DITM NG Special Website up- Interview with Wired Magazine

Posted on September 6, 2007 by Steven F. Palter, MD

I previously wrote about the upcoming National Geographic Special Inside the Living Body and my work featured in the special. I was also interviewed by Wired Magazine about the show and the technology behind it. You can read their take on it here (note – I have to email the author Sonia and explain that it is not a good idea to use the descriptor “Organ Porn” in conjunction with the work of gynecologist!).

One of the CG shots from the show

National Geographic has set up a website dedicated to the show with photos videos and facts. Lot’s of fascinating info and images to check out! They write:

From our first cry to our last breath, our bodies undergo a continuous second-by-second transformation. Every move we make and every outside stimulus triggers a reaction through the skin, bones, organs, muscles and cells. We breathe, on average, 700 million breaths in a lifetime; an adult skeleton is replaced every seven to 10 years; we shed as many as 30,000 dead skin cells every minute; and the food we eat travels 30 feet (9 meters) on its journey through our bodies. Now, the National Geographic Channel (NGC) takes you beneath the skin to reveal how our bodies evolve from birth to old age, and the amazing biological systems we need to thrive.
From the producers of NGC’s critically acclaimed In the Womb series, Inside the Living Body traces one “everywoman’s story”, using milestones to examine the everyday workings of a living, functioning body in ways not seen on television until now. Cutting-edge miniature endoscopic HD cameras delve deep inside the mouth, throat, heart, lungs, digestive tract, brain and reproductive organs to shed new light on how and why our bodies do what they do. Stunning photography in this two-hour special reveals universal moments in human development at the most minute level, providing insight into both our own individual metamorphosis and our shared human experiences.

(the bold is my part!)

The Show airs September 16th on the National Geographic Channel (and the NG HD channel!) at 8PM.

Docinthemachine Posts Return Next Week!

Posted on June 7, 2007 by Steven F. Palter, MD

Sorry to all my regular readers for the gap in posting. Several exciting new projects have been in development and all come to a head at one time! I will return on Monday and fill you in on the world of medical technology and all the new things I have been working on. Stay tuned!

(hints.. an interview and insight from the father of VR, a world’s first surgical innovation to be featured on TV, another keynote future technology session at an international medical meeting, podcasts, lecture videos, and more!).

Carnivals Galore: Grand Rounds x 2 and GeneGenie

Posted on April 12, 2007 by Steven F. Palter, MD

I wanted to catch up with the recent carnivals and thank them for including docinthemachine’s posts. First was keagirl a great medblogger who writes at urostream. This grand rounds was straight to the point and a cavalcade of posts. Thanks for including my post on technology: is it god evil or neutral?

Dr Palter from Doc in the Machine (a blog aiming at transforming medicine with tomorrow’s technology) discusses “Evil Tech“, about how some people believe that some technologies are inherently good or evil – especially developments in medicine and the military.

Next came the always fun Dr.Dork (how can you not love someone who blogs about himself in the third person?) – along with some of the funniest grand rounds photos ever.

My post on genetic screening for STD’s added to pap smears was added to the research section

Docinthemachine blogs on new developments in genetic pap smears which could lead us one step closer to eradicating some common STDs.

Last but not least was my first submission to gene genie. I submitted at the request of Bertalan Meskó from Science roll- the master of medical web 2.0 and genetics on the web. He writes gene genie is:

a new blog carnival on genes and gene-related diseases. Our plan is to cover the whole genome before 2082 (it means 14-15 genes every two weeks). But we also accept articles on the news of genomics and genetics.

Gene Genie this week was hosted over at Sandwalk. Thanks to Larry Mogan, a professor of biochemistry at Toronto and also a genetic blogger. He added my post on preimplantation genetic screening for patients with Huntington’s Chorea- and hiding the results from them.

Steven F. Palter posts on a very sensitive topic—whether a patient wants to know if they carry a possibly lethal genetic mutation. For example, what if you are at risk for Huntington’s disease and you simply do not want to know whether you will die in your 40′s or not? That’s fine as long as you don’t have children but do you want to pass the defective gene to your children if you carry it? How can you have children without risk if you don’t want to know whether you are a carrier or not? It turns out there’s a way and Steven Palter explains how in Beyond Genetic & Prenatal Testing- Pre-embryo Testing – Hiding the Results From the Patient.

I enjoyed these three blogs so much aI added them all to my blogroll!

DITM at Podcamp NYC

Posted on April 12, 2007 by Steven F. Palter, MD

In preparation for my two new podcast projects I spent the day at Podcamp NYC- the “unconference” of podcasters. THe idea of an unconference is that the participants script the events – or more accurately – they occur spontaneously. There is not spposed to be formal invitees or corporate ownership but rather the players and audience are one. All can speak and the event informally spills into the space. Once they signed up 1000 people the tides turned a bit as a formal schedule got written and corporate aponsors jumped aboard. I didn’t care. It was well organized and a wonderful mix of podcasters and vbloggers from around the globe. I met so many great people and got a chance to pick their brains and share ideas. The concept of the meeting worked!

