Sunday, April 23, 2017

Exam #2 Study Guide (including Report Questions)

Exam UPDATE: only odd-numbered quiz questions will be included on the exam. Tuesday's reports will not be included.

*An option: If we find ourselves too squeezed for time on Tuesday, we may decide to postpone the conclusion of reports until the officially scheduled exam date of Thursday, May 4 (3:30 pm)... Or, we could postpone the exam until then. Be prepared to express your preference on those possibilities first thing Tuesday. -jpo
==
April 4:

Oliver Sacks, Gratitude

1. What does "Mercury" celebrate? What was Sacks' elemental age when he wrote it?

2. Perfect weather sometimes elicited what exclamation from Sacks?

3. What does nunc dimittis mean?

4. Why were Johnson and Boswell angry with David Hume?

5. Of what did Sacks think he was more conscious, at 80?

6. What was the title of Hume's autobiography?

7. What attitude towards life did Sacks come to share with Hume, after receiving his diagnosis?

8. What did Sacks, contrary to Crick, not see as a problem?

9. What did "celestial splendor" make Sacks think about?

10. To what did Sacks turn, in times of stress?

11. What did Sacks intend to do with his "intermission"?

12. What were Sacks' mother's harsh words that made him hate religious bigotry?

March 28:

1. What does Paul Offit find laughable?

2. How much revenue did the rotavirus vaccine and Lipitor generate, respectively?

3. What did a Nashville woman sell for $50?

4. What did Jacobsen v. Massachussetts (1905) uphold?

5. What 20th century political philosopher does Biss's sister mention, in criticizing "Dr.Bob's" counsel of silence?

6. What paradoxical emotional state does Biss say is induced by citizenship in this country?

7. What "cultural obsession of the moment" do some mothers consider a viable substitute for vaccination? OR, what problematic implication of their obsession do some fail to consider? 

8. Whose errant article "Deadly Immunity" was retracted, but only in its corrected version?

9. Who said "a scientist is never certain"? OR, Who advocated "negative capability"? 

10. What was the bioethicist who said "it's not a matter of if, but when" referring to? 

11. Immunologist Polly Matzinger's _____ Model says the immune system is more responsive to entities that do damage than with those that are merely foreign. 

12. Who said "we must cultivate our garden," which for Biss implies recognizing immunity as "a garden we tend together"? 

March 21, OI 40-76

1. "Natural" has popularly come to mean what, in the context of medicine?

2. The most unnatural aspect of vaccination is what?

3. What led to the creation of the EPA?

4. What kind of thinking makes no room for ambiguous identities, and what does it threaten?

5. What "troubling dualisms" characterize the vaccination debate?

6. What practice went on in China and India for hundreds of years, to combat smallpox?

7. What metaphor is implied by "inoculation"?

8. What disappointed Biss about the immuno-semiotics conference?

9. What game metaphor does Biss prefer, to describe our immune systems and viral pathogens?

10. What caused the fatal form of croup that has virtually disappeared in this country since the '30s?

11. What caused the spread of puerpal sepsis ("childbed fever")?

12. What would exceed federal food-safety levels for DDT and PCBs at the grocery store, if sold there?

March 23, OI 77-109

1. What was ambiguous about the vampire metaphor, for Biss?

2. What struck Biss as both magical and mundane?

3. Smallpox is now no longer a disease, but a what?

4. Who were the Polio Pioneers? Where is polio still endemic, and why?

5. What are the profound differences between ethyl and methyl mercury?

6. How did Andrew Wakefield cause a "cascade of panic"?

7. Who accused WHO of collusion in 2009?

8. Why does Susan Sontag say public health is difficult to promote in our society?

9. Why does Arthur Caplan say the marketplace model of healthcare is dangerous?

10. When would Biss consider surgery a conservative option?

11. For what is there no credible evidence, "Dr. Bob" notwithstanding?

12. What's Biss's Dad's argument for preventive medicine?

March 14:

1. The stories of Achilles and the dragon imply what about immunity?

2. "A valuable asset placed in the care of someone to whom it does not ultimately belong" is Biss's definition of what? OR, it captures her understanding of what?

3. Our vaccines are now sterile, so anti-vaccine activists' greatest fear is not of bacterial but ____ contamination.

4. What is Dracula about, besides vampires?

5. Who said love is known "by its fruits"?

6. Contributions to the "banking of immunity" give rise to the principle of ____ immunity.

7. What's the most common way that infants contract hep B?

8. What raises the probability that undervaccinated children will contract a disease?

9. Who or what were microbiologist Graham Rook's "old friends"?

10. "There is never enough evidence to prove that an event _____ happen? (can/can't)

Oryx & Crake by Margaret Atwood
1)What was Snowman's previous name?
3) What game did Jimmy & Crake play together?
5) T/F Snowman marries Oryx at the end of the book?

Drug Dealer, M.D.
1.) When did the CDC declare a "prescription drug epidemic?"
3.) What was Karen trying to treat?
5.) What were doctors told to believe because Big Pharma Joined Big Medicine?

