Monday, July 08, 2024

A few points about Biden's interview with George Stephanopoulos

*  His voice still sounded raspy, although there was some twitter commentary about the sound quality of the interview being bad, generally speaking.   One tweet even ran some audio filter over it and Biden sounded much better, and the suggestion seemed to be that the audio was kept deliberately poor.   I don't believe in such conspiracies, but the quality was odd.

*  I don't think Biden was prepared for it to be an exercise in being asked the same question about 20 different ways.  Perhaps there was too much confidence that George would move on from the topic after 5 or 10 minutes?  It certainly doesn't suggest that he was fed the questions beforehand.

*  Given that it seems from the medical assessment we have seen that he has been examined not so long ago for neurological conditions including Parkinsons (and no signs found), I don't know why Biden or his advisers would not be asking the doctor - or some other specialist who had been involved in the assessment - to do a press conference confirming all of this.   (I know, the Republicans are now carrying on about getting the doctor to appear before Congress, but obviously, that is just for them to grandstand and spin conspiracies and crap, and not the way it should be handled.)

*  Speaking of the doctor, he is listed as a "doctor of osteopathic medicine", which surprised me, because I thought "osteopathy" was on a par with the quackery of chiropracty (or being a chiropractic practitioner - it seems chiropracty isn't a word.)   But, Googling the topic, it seems that osteopathic ideas have gained a type of legitimacy the US medical system in a way it hasn't in Australia.  Here's the opening explanation from Wikipedia:

Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (DO or D.O., or in Australia DO USA[1]) is a medical degree conferred by the 38 osteopathic medical schools in the United States.[2][3][4] DO and Doctor of Medicine (MD) degrees are equivalent: a DO graduate may become licensed as a physician or surgeon and thus have full medical and surgical practicing rights in all 50 US states. As of 2021, there were 168,701 osteopathic physicians and medical students in DO programs across the United States.[5] Osteopathic medicine (as defined and regulated in the United States) emerged historically from the quasi-medical practice of osteopathy, but has become a distinct and proper medical profession.

As of 2014, more than 28% of all U.S. medical students were DO students.[6][7] The curricula at DO-granting medical schools are equivalent to those at MD-granting medical schools, which focus the first two years on the biomedical and clinical sciences, then two years on core clinical training in the clinical specialities.[8]

One notable difference between DO and MD training is that DOs spend an additional 300–500 hours to study pseudoscientific hands-on manipulation of the human musculoskeletal system (osteopathic manipulative technique) alongside conventional evidence-based medicine and surgery like their MD peers.[9][10][11]

 And the Medical Board of Australia accepts them as legit doctors too:

The degree Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (DO USA) is a medical qualification that is recognised for the purposes of medical registration by many international registration authorities.

The Medical Board of Australia (the Board) has agreed to accept the DO USA as a primary medical qualification for the purposes of medical registration provided that the DO USA was awarded by a medical school which has been accredited by the Commission on Osteopathic College Accreditation of the American Osteopathic Association and recognised by both the Australian Medical Council and the World Directory of Medical Schools (online version).

Pretty peculiar!  

It reminds me a bit of how I was very surprised, 26 odd years ago on my fateful trip to Noumea, how  the French style pharmacies were chock full of homeopathic remedies:  something you just don't see in Australia.  (Here's an article from 2019 saying how the French medical system should stop reimbursing patients for using homeopathic "medicines".)

 

1 comment:

Not Trampis said...

the election is very easy to predict.
If trump is the main issue then he will lose however if it is Biden then he too will lose and at this stage It is Biden and it does not look going away