I especially enjoyed meeting and speaking with the leaders of blip.tv about how far vblogging and I-TV can go, podcasting guru Jason Van Ordern on marketing and promotion, podandgo and rawvoice on networks of podcasters, and countless widget app vendors – not to mentionall the people in the halls trading technical audio and video tips.

DITM 2 New Podcast Projects Close to Launch!

Posted on April 12, 2007 by Steven F. Palter, MD

New Podcast Projects: The past two weeks have been a wild ride of fun and excitement! I have two podcast projects undergoing the final edits prior to launcing. The first is the docinthemachine podcast focusing on the new technology and medical breakthroughts of this blog. The second, is a major new medical education project – still under wraps. I’ve had some major breakthroughs in the development of both. First, we have set up a trio of partnerships. The first is with a professional audio studio that will be the home of the podcast recording and production. In conjunction with this we have a pro Jazz musician and his band to provide some cool smooth jazz for the show. My hi-tech upgrade to the studio was adding a digital hybrid the telos one to the setup. (electronics note– if looking into this check out posts on mix-minus set-ups and this great site here for audio podcasting tips). A digital hybrid processes POTS telephone signals splitting the callers into separate audio tracks allowing high quality recording of my upcoming phone interviews. Just as exciting is a partnership with a major medical on-line site that will handle the hosting and outreach to the medical and lay communities. I just back back from the studio where we were recording the last bit of audio and we’ll wrap up some more interviews tomorrow before the launch. The response so far has been overwhelming from people in the medical and tech industries and from sponsors helping out with production costs. More news to comeas we approach launch day!

Docinthemachine Guest Blogging at Medgadget!

Posted on March 30, 2007 by Steven F. Palter, MD

I am very excited to begin guest blogging over at Medgadget! I am sure many of you are familiar with the site. Medgadget is a hugely popular site that reviews new medical devices. My first post is Bionic Implants Available Today: Docinthemachine Guest Post and reviews the state of the art of current human bionics; technology and ethics.

Medgadget is edited by Michael Ostrovsky, M.D. & Nicholas Genes, M.D., Ph.D. (of blogborygmi and grand rounds fame) & Timothy Odell along with webmaster Gene Ostrovsky. After admiring their work from when I began blogging, I was honored to be one of their finalists for best medical technology blog 2006. Then the real suprise cam when I received an email from Nich & Michael asking if I would consider guest blogging on medgagdet as a regular feature.

They wrote:

I was also talking this over with my colleagues at Medgadget.com, we’re grateful for your comments to the site and were wondering if you’d like to formalize your relationship, which is to say, write for Medgadget. As we talked about it, you could post about your research, other technology that catches your eye, your expectations for future development.

Since I have ideas galore and love their site I quickly wrote back – YES!

Thank you so much for the kind words and your support. As far as medgadget, I know the site well and greatly respect and enjoy it. I am honored by your request.

After we got this arranged I found out Nick and Gene were both invited to the J&J Blogging Summiit in NYC along with me. We had a great discussion and exchange of ideas and made arrangements for me to start guest blogging.

Gene, myself, and Nick at the Medical Blogging Dinner

I hope you will all go check out my gest blogging. Please send comments to me here or the medgadget people over on their site and let us know if you enjoy my visit over there. I plan on posting on their site very other week or so.

Grand Rounds Is Up!

Posted on March 27, 2007 by Steven F. Palter, MD

Grand Rounds is upat medviews - this weeks he has a very wide range of great pieces – unencumbered by themes. I appreciate him including my post on cadaveric surgical implants – and why synthetic is a much better route to take.

Doc in the Machine takes exception to the use of cadaveric disks for spinal surgery, pointing out the advantages of using synthetic disks.

Beyond Genetic & Prenatal Testing- Pre-embryo Testing – Hiding the Results From the Patient

Posted on March 21, 2007 by Steven F. Palter, MD

Woody Guthrie Died from Huntington’s Chorea

Medviews (host of next weeks grand rounds) has an interesting post about the dilemmas of genetic testing for deadly diseases such as Huntington’s Disease (he has one error- he calls it autosomal recessive but it is actually an autosomal dominant disease). For those unfamiliar see notes from the Huntington’s disease society on testing. The issue is if you get a copy of the disease gene from a parent you will develop the disease – and it is an awful one. There is progressive motor and cognitive degeneration ultimately leading to death.

He writes

There was a wonderful and touching piece in today’s New York Times detailing a young woman’s life as she comes to grips with her family’s history of Huntington’s Chorea (HC), an inherited disorder striking a patient with dementia and muscular discoordination in mid-life.

Ms. Moser, in a poignant and courageous decision, decided to take a genetic test to see whether she would develop the disorder. Unfortunately, the result came back positive, which, because of its recessive genetic nature, meant that both she and her mother would have the disease. Ms. Moser has come to grips with the life-altering nature of the news. She will apparently not have children, and will continue to devote her working life to the care of HC patients.

You see the standard up until now has been that since there is no treatment, diagnosis is a death sentence. Would you choose to know you have it? How would it affect your life? Many at risk have chosen NOT to be tested (it is a 50:50 shot if a parent has it that you would get it).

