Author: Avery Georgakis

I was browsing the blog, reading everyone’s work and trying to decide what I should include in my final post to this forum. I stumbled upon Kyra’s post. Her and I share something in common, we both seem to have procrastinated this assignment like no other. Which is very much unlike me to do, but here I am. I wondered why I took so long to crank these posts out and reach the required amount but I do think Kyra’s reasoning of feeling a slight anxiety over other peer’s seeing my thoughts and opinions played a role in my procrastination. I was spending far too much time worrying about if my thoughts would sound profound enough to share on the internet. Once I bit the bullet and did it, however, my fears were dissolved.

Continue reading “Procrastination at its Finest”

I was speaking to a friend of mine the other day about her classes and her professors. She attends a community college in my hometown. She said that her professors are constantly cancelling classes and that they assign books and tell students to just view the Sparknotes if they don’t feel like reading. My jaw dropped as she said this. I can’t imagine a professor ever acting in that manner at Geneseo. I told her that that was awful and she shrugged and said, “Yeah, but I get all A’s, so who cares?” Continue reading “SUNY Geneseo as a Place of True Education”

In another class of mine, we started to discuss the idea of race and if identifying one’s race was important when naming an accomplishment of an individual (i.e. “He was a black Nobel Prize winner). One girl in my class automatically said that she felt that it was 100% necessary and I was a little shocked to hear this. I felt that one’s race shouldn’t be considered because everyone is equally intellectually capable of performing the same feats. I honestly believed that creating a title for someone that included their race was disrespectful and an effort to overshadow their accomplishments. However, after hearing her reasoning, I started to contradict my initial thoughts. Continue reading “Is Race Something to be Ignored?”

This semester has been an extremely interesting and insightful one. I am currently enrolled in two courses with similar topics; this one and a sociology course titled “Gender and Science”. I signed up for both thinking that the topic names may have been a typo as there wasn’t a very long description for either of the courses. But, I signed up anyway because the title for this course, if it was correct, seemed intriguing and I had heard that Dr. McCoy as well as Dr. Eisenberg (who teaches the sociology course) were good professors. Continue reading “Gender/Race in Science and Medicine”

Upon reading the follow-up article about Alabama and the hookworm crisis that Dr. McCoy emailed us, I started to think about our government and its structure in a new way. I find it very interesting that this information is not reaching major headlines. An entire county that’s plagued with an illness due to unsanitary conditions seems like something that should be broadcasted on the news station. I am intrigued by the fact that this information is not something widely known but I cannot say that I am surprised.

Flint, Michigan’s water crisis made headlines a year after the problem arouse. Some of those who were in charge of the project of changing the source of the water to flow through lead pipes were aware of the likelihood that this would be a problem. However, it was swept under the rug until it became such a health concern, that they had no other option but to pull it out and dust it off. And in case anyone was wondering, the lead pipes in Flint have not all been replaced, yet. Their citizens have been without clean water for three years now…

Issues like this remind me of the things that we have learned from Medical Apartheid. I was horrified by the things that we read in that book. The treatment that these African Americans received was not that hard to fathom because I have learned about other terrible discrimination and pain that they were forced to endure. However, I was astounded by the fact that I had never heard about any of this. You’d think that these things would be in textbook or classes that teach about ethics in science, but the only thing you hear about is the Tuskegee experiments. And when you learn about this, it’s often described in a way to make it sound like a little “hiccup” in America’s ethics. In reality, there’s so many more situations similar to this that society does not know about.

Our nation often refuses to accept when we are wrong and unethical. Dark secrets are often swept under the rug and only few ever find them, and when they do, they do not have the power to make the information spread. Our country tends to focus on blaming outsiders for everything. This article, Medical Apartheid, and this entire course has really made me question how much do I really know about this country and its mishaps; what are they hiding?

Upon reading “An Unconscious Patient with a DNR Tattoo” from the New England Journal of Medicine, I was very perplexed by their decision to not resuscitate the patient based on the tattoo. We have learned in Home that one’s presence lives on long after they have passed for multiple reasons. This man who had the tattoo probably had a family or friends who knew him and would’ve rather had him alive. He probably had made connections to people throughout his life that left a lasting impression; and this impression may continue to live long past his death. Because of this, those people may have been upset that the hospital chose not to resuscitate him based on a tattoo.

Continue reading “Consent: Does “Yes” Really Mean “Yes”?”

Thinking more in depth about medical volunteerism has forced me to contemplate everything regarding studying abroad. I was on scrolling on twitter when I saw my friend tweet something along these lines, “I can’t wait to go dancing at the bars in Tuscany.” She’s studying abroad next semester in Italy. Reading this tweet in correlation with our discussions in class made me realize something: how often is it that someone studies abroad to genuinely study and experience the educational opportunities that another country may have in store for them. Continue reading “Studying Abroad: What’s Your Real Purpose?”

I find that I’m often carrying on conversations outside of the classroom with my friends that relate to this course’s content. Every time we read an article or a chapter from Medical Apartheid that is absolutely appalling to me, I’ll bring it up to my friends in conversation. Nearly all of the things we discuss or read in this class is too important to not spread to those who don’t have the opportunity to learn it themselves. Continue reading “Persuasion vs. Awareness”

Today in class, we discussed Blake in Clay’s Ark and his tendency to act as though he has the “God Complex”. The “God Complex” is when one tends to believe that they are above all else due to their place in society, their overfed ego, or their need to solely do what pleases them in life. Many quickly made the relation that Blake feels this way because he is a doctor. From many of my personal experiences, doctors tend to believe that they are above many others because they are educated and perform noble tasks daily. Although most doctors are right in feeling this way, I find that it is not applicable to every Doctor. I have had multiple bad experiences with Doctors over the course of my lifetime; my friend has one that takes the cake as being the worst story I’ve been told about an error made during a medical procedure Continue reading “The “God Complex” and Doctors”