1/10. Several clinical trials have shown that the mean nasal mucociliary clearance is negatively and significantly affected by cigarette smoking (PMIDs: 24669080, 3787531, 23615315,

While #Tulane school of medicine is rightfully being exposed for its contemporary racism towards faculty, staff, students (and patients) due to the racist firing of Dr. Princess Dennar, it’s important to call out the deeply anti-Black history of this school, specifically... 1/

The way #Tulane became a private institution (originally was a public university) at the end of Reconstruction to avoid having to desegregate. The school charter says it was founded for “white men” only... but there’s more (much more) to this story... 2/

cw: medical racism

Tulane’s school of medicine rose to national prominence for its collection of human “specimens” in their anatomy museum “rivaled only by Harvard”. How did it acquire these “specimens” you might ask?

The collection was “curated” by a Dr. Edward Souchon... 3/

Dr. Souchon was mentored by the late James Marion Sims, the “father of modern gynecology”, who himself had started collecting body parts, organs, and skeletal remains from enslaved Black people during slavery. Souchon continued “curating” his own collection in horrific ways. 4/

The Souchon Collection grew over several decades, eventually touring the state as a traveling “public health” exhibit- nearly all of the body parts stolen, harvested and illicitly acquired from formerly enslaved and poor Black people via Charity Hospital. 5/

I am no psychiatrist or therapist, but I have been on the receiving end of verbal abuse, multiple times over decades, and managed to escape and recover from (most of) the trauma. I'm not sure that really "qualifies" me to say the following, in the academic sense, but...1/

I am seeing the press engaging in what I would call verbal abuse. When you invite a "guest" onto a program to present his or her POV, or to discuss their "expert" opinion on a subject, and then laugh at them, roll your eyes and talk over them, ask only rhetorical questions 2/

...and then accuse the guest of harming/doing disservice to the audience, you are behaving like an abuser. You are "informing" no one of anything other than your willingness to bully and abuse other human beings. Hosts with honest disagreements can and should ASK questions 3/

The hallmark of sincere disagreement is the listener who first checks for understanding of the speaker's POV, then asks why they say that. The host could challenge their arguments on the merits, with their evidence, then allow the guest to respond. This is how adults act. 4/

Immature, irrational, indoctrinated, and/or abusive, people talk OVER, mock, belittle, and accuse guests with different points of view of being "dangerous" or "harming" viewers/listeners. This is the behavior of deeply insecure people who know their ideas lack merit. 5/

Anxiety resides in 4 spaces:

1. The space inside you
2. The space between you and another
3. The space between others
4. The space inside another.

A powerful de escalation tools is to first locate the anxiety. Where is it?

Often the answer is 'all 4.' Yikes!

1/

Anxiety is contagious, we spread it and escalate it unless we know how to manage it.

This was perhaps my biggest lesson as a trauma chaplain - the very hard work of not catching someone's anxiety.

2/

When I caught it, I was no good to them. I no longer saw what was going on, I was now 'infected' by my own triggers, assumptions, the story I tell myself. I was all wrapped up in myself.

But when I managed my anxiety, I was able to be calm, aware and fully present to them.

3/

Even in the very worst moment of their lives, even if they had me by the shoulders screaming, 'how could God allow this to happen?'

4/

Incidentally, early in chaplaincy, I thought this was an actual question. Because I was anxious, I was more infected by my need to answer than I was to simply be calm and present with them in their pain.

5/

Our conscious experience exists. In fact, it's the only thing you can directly observe, as everything about reality and how we perceive it is filtered through how our brains process stimuli and information. You are the only one who can define who and what you are.

Don't get me wrong, I am a materialist who believes the universe exists in the absence of beings who can observe it from an intelligence standpoint, but we are all collections of atoms, our function governed by chemical processes, not perfectly replicated by the process of birth.

Our means of DNA replication is imprecise because of billions of years of random evolution. We are on one branch of many, and there is countless variation in how all living beings are formed, and how we classify traits of those creatures, including sex and reproduction methods.

It would be an error to say that people who are intersex and/or transgender are the results of mistakes or errors in reproduction, because it implies DNA is "trying" to create a binary model of people and sometimes gets it wrong. It doesn't "try" to do anything; DNA != conscious.

Rather, our biological blueprints are not precise, and this is true for all living things. We can crossbreed plants and animals because of that imprecise nature, it's responsible for what we perceive as the "races" of people, etc. We can observe variation everywhere.