Scientific MOOCs follower. Author of Airpocalypse, a techno-medical thriller (Out Summer 2017)


Welcome to the digital era of biology (and to this modest blog I started in early 2005).

To cure many diseases, like cancer or cystic fibrosis, we will need to target genes (mutations, for ex.), not organs! I am convinced that the future of replacement medicine (organ transplant) is genomics (the science of the human genome). In 10 years we will be replacing (modifying) genes; not organs!


Anticipating the $100 genome era and the P4™ medicine revolution. P4 Medicine (Predictive, Personalized, Preventive, & Participatory): Catalyzing a Revolution from Reactive to Proactive Medicine.


I am an early adopter of scientific MOOCs. I've earned myself four MIT digital diplomas: 7.00x, 7.28x1, 7.28.x2 and 7QBWx. Instructor of 7.00x: Eric Lander PhD.

Upcoming books: Airpocalypse, a medical thriller (action taking place in Beijing) 2017; Jesus CRISPR Superstar, a sci-fi -- French title: La Passion du CRISPR (2018).

I love Genomics. Would you rather donate your data, or... your vital organs? Imagine all the people sharing their data...

Audio files on this blog are Windows files ; if you have a Mac, you might want to use VLC (http://www.videolan.org) to read them.

Concernant les fichiers son ou audio (audio files) sur ce blog : ce sont des fichiers Windows ; pour les lire sur Mac, il faut les ouvrir avec VLC (http://www.videolan.org).


Affichage des articles dont le libellé est medutainment. Afficher tous les articles
Affichage des articles dont le libellé est medutainment. Afficher tous les articles

Crush Test

Dalya Pallot on Pinterest: Beautiful Wonderlands

Another data in the silo

For Regina Holliday.

The Mad Tear Party

1. (ironic)
The last time I kissed a surgeon,
He was helping a cause:
Organ trafficking
In China.
And I saw a lot of dead bodies.

« Till Death Us Do Part. »

I stand corrected.
At the Mad Tear Party
We both attended,
Corrosive corruption did the job;
Not death.

So now I know.
They recycle organs,
They put data in silos.
An endless collection
Of data silos
With discarded souls in it
Whispering the truth.

2. (romantic)
The last time I kissed a doctor,
He was trying hard to hide
Something or someone from me,
And I saw a drop-dead
Gorgeous ghost.
He died a long time ago
At the hospital.
His soul was thrown out
But they were successful
In recycling his organs.
You never know what a hospital really is,
Until a discarded soul tells you.

So now I know
Souls they dispose of
At the hospital
Can be like true love
That never ends.

So now I know.
They recycle organs,
They put data in silos.
An endless collection
Of data silos
With discarded souls in it
Whispering the truth.

3. (hectic, desperate)
The last time I saw him,
He had cancer,
Then organ transplant,
Then cancer again.
He was dying and he knew
All those silos were killing him.
I could tell he was listening
To those discarded souls
Whispering the truth:

« All in all you are just
Another data in the silo. »

So now I know.
They recycle organs,
They put data in silos.
An endless collection
Of data silos
With discarded souls in it
Whispering the truth.

3. bis (slow)
As we were holding hands,
The silo became a seed,
Then a fruit, a forest.
And the last time I looked,
The silo had become a planet.

So now I know.
They recycle organs,
They put data in silos.
An endless collection
Of data silos
With discarded souls in it
Whispering the truth.

4. (peculiar, mad tea party)
The last time I had cookies and tea
At the mad tear party,
They told me things were just hunky dory:
You must share your organs
But you cannot share your data.

« Would you rather share your vital organs,
Or your data? », I asked them.

My question opened a rabbit-time-portal-hole.
The data turned into some kind of vital
Organs.
Then I saw digital locks turning into beating hearts,
The Queen of hearts was yelling at me.
I thought she wanted to perform
A totally endoscopic coronary artery bypass
On my chest,
Or write a snippet of code in Python
To find in my genome a mutation.

So now I know.
They recycle organs,
They put data in silos.
An endless collection
Of data silos
With discarded souls in it
Whispering the truth.

5. (oppressing)
But instead, she kept yelling:
« I will chop your head off
With my DRM spears and there will be no backdoor left for you
To run away.
You cannot escape.
I own all the patent rights on red roses anyway! »
I was so confused…
But the caterpillar
Explained that digital rights management
Would give me limited use of my digital devices
Even if I would be happy to pay full price for them,
And backdoors could be used only by big corporate or the queen;
Not by some anonymous Alice.

