Bismillah

I've just been reading the latest medical news in a break as I cram last minute information for exams in the AM. I hope for a prosperous next 24 hours..."Bismillah". I don’t know what it means, but it must mean something about educational success or it's a mnemonic for the TCA Cycle. I've been hearing it a lot around here lately.

  So the news is lamenting about the medical system in the U.S., how little attention it is getting in the election discussion, and how failed the medical school system is. That caught my eye.  Why does the United States import physicians from foreign countries instead of training our own?  Why do US Medical schools graduate only 16,000 medical students each year when we have a need for at least twice that number of physicians each year?  Why do US Medical Schools refuse to accept well qualified applicants forcing many would be physicians to go abroad for their training? Why do you need 4 years of undergraduate work in college before applying to medical school (the rest of the world knows that's not important)? Why is it that each year we deny a medical school [postgraduate] education to some 16,000 well-qualified American college graduates?   Why do we then remedy this shortfall by importing 16,000 foreign docs? Oh wait, I am one :)

Ok, so I'm all questions and no answers. Actually I've got a few and maybe I'll figure out how to institute them shortly, but for the moment, I'm wrestling with the Cori Cycle, gluconeo-something, and base sequence repeats. Makes you hair curl doesn't it? It is, what it is. I'm hopeful about tomorrow.