Tuesday, June 08, 2010
Medical device moment
The video below is a couple of years old, but is just now going viral, so I am adding to the spread of the virus here.
A baby, born deaf, has received a cochlear implant, and the video captures the initial activation of the implant, and the baby hears his mother's voice for the first time.
Is it possible that the "corporate tools" working at medical device companies actually play a role in making moments like this possible? For those Americans who might believe that the federal government can (and rightly should) pick which technologies ought to receive the funding necessary to go all the way from the inventor's lab to the patient, you might want to rethink that, and watch the video again.
3 Comments:
By 
JPMcT, at
Tue Jun 08, 06:39:00 AM:
I'll make the assumption that very intelligent people designed, crafted and manufactured the device. More very intelligent people evaluated the child, discovered he was a candidate for the device and actually implanted it. Other very intelligent people will program the device to be sure that the child gets the most out of it.
In another generation, most, if not all, of these type of people will be getting their MBA's rather than PHD's and MD's...BECAUSE they are very intelligent people.
By 
, at
Tue Jun 08, 10:22:00 AM:
Sad, but true, JPMcT, and getting more true as time goes on.
Not long ago a friend of mine was ranting about the "for profit medical profession". Apparently, he forgot my father was part of that horrible, terrible group. My father had a least 6 children named after him, because of his efforts to save and improve lives. President Obama thinks doctors lie about treatment so they can collect more money amputating limbs. He spends too much time with lawyers, I guess.
By JPMcT, at
Tue Jun 08, 11:29:00 PM:
When not playing music, I'm a general and vascular surgeon...so you can imagine my delight when Mr. Obama declared that the reimbursement for an amputation went from it's usual level of reimbursment of around $400 to FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS!!!!
Doing the math...and relying on the level of greed that Mr. Obama believes that we docs are capable of, I quickly realized that all I had to do was to talk one patient a week into having an amputation...and I could rake in a little les thanj 2.5 MILLION dollars a year!!!
Woah! Boy...That's Hope and Change for ya!!
Unfortunately, with modern vascular surgical techniques, amputation has become an unusual procedure.
Clearly, we need to stop all this vascular reconstructive crap, eliminate the angiograms and the stent placements...stop doing bypass surgery...forget about non-invasive vascular screening...and just concentrate on choppin' off legs!
Thanks, Barack!!