What many don’t know is that the genetic puzzle is now even more complicated due to PGD- preimplantation genetic testing. In PGD a fertility doc like myself will have the patient undergo IVF. When the embryos are at the 3 day 8-10 cell stage we biopsy them, take a cell, and do a rapid genetic sequencing to look for the target gene- in this case Huntington’s. If that particular embryo is affected we choose not to place it back into the womb and instead choose and unaffected one.

What happens in Huntingtons where the patients often have chosen to not even be tested themselves? I have had these patients. We can do what is called “non-disclosing PGD”. Here, we go through the whole process but the results not shared with the patient (by their choice). We choose the unaffected one to replace and the patient does not know if there even were any embryos that were affected. Either they don’t have the disease (and all embryos are healthy) or they do have it (and we just did not put the affected ones back in).

Personally, I think I would want to know but then again I am not in their shoes. As it has been said- live each day as if it were your last.

More amazing is that this technique of PGD could potentially be used someday to help eradicate single gene disease from the human genome. Do you think it should be used to rid the population of diseases? If so which ones?!

Read more about PGD and controversy surrounding it here

Big Med-Industry Courts Med-Bloggers

Posted on March 21, 2007 by Steven F. Palter, MD

Beppe in NYC

Now I have seen it all. Old school med-industy came to NYC a-courtin’ new school med-bloggers last night. I was invited to a dinner at Beppe a well ranked (not bad in Zagat – menu here) Italian restaurant near Grammercy Park by the Corporate Communication Folks at Johnson & Johnson.

The big pharma folks are exploring the blogosphere and testing the waters before they tread deeply. Their goal was to explore the medical blogging environment and garner information to help them decide how to get involved.

In attendance were a cadre of marketing and corporate communication execs from J&J (Heidi Youngkin (executive director/global marketing group), David Swearingen (vp corp comm), Mark Monseau (director of media relations), Jeffrey Leebaw, Ray Jordan (vp public affairs), Rob Halper (director of corporate TV) and others whose cards did not make my pocket. They brought Adriana Lukas of mediainfluencer and bigblogcompany along with them from across the pond (UK)to try to stir-up the waters. Nothing like having a new media marketer sitting next to an ex-official FDA marketer for fun dinner talk.

On the medblogging side was (along with myself) Jim from BrandWeekNRX, Bob and Peter from Drugwonks and CPMI, Fard from Envisioning 2.0 and , Ed Silverman from Pharmalot , and a highlight for me – a chance to meet my electronic pals from medgadget and blogborygmi Gene Ostrovsky and Nick Genes (of Grand Rounds Fame).

L to R Gene Me and Nick!-

guess who works in the ER, who is a computer programmer, and who came from a full day of patient office hours?

The conversations focused on how industry could partner with bloggers, should they give emplyees free-reign to blog about their work (sure the attorney with NDA in hand will love that), and how the public is using inernet and blog med info. Personally, I spoke about what I see in patient disease chats and discussion forums. There is so much great information but so much disinformation and inaccuracies. I volunteer my time to answer medical questions on forums like these such as ATIME. I believe industry can play a role to foster moderation of information (think Citizendium to Wikipedia). A bit of industry support could help get a panel of docs pharmacists nurses etc time to respond to the mass of information requests and provide an objective commentary (when requested). Real partnerships between industry and patient groups could be fostered on education and not just financing.

I also enjoyed picking Peter Pitts (former FDA’s “chief messaging officer,” serving under Commissioner Mark B. McClellan) brain about 1) why the FDA and legislature is not tackling the herbal and alternative medicine horrors MD’s are seeing (ie who’s getting the payoff) and 2) if FDA does not think herbals are drugs to be regulated why they think sperm, eggs, and embryos are (but that the subject of a whole series of posts to come…)

UPDATE- wow some people are actually blogging about the dinner and who did or did not get invited. You can see the Post on Rost’s whistleblower site and my comments back here

Docinthemachine Guest Blogging on Lifeboat Foundation Blog

Posted on March 15, 2007 by Steven F. Palter, MD

I am honored and excited to have been invited to guest blog on the Lifeboat Foundation Blog. My first post is on the new DARPA 2007 focus plan and its relation to medical technology.

For those unfamiliar with them, their mission statements sums it up:

The Lifeboat Foundation is a nonprofit nongovernmental organization dedicated to encouraging scientific advancements while helping humanity survive existential risks and possible misuse of increasingly powerful technologies, including genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and robotics/AI, as we move towards a technological singularity.

Lifeboat Foundation is pursuing a variety of options, including helping to accelerate the development of technologies to defend humanity, including new methods to combat viruses (such as RNA interference and new vaccine methods), effective nanotechnological defensive strategies, and even self-sustaining space colonies in case the other defensive strategies fail.

We believe that, in some situations, it might be feasible to relinquish technological capacity in the public interest (for example, we are against the U.S. government posting the recipe for the 1918 flu virus on the internet). We have some of the best minds on the planet working on programs to enable our survival.

They have an impressive Scientific Advisory Board including a large helping of professors and Nobel Laureats (and me). You can read more about them here.