Medtees in the News and Study on Men and Guns

ABC Chicago has a story and video about Dr. Wes Fisher, an electrophysiologist and blogger, and his wife, Diane, a clinical psychologist, who run Medtees.com. Dr. Fisher was the star of our Cardiology podcast which is one of our most popular. The Fishers' site displays and sells various t-shirts that help patients feel better about their illnesses and can bring some laughter to a bad situation. I know they helped me.

Oh, and check out this post by Dr. Wes in which he makes fun of a "scientific" study on men and aggression from (who else?) the New York Times. The title of the study says it all--"In Men, Trigger-Happy May be a Hormonal Impulse."

Handling a gun stirs a hormonal reaction in men that primes them for aggression, new research suggests.

Psychologists at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill., enrolled 30 male students in what they described as a taste study. The researchers took saliva samples from the students and measured testosterone levels.

....The "taste sensitivity" phase of the experiment was in fact intended to measure aggressive impulses. After the writing assignment, the young men were asked to rate the taste of a drink, a cup of water with a drop of hot sauce in it. They were then told to prepare a drink for the next person in the experiment, adding as much hot sauce as they liked.

And this aggression is bad how? If you handle a gun to ward off an intruder, isn't the willingness to be aggressive necessary? The researchers found that those men who handled a gun later added more hot sauce in a drink for the next person who was going to do the experiment. After they found out the aim of the experiment, the subjects were found to be disappointed when the next student was not going to drink this wicked brew. Frankly, I would be disappointed that I was not serving it up to the anti-gun lobbyists who cooked up this little trigger-happy experiment.

Update: Jonah Goldberg has more on this aggressive absurdity.