Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Gunshot Wounds

Episode Date: December 10, 2015

This week on Sawbones, Dr. Sydnee and Justin provide a brief history of caring for gunshot wounds. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers

Saabones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, time is about to books!

One, two, one, two, three, four! We came across a pharmacy with a toy and that's lost it out. We pushed on through the broken glass and had ourselves a look around. Some medicines, some medicines that escalate my cop for the mouth. Wow! Hello everybody, welcome to Salbo, and to my other tour of Miss Guy to Medicine. I am your coach at the macro I'm Sydney Macri Normally we have like a fun Look a bit like a whole little back and forth Pretend like we're gonna talk like we pretend like we're gonna talk about something else or like you just kind of

Happened to walk into our living room to overhear us discussing something related. Maybe I do a fun accent, I'd be like, Zootalo, that kind of thing. That's just his favorite thing to say in an accent. Zootalo. I see, I do that, and we have books about that French draft, Sophie, I do anyway, this doesn't matter.

No, because we're not gonna do a bit this, not a bit this. We're not gonna pretend you wand do a bit this time. No, but it's just, we're not gonna pretend like you wandered into like our crazy conversation about how Justin thinks he's sick or, you know, us talking about Charlie or something like that. Yeah, we're gonna talk about gunshot wounds on this episode because it has become a pressing topic,

I would say, in the world. I think that, because this is actually, isn't something, I looked back, isn't something that anybody has asked me to specifically cover before, at least not in my email. I wonder what that is.

So it's supposed to be fun. It is. Now, and I will say that you're gonna get your usual, your usual kind of goofy saw bones stuff here. There's no exception. When we're talking about the treatment of wounds in general throughout history, I think you can imagine we've put some weird stuff on wounds, and I have all that gooey gory detail

for you that you enjoy. But I think it's fair to say this is a little more of a more of a serious topic. You know you have two options you can either like try to have a little bit of fun or just like scream and mortal tear 24 hours a day. So it's like and that's so those are the two options. And we are trying to take option one, because option, nobody will buy ads on option two. What's just, which is the podcast Justin's gonna do next, cause you know, that's what we do.

Basically, I'll do it. Justin comes up with a new podcast to do, but it's gonna be him just screaming and mortal terror. For like, what are you doing like 30? Is that a 30 minute or is that time? More of a 60. Start with a tight 20 minute. Okay, a tight 20 minute.

Now, do you think any of our sponsors will be interested? You know what, I think I can get him for at least a couple of months, just based on the McElroy brand, the beloved McElroy brand. Are you gonna get a brother in on this? Or is this a solo? It is a solo project.

Okay, great, awesome. Sid, where does this start? Take me back. I know the Chinese invented a gunpowder, right? That's absolutely right. For fireworks, right? Yes, yeah. And then I quave it, what if we put a bullet in here?

Poshy, moshy, this is a good idea. Is it? Ouch, said Daniel. Well, if we put bull in here, much, much, this is a good idea. Is it? Ouch said Daniel. I don't agree. I think this is a bad idea. Don't do that. Don't do this, please. Now, absolutely, you're right that the Chinese have been using

the like explosions, you know, the use of gunpowder to propel rockets or fireworks for a long time before we started thinking about making weapons out of them. And they were used, it was used first for cannons and big large artillery guns before we moved towards handheld guns. They were hand cannons that were used in some parts of China and that kind of thing.

But not a very efficient kind of, what we would think of today as like a gun. So to speak, until later in the 1200s, really. And we see a really good description of one that actually was written not in China by Sir Roger Bacon in 1242, which is where you really describe like the concept of using like a small explosion,

like a small amount of an explosive powder to propel a small object at someone very quickly, which is the most roundabout scientific way I can say of shooting somebody. It sounds like the explanation that Charlie's grandpa gave to me in Charlie the Child of the Factory. We said remember how you asked me how a bullet comes out of a gun and it's like That's not in it at all It doesn't you don't put a chubby a German boy into a tube full of chocolate No, it doesn't work from like chocolate pressure. No, there's no chocolate pressure involved

No, I'm not gonna be talking a lot about the gun mechanics, but I think that's that's not how they work No, I wish they involved chocolate. I'd probably like a- It'd be a better, yeah. Initially, these attempts to make guns were much more likely a cause-endery to the person attempting to shoot the gun, because it was supposed to be a small controlled explosion, and that doesn't always go so well when you don't know exactly what you're doing. It wasn't until the 1400s in the War of the Roses that we start to see artillery really playing

a major role in warfare. And I'm going to talk a lot about this in like a sequence of wars and battles. And that should probably make sense to you because that's when we have like large collections of data on gun injuries and gunshot wounds and like surgeons who are trying to treat it and constantly changing and adapting because they have lots of patients unfortunately. So I'm going to be kind of skipping more to war but that's the history of guns, that's the history of GSWs, that's history gunshot wounds. So guns became more portable at this point, so they could be carried into battle,

so they became a lot more important for winning at this point. Right. And so what follows guns becoming more widely used is the first mention of treating wounds from guns. You know, that's why surgeons started talking about it, right? Right, because they had to. Because it happened. At first, there's no specific treatment

