Zack Mahdavi's Blog

I matched to Neurosurgery! I’ll found out where I matched to on Thursday.  What a relief!

The Wall Street Journal today has an absolutely wonderful article about the evolutionary characteristics of the human body.

A 2009 Gallup poll found that 44% of Americans believe that God created human beings in their present form within the past 10,000 years. Many of them also think the human body is perfectly designed.

But most scientists—including biologists, anthropologists, paleontologists and geneticists—see the 21st century human body as a collection of compromises, jury-rigged by evolution as our ancestors adapted to changing conditions.

“In many ways, we are maladapted for modernity,” says Stephen Stearns, a Yale evolutionary biologist. He and others in the field are urging medical schools to include more evolutionary thinking when teaching doctors about modern diseases.

Everything from our imperfect spines, our little toe, and the evolutionary explanation of the appendix are all covered in this article.  It really made me think.  What will the human body be like 20,000 years from now?

Yesterday, CNN aired a piece on Michael Moore’s new documentary, Sicko, as told by CNN’s health correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta. After airing the piece, Wolf Blitzer had Michael Moore talk live via satellite.

Moore blew up, obviously angry about CNN’s remarks that “Moore fudged the facts.” He challenged Dr. Gupta to actually turn up hard evidence of any wrong facts. It will be interesting if Gupta takes up Moore on the challenge. Regardless, I was happy to see someone stand up to the American media; it seems like every day, the American news channels get crummier and crummier. Instead of showing real news like how Bush messed up Iraq, we get fluff pieces about Paris Hilton, Anna Nicole Smith, and my favorite fluff piece, Don Imus.

In fact, look at the headlines the lovely Fox News mentioned within the past week:
- National Healthcare: A breeding ground for terror
- Fox News names Giulliani “Mr. 9/11″
- FOX News asks: Did Mr. Rogers destroy an entire generation?

It’s time Americans stop putting up with our crappy American media, because if we can’t get news from people we trust, then how are we supposed to understand what’s going on in our economy, government, and our world? Oh wait, that doesn’t matter… the celebrities are way more important….

Update: Tell CNN to apologize here.