Ignaz Semmelweis

PeoplesCDC:

CDC revised its infection control guidelines regarding mask-wearing in healthcare settings, from hospitals and clinics to home care providers and nursing homes. The new guideline recommended masks only need to be worn in healthcare settings when COVID Community Transmission rates are high, based on the CDC map. This change is dangerous, unethical and based on flawed data.

drcopps:

You know how a doc discovered hand washing between dissecting cadavers and delivering babies could save lives? Imagine if 3 yrs later, they were like "that's mildly inconvenient so I'm gonna go back to not washing my hands". That's what maskless MDs look like to me 🤷🏼‍♀️

Lacci:

They basically did that. They phased handwashing out in the hospital where it was discovered and first implemented because it made doctors upset. It took 30 years to get from Ignaz Semmelweis proving handwashing saves lives to getting most doctors to do it.

PBS:

Medical students and their professors at the elite teaching hospitals of this era typically began their day performing barehanded autopsies on the women who had died the day before of childbed fever. They then proceeded to the wards to examine the laboring women about to deliver their babies. [...] Every day he heard the heart-rending pleas of women assigned to his care begging to be discharged because they believed these doctors to be the harbingers of death. [...]

Dr. Semmelweis ordered his medical students and junior physicians to wash their hands in a chlorinated lime solution until the smell of the putrid bodies they dissected in the autopsy suite was no longer detectable. Soon after instituting this protocol in 1847, the mortality rates on the doctor-dominated obstetrics service plummeted.

Unfortunately, Semmelweis's ideas were not accepted by all of his colleagues. Indeed, many were outraged at the suggestion that they were the cause of their patients' miserable deaths. Consequently, Semmelweis met with enormous resistance and criticism. [...]

Dr. Semmelweis's behavior became more and more erratic and he was finally committed to an insane asylum on July 30, 1865. He died there, two weeks later, on Aug. 13, 1865, at the age of 47. Historians still argue over what caused Semmelweis's mental health breakdown and subsequent death. Some point to an operation Semmelweis performed, wherein he infected himself with syphilis, which may also explain his insanity. Others believe he developed blood poisoning and sepsis while imprisoned in the asylum for what may have been an unbridled case of bipolar disease. More recently, some have claimed that the obstetrician had an early variant of Alzheimer's disease and was beaten to death in the asylum by his keepers.

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Some extremely good Dental Phantoms

And people say I'm hard to shop for.

I have acquired a nice collection German made KaVo Phantoms for dental simulation practice. The aluminum jaws have a magnetic quick disconnect system and come with an articulating head and torso. Theses units can adapt to a simulation unit to fit your requirements. These are used units but are high quality and in great condition.


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Trump Betrayed by His Diet Coke Valet

Everything about this story is beautiful.

The Washington Post reports that his former White House valet -- the man who had to respond every time the president pressed his famous Oval Office Diet Coke button -- provided key evidence that led to the FBI's search of Mar-a-Lago in August. [...]

Not long after Trump took office, Nauta left the mess to become one of Trump's valets, spending some of his workday in a small passageway that connects the West Wing to a private dining room. From there, he had access to a small refrigerator stocked with Diet Cokes, which he brought to the president in the Oval Office when Trump pressed a call button on his desk.

Nauta frequently served as a kind of gofer, fetching any items the president might need throughout the day and tidying up the room, the former staffer said. When Trump left the Oval Office for the night, it was Nauta who brought his coat. Their daily proximity meant that the two developed a close professional relationship, and Trump "trusted him completely," this person added.

Nauta followed Trump to Mar-a-Lago at the end of his term, and campaign-finance records show he was on the payroll of Trump's Save America PAC, making about $135,000 a year. It seems Trump's trust wasn't entirely misplaced; the Post reports that Nauta resisted betraying his boss at first but eventually changed his story:

When FBI agents first interviewed Nauta, he denied any role in moving boxes or sensitive documents, the people familiar with the situation said in interviews before Nauta's name became public. But as investigators gathered more evidence, they questioned him a second time and he told a starkly different story -- that Trump instructed him to move the boxes, these people said.

Nauta's alleged disloyalty is a crushing blow not just for Trump but also for Downton Abbey fans, who were led to believe over six seasons and two movies that a valet is someone who will hand-wash unmentionables, happily accept their lower station in life, and never, ever tell their wealthy employer's dark secrets.

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Copilot lawsuit

We're investigating a potential lawsuit against GitHub Copilot for violating its legal duties to open-source authors and end users:

Here again we find Microsoft getting handwavy. In 2021, Nat Friedman claimed that Copilot's "output belongs to the operator, just like with a compiler." But this is a mischievous analogy, because Copilot lays new traps for the unwary.

Microsoft characterizes the output of Copilot as a series of code "suggestions". Microsoft "does not claim any rights" in these suggestions. But neither does Microsoft make any guarantees about the correctness, security, or extenuating intellectual-property entanglements of the code so produced. Once you accept a Copilot suggestion, all that becomes your problem. [...]

What entanglements might arise? Copilot users -- here's one example, and another -- have shown that Copilot can be induced to emit verbatim code from identifiable repositories. Just this week, Texas A&M professor Tim Davis gave numerous examples of large chunks of his code being copied verbatim by Copilot, including when he prompted Copilot with the comment /* sparse matrix transpose in the style of Tim Davis */.

Use of this code plainly creates an obligation to comply with its license. But as a side effect of Copilot's design, information about the code's origin -- author, license, etc. -- is stripped away. How can Copilot users comply with the license if they don't even know it exists? [...]

Amidst this grand alchemy, Copilot interlopes. Its goal is to arrogate the energy of open-source to itself. We needn't delve into Microsoft's very checkered history with open source to see Copilot for what it is: a parasite.

The legality of Copilot must be tested before the damage to open source becomes irreparable. That's why I'm suiting up.

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