Despite one of the worst traffic snarls of my life (Thanks Clippers), I managed to get home in time for House last night.

Which was a good thing.  With the Stacy plot out of the way, I guess the writers thought it was time to bring the H-man back in full force.  A great ep, especially the subplot with the sleazy researcher.

It's widely known in the medical research community that doctors and scientists who want to take shortcuts or outstep the FDA take their work overseas.  Usually, that means India because the medico-legal system hasn't caught up with technology.  India is unique in that it is a chaotic third world country, but it is also home to a wide array of state-of-the-art medical technology.  Doctors like Weber and sleazy pharmaceutical companies can test their drugs on people you've never heard of who would otherwise suffer in silence without having to go through the normal procedures, including long periods of expensive animal testing (which usually is done to verify that 1) the drug isn't lethal at normal dosage, and 2) it actually has some worthwhile effect)

Furthermore, India (and other small countries) is home to a number of questionable medical science journals.  Like most other professions that utilize the written word to communicate, biomedical science has a number of trade publications, commonly called medical journals, in which doctors and researchers publish their findings.  These journals, however, are not equal.  The top journals are the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, and for more preclinical work, the journals Science and Nature.  There are also many specialty journals such as the Archives of General Psychiatry, or Alcoholism in Clinical and Experimental Research.  Both types of journals, general and specific, have their strata.    At the top are journals that most researchers strive to get published in.  At the bottom are journals that will take ANYTHING, as long as you pay for the pages you submit and it looks vaguely scientific.  Sometimes good researchers who feel they are on to something important will use these journals to get their ideas published ahead of someone else, but most commonly these crappy journals are used to publish work that no one else will touch, because after all, the university administration  only looks at the number of paper you put out, not the quality of your publications, although that is slowly changing.

When House accuses Weber of publishing in the New Dehli Journal of Medicine, what he's really saying is that Weber's work isn't strong enough to be published in the US and that the drug isn't good enough to be FDA approved.  And he proves it, if only to himself....  though that was a pretty damn bad migrane, I must say.

Best line of the night: "House, you can't keep doing this.  Get a hobby.  Get a Hooker."--Wilson.

Anyone else notice the confirmation of House's address at the end of the show?  He indeed lives at 221 B Baker St.

Posted by: caltechgirl at 11:03 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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