TED Community » Robert Baird

More About Me

I'm passionate about

Issues surrounding child health

Talk to me about

Anything, so long as you are passionate about it

Comments

• TEDCred score: +0.90 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• A comment on Conversation: Is war inevitable? Is it a natural state of human affairs or an aberration, absent from our distant past and perhaps, our future as well?

  Apr 10 2012: I highly recommend Steven Pinker's "the better angels of our nature" on the subject. It makes a compelling argument that increasing globalization and interconnectedness has expanded the size of our respective tribe to the extent that we recognize ourselves and our common humanity in the 'other' and therefore increasingly abhor warfare. The fact that little evidence exists to support the existence of organized violence prior to civilization has more to do with the absence of organization than it does the absence of violence, I believe.
  Mankind has never had a greater capacity to destroy itself, but also has never had less large-scale violence in it's history. I profess no expertise in the subject, but let's all hope that it's war itself, and not mankind the bringer of war, that becomes extinct.
• +3

  A comment on Talk: Jack Choi: On the virtual dissection table

  Apr 8 2012: I was fortunate enough to learn anatomy through cadaveric dissection; it taught me two things that Dr. Choi's table doesn't:
  1. Haptics (tactile feedback). This allows for understanding the texture of tissues and how to carefully handle them. Surgery remains a hands-on specialty (at least until robotics replaces us all).
  2. Respect for the human body. True cadaveric dissection is an incredible privilege, often the first such privilege for physicians and surgeons-in-training. It requires a mindfulness and humility that will surely be lost when it is digitized.
  
  I applaud the technological advance and can see its applicability; I only hope it complements and doesn't diminish the role of traditional anatomic instruction.
• +2

  A comment on Conversation: Are you optimistic or pessimistic, and why?

  Jul 16 2011: Optimist.
  Everything will work itself out in the end.
  If it hasn't yet, it's not the end.
• +3

  A reply on Conversation: As Dave stressed "Let patients help", my question is how can patients help their doctors?

  Jul 3 2011: Dear Paul,
  
  While you raise several important points, I think you fail to appreciate what pressures/demands lie on the other side of the equation. This is a little biographical, but bear with me here, it's to illustrate a point. I am a physician (a paediatric surgeon, to be specific) in Canada. I have spent 4 years in medical school, during which time I was on call in the hospital every 4th night.I wrote countless examinations. I then spent 6 years in residency where I was on 1 in 4 up to 1 in 2 nights. I worked between 80-100 hours per week. I then completed a fellowship in my field, when I worked 1 out of every 2 nights for two years, still averaging 90 hours/week. I am now 1 year in practice, and work 60-70 hours per work. I usually start at 7am and don't leave before 5pm. I am now on call 1 in 5 nights. I have graduated with a significant debt, and have sacrificed much of my youth to become a physician.
  
  My story is not unique. It reflects the fact that becoming a competent doctor is... hard. Do I want sympathy? No. I am extremely fortunate to have risen to a place of such extreme responsibility.It is a privilege to do what I do, and I wouldn't trade it for the world. But sometimes I feel that a little respect is deserved. A patient is never concerned with the well-being of their health-care provider - they have their own health to worry about. But when speaking in the abstract, I think it deserves remembering that physicians are human too. They are subject to the same fallibilities as everyone else.
  
  Perhaps the next time you are made to wait, or the victim of an unkind word, you'll try and consider the perspective of the other before jumping to conclusions that may not be deserved. It's a lesson I try and practice every day.
  
  Cheers

• A comment on Conversation: What motivates you?

  Jun 19 2011: I am motivated by a quest for significance.
  I think in some way, we all are. Why else do we post messages on a TED conversation? I think we do to be meaningful to someone else. To touch and be touched by our common humanity.
  Thanks for the question and the chance to reflect.
• +1

  A reply on Talk: Alice Dreger: Is anatomy destiny?

  Jun 15 2011: I'm less concerned about the potential for a violation of minority rights than I am the blatant demonstration of innumeracy - a widespread affliction amongst the 'learned'. This isn't meant as a slight directed at you, Bryan. You're arguments are otherwise coherent and very literate. But you're inability to accurately calculate a percentage from a ratio (and also believing that '1 in 1500 is the lowest ratio', which it isn't) all point to a fundamental flaw in so many public disagreements.
  
  You can't engage in public discourse without grasping the rules of grammar. You also can't formulate a reasonable argument grounded in science if you lack the tools to interpret the available data.
  
  Sorry for the rant
  
  The true rate depends on your definition. While the WHO estimates that 1:2000 (or 0.05%) of children have an obvious abnormality, nearly 10X that number have a mismatch between genotype and phenotype. Many clinicians use this 'mismatch' as a working definition for 'intersex', although most folks I work with prefer the term Disorder of Sexual Differentiation (DSD). This includes individuals with chromosomal abnormalities like XO, XXY and mosaics as well as individuals with more subtle enzymatic derangements than the one alluded to in Alice Dreger's talk.