Here's my routine life updates:
I got my hair trimmed!
I passed I&I part 1!
And... I completed my OSCE today! (Objective Structured Clinical Examination)
Weee....now that that's over....
I mostly wanted to talk about my shadowing experience yesterday and a few other things.
So, I got to shadow Infectious Disease (ID) yesterday....and it was awesooommmeeeee, despite it being a slow day. I think the coolest thing to me was seeing the obvious link between medicine, biology, and the environment...and seeing some pretty obscure bugs that we talked about in class..like Acetinobacter baumanii, Nocardia, and coagulase negative Staph.
Maybe the most interesting thing that I saw was when I was in grand rounds and one of the attendings gave a presentation called "man vs. fish". Before I tell you why it was cool, I of course, have to get into my environmental rant...
If you don't think that climate change will have an impact on human health, spoiler alert....you're very wrong.
To allude to John Stewart's "Burn Noticed" video, yes, we can still breathe (if you haven't seen it...please watch it, and be appalled with the US House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology). http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/8q3nmm/burn-noticed -- actually, there's the link. Definitely go watch it, after you finish reading the blog. The links between the environment and health are a little more subtle than CO2 suffocating us to death, but are still important nonetheless.
Okay, so think about this. Each ecosystem, whether on a grand scale--such as the temperate forest -- down to a much smaller level, like a leaf, have different organisms, nutrients, and factors that keep that system in balance. These factors can be temperature, precipitation, etc. There is a lot of research being done on at what point do these ecosystems become out of balance or differ from what they normally are (kudos to you, Steph Clements!)
So, I now get to debunk my favorite argument against the existence of "global warming". I put it in parentheses because the general public and a few congressmen(and women) belonging to a certain party cough cough have made the argument that "but the Earth isn't getting warmer, I can disprove this with a thermometer"
....le sigh. No, that is not what is happening. What is happening is much more complex and "global warming" is really causing a shift in climate patterns that is occurring much more rapidly than it normally would. So, yes, in some places...it will be warmer. In others, it will be colder. Some places will get more rain than others. Some places will experience drought. Sea levels will rise due to melting of the ice caps.
The point is, is that regardless of how the climate is changing, if it is CHANGING, most likely, the ecosystems that are currently present are going to be altered as well. This goes from a large animal scale--birds, deer, dogs, whatever--down to the microorganismal level. Especially the microorganismal level. The most obvious example of how climate change can impact the balance of ecosystems is the rise in sea levels creating a new habitat that was not previously there while also disrupting the previous ecosystem that WAS there. Some parts of the ecosystem will be fine and adapt and survive, but others may not and those niches will now open for new organisms.
Maybe, one of the organisms that was keeping the "bad bacteria" in check just got eliminated from the ecosystem. The bacteria now have a better chance of survival and thus pose an increased risk of infection. Maybe the rise in temperatures created a more suitable environment for the organism. An increase in precipitation could create more reservoirs for other organisms like bugs, which can carry disease (cough cough malaria, Lyme Disease).
So, what is my point? My point is that the incidence of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever has increased with increased temperatures and shows a correlation to climate change because the tick that transmits the disease is living longer. My point is the levels of Vibrio parahaemolyticus--a bacterium responsible for local infections with watery discharge that can rapidly progress to sepsis--have increased with the warming of waters that occurred when El Niño changed a few years ago (so...if the incidence of this bug increased with warming waters....you get the point). That was the bug mentioned in man vs. fish, and the same increase in temperature correlation goes with all Vibrio species (which, are the nasty little buggers, like Cholera, that cause food poisoning from raw seafood).
Not that I'm going to go on this rant today, but the water crisis and water quality are already major problems in the world anyway.
What I'm telling you is that while we may have a good handle on infectious disease now for the most part, as things change and these microorganisms evolve (because oh buddy Gonorrhoea is almost resistant to every antibiotic we have, let that sink in) we will probably be facing new epidemics. It won't happen immediately, but based on the way that nature tends to work I would put my money on it happening.
So, if you don't really like hugging trees like I do, or the balance of the ecosystem and its importance, you can at least care about yourself and humans. THIS is why taking hold of climate change is important, ladies and gentleman (well, one reason amongst many....). It will impact either your or your descendants health at some point in time, most likely.
Granted, who is really going to listen to some random chick on the interwebs ranting about bacteria and global warming, but..maybe I can at least get some people THINKING about why climate change is real and is such a big deal. (Dr. Suess, what)
On a side note, I think I've found a potential purpose in medicine if you couldn't tell by the rant. Hopefully my meeting with Dr. Bearman in regards to getting a Masters in Public Health will be insightful as to how I can further tie my three loves together: biology, the environment, and medicine.
To leave you with a quote:
Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we to do the web, we do to ourselves. Whatever befalls the Earth befalls the children of the Earth. - Chief Seattle.
