It’s an AMSA Rodeo, and you’re invited!

Upon arriving to Houston for the 2012 AMSA convention and learning that there is, in fact, a straight-up rodeo in town, my first thoughts turned to the concept of rodeo clowns, and then to clowns more generally.

Harsh? Perhaps. This is, however, the organization of medical students that:

 

• Denounce drug companies and urge physicians and medical schools to cut ties with them, while allowing drug and device companies to buy exhibitors’ booths to reach our innocent medical student eyeballs;
• Advocates for changes in policy on issues from healthcare reform to resident work-hours based mainly on emotive appeals, and whose policy “leaders” don’t seem to have the best sense of the subject matter they’re lobbying about, and;
• Unabashedly supports quacks and quackery… practices that are harmful to patients, and not in keeping with the professional and scientific heritage of the medical profession that their members will soon join.

Sounds a bit clownish to me. That’s what makes it fun to watch. So for the second year in a row, your intrepid blogger will brave the ghastly Houston weather (and jet lag!) and suffer the slings and arrows of those conference attendees who can’t bear disagreement.

Follow my postings to this blog and to Twitter (under the #amsaconv12 hashtag) to get a bug’s-eye view of the goings-on at the 2012 annual convention of the country’s largest association of medical students.