pascal because of that story thread.

I’ll be getting my hysterectomy in the new year. I’m looking forward to it.

Oh, I forgot for OB/Gyn: GOOP and “Natural Birth Midwives”

• Emergency Medicine: Alcohol and/or fireworks
• Family Medicine: Wellness influencers
• Surgery: Pre-op NSAIDs (eg ibuprofen)
• Pediatrics: RFK Jr

The medical school application system, AMCAS, sells the information of every medical school applicant. I had to call the recruiters’ office and explain to them that I have multiple failing organ systems and take more than 10 medications a day. I asked if they could get me a medical waiver for chronic kidney disease and they sheepishly agreed to remove my name from their list.

Most of the drug research that actually produces new, useful treatments is done by universities and government research institutions, (or at least it was before the budget cuts). That research produced with state funding is then bought for pennies on the dollar by big pharma who does the last couple steps and reaps all of the financial rewards.

The NIH and CDC would be fully funded in perpetuity (along with many research institutions and universities) if they got paid even a fraction of the profits for their foundational research.

To be somewhat pedantic, “Nazi” is not a demographic identifier. Demographics almost always refers to more immutable features like age, sex, gender, orientation, race, nationality, citizenship, etc. Political ideology is a way to divide and count people, but it’s not something that is reliably counted as a demographic indicator.

I have the KPDH soundtrack going on repeat. (My life is extremely stressful at the moment and I need my dopamine from somewhere)

They can get your actual region off your billing details for subscription pricing. The content availability might vary by IP, but the pricing is going to go off your billing address. That’s why I pay taxes on some of my subscription services is because my state has a tax on that while other states don’t. When signing up for a new service, it doesn’t show me the total with tax until I enter my address.

Given that, as a species, we have only just recently figured out how to diagnose any of these things, it is highly unlikely that these conditions are nowhere in your family lineage. There is always the possibility of de novo mutations that can shake things up, but people with schizophrenia used to just be called generically insane…or they were prophets or cult leaders if they rolled high on Charisma.

This is a misrepresentation. Development or maturation of the brain finishes around 25 years old. In this context, “development” refers to the completion of the adult form of the organ. The ongoing “development” that this blog post refers to is more accurately described as neuroplasticity. There is an ongoing potential for the brain to create new connections and reinforce existing ones throughout life, but the actual mature form of the frontal cortex is not complete until your mid-twenties.

Another way to explain this would be to use breasts as an example. As a biologically female girl goes through puberty, her breasts grow as her body develops mammary tissue and the surrounding/supporting structures. This is called secondary sexual development. If you used the word “development” the same way that blog post does, then the changes to the breast throughout adulthood (such as milk production, skin sagging, loss of adipose) would also be called “development”, but that doesn’t make sense when we’re talking about development of sexual characteristics. Those are ongoing changes to the breast, but it is not the same thing as the initial development stage that is equivalent to the initial development and maturation of the brain that finishes in a person’s mid-twenties.

The earlier its diagnosed, the more severe it tends to be. If someone has schizophrenia triggered under the age of 25, the massive shift in the balance of neurotransmitters has a significant effect on the continuing development of the brain. The frontal cortex (the executive function, intelligence/wisdom, and common sense part of the brain) is the last part to finish developing. That’s why you can have teenagers and college-aged kids that are extremely smart academically, but absolute morons when it comes to decision making and self-restraint.

Schizophrenia is characterized by massive overloading of dopamine to the point that the brain malfunctions, and the medications used to treat it (anti-psychotics) mostly work by dulling the effects of dopamine and limiting its production. Finding the right anti-psychotic and right dose of that drug can take a lot of trial and error, and that’s all time lost for ongoing development of that person’s brain. Dopamine is a very important neurotransmitter, so if someone has severe schizophrenia requiring strong dopamine inhibition, they can end up with a lot of nasty side effects.

The medications have long term effects too and there’s kind of a maximum amount of time you can be on an anti-psychotic before you start having a form of medication-induced Parkinsonism. If someone’s schizophrenia gets triggered then diagnosed and treated earlier, it means they are going to start having those Parkinson’s symptoms that much earlier.

I work in medicine (mostly emergency medicine), and I have seen a lot of people end up with their lives completely torn apart because of permanent effects of psychotropic drugs. CBD has a lot of benefits and some real clinical evidence backing it up, but there really aren’t any non-recreational uses for THC and the people who want to use marijuana for calming effects can get CBD on its own these days.

Copied from another reply:

Schizophrenia is a mental health disorder that can be triggered by psychoactive substances, trauma, or other significant events/life changes. Not everyone who has schizophrenia was guaranteed to get it, it’s just that some people have the potential for it. A psychotic episode (whether substance-induced or organic) is a common trigger to cause schizophrenia in someone that had the potential to develop the disorder.

If you have a family history of mental illnesses (particularly Schizophrenia and Bipolar disorder), significant THC use and substance-induced psychotic episodes can be the grain that tips the scale towards developing the disorder that may have otherwise been avoided.

(TL;DR: if Schizophrenia runs in your family, be exceedingly careful about what psychoactive substances you use.)

Schizophrenia is a mental health disorder that can be triggered by psychoactive substances, trauma, or other significant events/life changes. Not everyone who has schizophrenia was guaranteed to get it, it’s just that some people have the potential for it. A psychotic episode (whether substance-induced or organic) is a common trigger to cause schizophrenia in someone that had the potential to develop the disorder.

If you have a family history of mental illnesses (particularly Schizophrenia and Bipolar disorder), significant THC use and substance-induced psychotic episodes can be the grain that tips the scale towards developing the disorder that may have otherwise been avoided.

(TL;DR: if Schizophrenia runs in your family, be exceedingly careful about what psychoactive substances you use.)