I am a second trimester student at ACCHS. So far, I've really enjoyed my time in school. My bio is actually on my very first post, so I won't repeat it now. This is my second class with Larry Spears, and I am looking forward to reading recent news and current events, and how it relates to biochemistry.
I wish the Internet was as accessible when I first took chemistry. The animations on the periodic table and lab activities would have been helpful in high school and college. Some of the standard college chemistry experiments explained on the website would have also been useful--sometimes during lab, my classmates and I would wonder what our conclusions were supposed to actually be. Or TA never seemed to be around when we really needed him, so the steps and and expected outcomes would have been helpful.
The topic if doctors routinely prescribing placebos was interesting, however, it could have been better written. I am curious to see what kinds of medicine were replaced by placebos. When we see a doctor, we generally trust their medical opinion, which is why we turn to medication in the first place. If they decide to give a placebo instead, I hope that they are using sound medical judgement, which will benefit the patient. Hopefully they will not be prescribing a placebo in place of Amoxicillin or Vicodin. If placebos are effective for a depressed patient, then I think the doctor was correct in prescribing it. I suppose that one could also say that acupuncture can be looked at as being as affective as a placebo--many people say that it can't be proven that it actually works, and you can only measure the success rates on how people feel.