The Case Against Perfection by Michael Sandel
1. How much will it cost to get a clone of a dog? pg 5
3. What are the four examples of bioengineering already on the horizon? pg 10
5. What does MicroSort do? pg 23
7. What has happened to the size of football players over the last 30 years? pg 34
9. What is Eugenics? pg 63

The Soul of a Doctor
1. What one thing gave Mr. Colovos joy in "Limitations"?
3. What was Dr. Westerhaus feeling anxious about in "Reclaiming the Lost Art of Listening"?
5. How long was the code for the baby until his death was announced in "Imagine How You'd Feel?"

The Future of Human Nature by Jurgen Habermas.
1. In the face of advancing biotechnology, Habermas asks how "the implementation of these achievements affects our ________________." (p. 12)

3. Habermas says that "the breadth of biotechnological interventions raises moral questions that are not simply difficult in the familiar sense, but are _____________________." (p.14)

5. What does preimplantation genetic diagnosis allow us to do? (p.17)

7. Johannes Rau said, "Once you start to instrumentalize human life, once you start to distinguish between ______________ and ___________, you embark on a course where there is no stopping point." (p.19)

Brave New World
1.It was thought that ______ could be made an instrument of intellectual education. (p.19)
3. Gamma children all wear what color? (p.21)
5. Industrial civilization is only possible when there is no ______. (p.161)
7. What are two rights that the savage claims? (p.163)

Superintelligence
1. At first it seems like, "the smarter the AI, the ______ it is."
3. What is 'the treacherous turn'?
5. How does the AI in the last example choose to most effectively pursue its goal?


Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow
1. Why is it better to refer to the last 70,000 years from modern day the "Anthropocene" epoch? (72)

3. Why does Darwin's ideas of species evolution disturb people more so than the theory of relativity? (104)

5. Why is it necessary for science to rely on religious assistance in order to create viable human institutions, according to Harari? (189)

7. What is the chief formula for knowledge in medieval Europe compared to that of the Scientific Revolution? (238)

9. What is one of the enormous potential advantages that IBM's famous AI system, Watson, has over human doctors, as stated by Harari? (319)

11. What is the ultimate goal of algorithms once they become established as all-knowing oracles, such as Google and Facebook? (346)

Zero K by Don DeLillo
1. Who said, "Everybody wants to own the end of the world."(3)

3. What is the name of the endeavor that Ross Lockhart, Jeff's father, put large sums of money into?(7)

5. What does Ross compare the people in the "hospice" unit that are about to undergo the process to? (9)

7. What scenario does Artis explain  that shows how she thinks about the cryogenic process? (19)

The Art of Aging: A Doctor's Prescription for Well-Being
1. "Men do not quit playing because they grow old, they grow old because they quit", what?

3. Major schools of medical thought from the 17th-18th centuries called themselves what?

5. Who is the Italian medical theorist that expressed the Iantromechanists philosophy in a statement made in his 1704 book Opera Nomia Medical Practica Et Anatomica?

How We Die - by Sherwin Nuland.
1. What was Robert DeMatteis terrified of?
3. How was Bob's prognosis?
5. What did Bob say to Nuland (the author) as he was leaving his house Christmas Eve?

Black Man in A White Coat
1. What’s the percentage of black doctors in the nation?
3. Who did the professor mistake Damon Tweedy, the medical student, for in class?
5. After 17 years, what’s Dr. Damon Tweety’s role at Duke University School of Medicine?

Generosity by Richard Powers   
1. The art students remind Russell Stone of how it feels to what? (53)

3. Who wrote the thesis, "Unless you care for the people in your story the way you want your reader to, all the description in the world will arrive stillborn."? (57)

5. What journal entry does Russell assign his students? (58)

7. After her three page entry on "Why you might not want to grow up in my hometown," what does Thassa still write about Algeria? (65)

Ordinarily Well
1. Who invented the modern antidepressant?
3. What was the first effective drug for psychosis?
5. Who was Kramer's first patient?

The Nature Fix by Florence Williams
Introduction: Nature is Necessary
     1. What is the aspiration of The Nature Fix?
     2. Natural environments can help us align with the World Health Organization's definition
         of health, which is ______________?

Why Nature Benefits Us: The Biophilia Effect
     1. What is the biophilia hypothesis, as described by the anthropologist Yoshifumi Miyazaki?
     2. What is biophilia, as defined by social psychologist Erich Fromm?
     3. Because most of our time during human evolution was spent in nature, our __________
         is still adapted to it.

 Why Nature Benefits Us: Cognition
     1. Rather than beginning with the premise of biophilia, cognitive psychologist David Strayer's
         research group was all about ___________________.
     2. Strayer's research team was more interested in what than in "amorphous concepts of
         well-being"?

Better but Not Well by Richard G. Frank and Sherry A. Glied
1, Three types of technology advances. page 27
3. Who discovered Chlorpromazine? page 29
5. When did the first government agency over psychiatric disorders meet?   


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