So now I know.
They recycle organs,
They put data in silos.
An endless collection
Of data silos
With discarded souls in it
Whispering the truth.

6. (delirious)
Puffing on his electronic-pipe contentedly,
He said, his words so heavy with pipe smoke
I couldn’t breathe:
« Better stay in the lobby. You’ll be safe from the Queen. »

So some kind of fungi
Sorry, fun guy,
Smoking some kind of e-cig
Was telling me
I would become the subtenant of my own health
Using an electronic device:
My smartphone.
This tale was epic dumb.

So now I know.
They recycle organs,
They put data in silos.
An endless collection
Of data silos
With discarded souls in it
Whispering the truth.

7. (Falling. Falling. Falling)
« Better stay in the lobby. You’ll be safe from the Queen. »

« But I already am, I said.
« I just talked to the Queen in this bloody lobby.
Didn’t you see me? »

Another lungful of words,
Blown by the caterpillar:
« My dear,
You are not in the lobby.
You are falling in a deep, deep, deep
Rabbit hole. »
The words and the smoke were fading already
And as I kept falling,
Falling and falling on and on and on,
I could hear the discarded souls
And their song.

« All in all you are just
Another data in the silo. »

So now I know.
They recycle organs,
They put data in silos.
An endless collection
Of data silos
With discarded souls in it
Whispering the truth.

« All in all you are just
Another data in the silo. »

8. (cheerful)
The last time I fell in love,
It was with you.
But I was falling so hard
I mistook you for something else:
That deep, deep, deep
Rabbit hole,
From Alice in Wonderland.


« All in all you are just
Another data in the silo. »

So now I know.
They recycle organs,
They put data in silos.
An endless collection
Of data silos
With discarded souls in it
Whispering the truth.

« All in all you are just
Another data in the silo. »

9. (cruel truth, same as the end of "La Ballade de Johnny Jane" : "le temps ronge l'amour comme l'acide")

The last time I fell in love,
It was with you.
But I was falling so hard
I mistook you for something else:
That deep, deep, deep
Rabbit hole,
From Alice in Wonderland.

The last time I kissed a surgeon,
He was helping a cause:
Organ trafficking
In China.
And I saw a lot of dead bodies.

« Till Death Us Do Part. »

I stand corrected.
At the Mad Tear Party
We both attended,
Corrosive corruption did the job;
Not death.

As I found out
That his heart
Was just a spare part
I decided to dispose of it.
Feeling gutsy,
I gutted his heart.
When I was finished
I flushed the toilet.

« All in all you are just
Another data in the silo. »

So now I know.
They recycle organs,
They put data in silos.
An endless collection
Of data silos
With discarded souls in it
Whispering the truth.

« All in all you are just
Another data in the silo. »

As I found out
That his heart
Was just a spare part
I decided to dispose of it.
Feeling gutsy,
I gutted his heart.
When I was finished
I flushed the toilet.





"Outdated Science Is My Worst Ennemy."

http://www.yourbest100.com/people/top-100-influential-people
Catherine Coste, author of this blog. Pic: Hello Tomorrow, Paris, June 2015
I used to work with surgeons and doctors as a marketing assistant. I earned myself four MITx EdX certificates (MOOCs) to learn about genomics and quantitative medicine. If a marketing assistant can do it, physicians can do it!

The patients will want it...

The Doctor-&-Patient "Nerdvana Annihilation" Topology

My favorite musical is "New West Side Story", which is an adaptation of "The Creative Destruction of Medicine" by cardiologist Eric Topol MD, but there's kind of a fly in the ointment...
Ever seen that old musical in New New York, Matilda?
Lyrics from "Naughty" -- Matilda The Musical
Stupidity, gory?? Paternalistic medicine??!! Yuck.

This nerdvana thing drives me crazy...

So Sheldon Cooper gave me a hot beverage to comfort me...
He also told me IBM's Watson might help...

http://www.robofed.eu
Watson?!? WTF???!!! 
 


Oh, I see... So they did change their story after all... "The Rockstar Patient Will See You Now"



"A.I. + Rockstar; Doctor + Amy Wong.
What could possibly go wrong?"

http://rosiecoleman.deviantart.com/art/fry-n-bender-193472434
http://www.cc.com/video-collections/l7sdzn/futurama-why-not-zoidberg-/6xblvr
"I'm a Doctor. I thrive in a competitive environment.  I got selected for med school through competition. I've studied anatomy and organs for 15 years but I spend most of my time hating my colleagues."

