tailieunhanh - Báo cáo y học: "Strange day"

Tuyển tập các báo cáo nghiên cứu về y học được đăng trên tạp chí y học Critical Care giúp cho các bạn có thêm kiến thức về ngành y học đề tài: Strange days. | Comment Strange days Gregory A Petsko Address Rosenstiel Basic Medical Sciences Research Center Brandeis University Waltham MA 02454-9110 USA. Email petsko@ Published I October 2007 Genome Biology 2007 8 II0 doi gb-2007-8-9-II0 The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at http 2007 8 9 II0 2007 BioMed Central Ltd It s hard to do satire when reality is so bizarre as to be selfparodying. As I write this the President of Iraq Jalal Talabani has left his war-torn country for three weeks to travel to the United States. To consult with President Bush you ask No. To beg Congress for more money or more American troops Nope. To appeal to the American people to support the US presence in Iraq Not at all. He came here to lose weight. He has checked himself into what is non-euphemistically called a fat farm - a place that combines the physical discipline of an army boot camp with the motivation of an evangelical tent meeting - all in the service of shedding unwanted pounds. It s the sort of place that s particularly popular with rich matrons. Now am I the only one who sees something mind-numbingly peculiar about the symbolic head of a country where a significant proportion of the population is malnourished leaving that country in the middle of a civil war to go to the country with the most obese population on the face of the earth so he can slim down I guess I shouldn t be. After all nothing else has been logical about Iraq - why should this be any different Yet when it comes to strangeness Iraq is just one example out of many. We seem to be living in a period characterized by events - and human behavior - that don t just defy reason. They laugh in its face. For example the most popular new tourist attraction in the US is The Creation Museum in Petersburg Kentucky. You have to see this place to believe it - and you can see some of it - without the bother of actually going there because they have a .