JaeWonJoh.com
Korean-American medical student
Hey Jae: how important is research?
Mar 6th
I’m currently a sophomore at Stanford. My question is about research experience. I noticed that you have a lot of research/publication experience. How important are they? It’s difficult to state how “important” research and publications are. Sure, they look good, and if you end up applying to research-oriented medical schools, then having research experience will…
A reflection on life, death, and the role of the medical student
Feb 12th
I never quite imagined that I would have my first one-on-one end-of-life talk with a patient’s family during my very first month on the wards.
Hey Jae: Do medical students have jobs outside of school?
Dec 31st
Do medical students have paid jobs when school is in session? I would think that some would work to help pay off their tuition costs. Yes and no. Many people do some form of work-study financial aid in school where they find jobs as librarians, TAs, research assistants, manual laborers, etc. Others arrange their own…
Hey Jae: Should I give up on pre-med if my GPA is too low?
Dec 28th
I am a sophomore in college and after one and a half years of being a pre-med, my GPA so far is 3.1, which is very low, I know. I don’t know if I should give up pre-med, since my gpa is too low to get in anywhere. But I always liked to become a…
How NOT to get high on heroin
Nov 1st
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/health/13blood.html After reading this article, I decided to do some math on the matter…and unless the person into whom the blood is being injected has incredibly low tolerance to heroin, the chances of getting a heroin high by injecting yourself with the blood of someone else who has just used heroin is near nil. Let’s…
The HIV treatment primer
Oct 18th
BACKGROUND To understand HIV medication, one must first understand the 6 crucial steps that HIV needs to complete in order to replicate and spread. In order, they are: Binding and fusion: HIV binds to either or both of two cell receptors known as CCR5 (typically in initial stages of infection) and CXCR4 (often in later…
Mosquitoes are evil. Seriously.
Oct 10th
Of 10 major incurable diseases, mosquitoes are the carriers for 8 of them. Whoever eradicates this dreadful species gets my vote for that year’s Nobel Prize in medicine. =__=; Disease (insect): notes. yellow fever (mosquitoes): Mortality rate is high. dengue fever (mosquitoes): This is the most common insect-borne viral disease in the world. Classic dengue…
What is the distinction between HIV and AIDS?
Oct 10th
HIV is the viral agent that causes the condition known as AIDS. It might help to decipher the abbreviations: HIV = Human Immunodeficiency Virus AIDS = Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome In common use, the terms HIV and AIDS are often used interchangeably. The distinction is made clinically because infection with HIV typically doesn’t immediately cause AIDS,…
How much Vitamin C can the body absorb?
Oct 8th
Recommended daily allowance (RDA) for an adult is about 90 mg/day. If you smoke, add 35 for a total of ~125 mg/day. While RDA is set based on recommendations for prevention of deficiency, it’s been shown that anything above that in a healthy person doesn’t seem to improve biomarkers of cellular oxidant stress (at least…
Are parasites useful in treating autoimmune diseases?
Oct 8th
Someone asked me this question on Quora, and it was a pretty interesting thought experiment, so I thought I’d share. The question details: I went to an evolutionary biology talk they had at my school (to celebrate Darwin’s birthday) about the fact that a lot of parasites secrete hormones that suppress a human’s immune system,…