"Doctor-&-Patient 'Nerdvana Annihilation'? Paternalistic medicine can kiss your shiny metal ass, Bender!"

The Rocky Medical Picture Show

https://youtu.be/ZCZDWZFtyWY


My Tribute To Paternalistic Medicine

In this old song by French singer Michel Sardou, it is said that what is left of Verdun (World War I) or of (The Great) Terror is an old man walking by. Paternalistic medicine can be compared to Verdun or to The Great Terror...

"Finalement, Verdun, ce n'est qu'un vieux qui passe."
De Verdun à la médecine paternaliste, certains vous diront qu'il n'y a qu'un pas ...

Et comme le dit la chanson, Verdun, c'est un vieillard usé ...



An old man walking by...

French pioneer of heart transplant in Europe Christian Cabrol. Pic: http://www.theatre-huchette.com/actualite/evenements
Today's pioneers can be seen at MIT (US), or at the Max Planck Institute (Germany), and as my MIT prof Eric Lander keeps saying: "Don't forget that the fastest computers today are in China, not in the USA."


Emmanuelle Charpentier
Feng Zhang & colleague


Medutainment about PTS?

"Medutainment" = medicine + education + entertainment.


Once a European nurse working in organ transplant (in a public hospital & Big Pharma) told me her job sometimes reminded her of the fiction "Lord Of The Flies"... Then she added (like this was meant to be kept secret):

"- But I would never dare tell anyone!"

Job Interview

"Would you like to work in medical education entertainment?"

" - No thanks. I've seen the gulag (been there, done that) and I am not talented enough to make it look and sound and feel and smell like Disneyland. Happy to know that some other people are, though."

"Would you like to be an activist?"

"- No thanks, what's left of my mental health (not much, really) would vanish in the process, like the Titanic into the ocean. Plus, I can think of some people who really, really wouldn't like me to become an activist. Gotta care about the people you care about, right? Plus, I don't enjoy receiving death threats so much. I'd rather forget I ever did, actually."

"What did you study?"

" - Genomics. Still working on it, and I don't think I'll ever give it up. Just earned myself another MIT certificate (molecular biology, advanced level), so I'm super happy!! And also, literature (I'm a post-graduate in German literature, language and civilization). Love it, too. Can't say I have a passion for the microbiome, but I am fascinated (like many others) by cool genome editing tools like CRISPR-Cas9 and population genomics and bioinformatics. I'd like to write about it. Help speed things up, yes."

"Would you like to work in genomic entertainment?"

" - Definitely. Would love that!! I'm just a writer."

"Who are your favorite scientists and why?"

Nina Tandon is Katy Perry
Robert Darnell at the NY Genome Center is Louis Pasteur

J. Craig Venter is Michael Jackson
Eric T'Pol MD, sorry, I meant to say Topol, is Mr. Spock

 "How do others see you?"

" - Errrr..... (Where's Charlie??)"


"Who are the most important people for your work as a writer?"

" - My co-writer Isabelle, my husband, the teenagers around me. I never miss an update on T'Pol's twitter account ... Sorry, I meant to say, Eric Topol MD. Also, I spend a lot of time reading articles by MIT Tech Review."

"If only silo's & money were not storms people had to weather"



And yes, I know about that thing they call Photoshop.  

What Is Medutainment?

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/853980


Mein Lieblingsgedicht

Health Care activist Regina Holliday usually asks the people she gets to meet: "What is your favorite fairy tale?" I tend to ask people: "What is your favorite poem?"

Here is mine (btw I am a German native speaker).

Nur zwei Dinge

 

Durch so viele Formen geschritten,
durch Ich und Wir und Du,
doch alles blieb erlitten
durch die ewige Frage: wozu? Das ist eine Kinderfrage.
Dir wurde erst spät bewußt,
es gibt nur eines: ertrage
- ob Sinn, ob Sucht, ob Sage-
dein fernbestimmtes: Du mußt.
Ob Rosen, ob Schnee, ob Meere,
was alles erblühte, verblich,
es gibt nur zwei Dinge: die Leere
und das gezeichnete Ich. 


Gottfried Benn (Arzt: Dermatolog, Dichter) 

http://www.funcage.com/blog/18-amazing-examples-of-optical-illusion-photography