School Stuff

This morning in epidemiology I gave (along with CB) my last presentation for the school year. The point was to convince the class to start using some new technique/something - we did ours on a new feline leukemia virus vaccine made by Merial. It is given by a needle-less injection device; based on a live recombinant canarypox vector (which provides the body with better immunity); and contains no adjuvant (a substance added to a vaccine to increase the immune response mounted against the virus; adjuvants may be associated with a vaccine-associated cancer).

Did any of you read the Magic School Bus books when you were young? I used to think they were pretty neat, and was reminded of them (particularly The Magic School Bus Inside the Human Body) today while observing endoscopy on a horse. We looked into the trachea, esophagus and guttural pouch*, and a number of us got to drive the endoscope.


* The guttural pouch is a diverticulum off the horse's eustachian tube. It contains a couple nerves, part of the hyoid apparatus, and the external and internal carotid arteries. Guttural pouches are important clinically partly because they can host fungal growth that erodes through the carotid artery.