that anybody, they just kind of acknowledged. There are already these concepts that they would draw of the wounded man, which was this figure that would be common for surgeons of the day to have. And it was like a naked guy standing there with like arrows and spears, like sticking out of various parts of his body. And then like little descriptions

of what each of these wounds are. I bet that's probably a few album covers, but now when you think. You would think, right? Probably. And like initially, it didn't have artillery wounds or bullet wounds in it, because there weren't. And so we see that kind of join the picture in 1497

when you first see artillery wounds pop up on the wounded man, a German surgeon, surgeon added them. And even then we see like a distinct difference in the way that surgeons are approaching a bullet wound or an artillery wound as opposed to like a knife wound or a spear wound or an arrow wound or whatever other wound. Oh yeah, I mean you would think there's difference in velocity, there's burns to consider like a knife wound or a spear wound or an arrow wound or whatever other wound. Oh yeah, I mean you would think there's different simplicity, there's burns to consider I would imagine. Exactly. Now they didn't quite understand all these things obviously at the time. Not everybody has my medical acumen.

No, thank goodness that some of us have more. But at the time they just knew that bullet wounds were different. That like a knife wound or an arrow wound was cutting is what they would have described it. And they thought that it was pretty straightforward. If you get like shot with an arrow, it either kills you right away or you're probably going to heal all right on your own. Yeah, well, yes.

It's either going to cut something really important or it's not. Medicine. Artillery wounds were much more complicated because what they found is that they can be lacerating, they can be cutting, but they can also be contusing, meaning they cause bruising and damage to the surrounding tissues, like a contusion is a bruise. And they are also penetrating, so they go much deeper because of the velocity and everything that a lot of these, like an arrow or something necessarily would. So they can sever important structures, damage organs, but they can also damage all the

tissue around the path. Plus they go, like I said, they go deeper. And as they do, they can carry what was called at the time poison along. It was infection. And they were worried about infection. But they know that almost every single time somebody would get wounded by a bullet or artillery, they would have pus come from it, which was their way of saying that it was infected, although they didn't know that's what it meant.

But they would say, oh, anytime you're going to see pus because it's poisonous deeper or harder to treat or as the well as the bullet pass through outer layers of Tit of like clothes and skin and everything and just carried Germs, I mean, and then you don't dumb. I am I just assume germs that could like knocked off because it's going so fast No, no, they don't well it carries them all deeper plus you got to consider um No, they don't. Well, it carries them all deeper. Plus, you've got to consider the bullet wound itself is likely dirty, but then what we would do to it afterwards. Right.

I'm going to say this is hardly, nearly a 10%. So let's talk about what we were going to do to these. And this will give you a good reason why if the gun wound wasn't what they, again, we're referring to as poisonous. A poisonous wound. It took a long time, by the way, for us to get rid of the idea that wounds were poisonous. It was like throughout the writings for hundreds of years that gun wounds are, of course, are poisonous.

Well, no, they're not. They're infected. But so what you could do is take a hot seat in so like a metal, like a rod, like a hot, like a branding iron kind of like looking thing. Yeah. And you would drive it in and out of the gun wound. Just until they died and say, I don't worry about it anymore.

What you were trying to do was force the gun powder out because the belief was that it was the gun powder that was still in the tissue that was poisonous that was causing all of the pus and odor and everything that was actually in fact. It's obviously wrong, but I bet, I mean, wouldn't it help somewhat because of cotterization? Yes, I mean, yes, driving, it's obviously wrong, but I bet I mean wouldn't help somewhat because of cotterization. Yes, I mean, yes, driving, yes, you would, you know,

cotterize the wound and maybe stop bleeding. Um, but you're also again sticking something that what part of it is hot, not all of it is part of it is just like cold and germy. Dirty. Dirty. Um, and you're damaging all the tissue around it. Sure. Probably. Um, and you're damaging all the tissue around it. Sure. Probably. And you're doing it for an indeterminant time to force powder out, which isn't necessary, of course.

Right. And then what followed that was just as bad, you would plug the wound with lint that was moistened with like bacon or ox grease. Just like they sat on it and was like, what was the worst thing you guys think we could do? Let's start there and build up like we could gym here we could gym full of grease and dart and win yeah I mean that seems very good let's start there well go up and the great thing was they had all kinds of alternatives if you

didn't want to do grease you could try melted butter you could you barley water you could try a water with earthworms mushed up in it. That was a very popular. Earthworms play a big role here. The important thing about all these different substances that you're going to pour in your gunshot wound is that it's boiling hot. That's the main thing you want to make sure. Whatever it is is that it's boiling hot. And then you're going to cover it with rose oil, camphor, and turpentine. Now, if the bullet is still in there, because this is for a wound that the bullet is not there anymore, because you cannot leave the bullet in. That was the understanding at this time.

And this kind of waxes and wanes throughout history, whether or not you can leave bullets in, which now we know there are people who have like, you can see on X-rays and stuff, little bits of shrapnel and stuff inside. So we don't always necessarily go in and dig every teeny little bit of everything out, like fuck shot. You can't get an MRI though. Yes, that is true. That is true. You hesitated.

MRIs are a lot trickier because it depends on exactly the kind of, generally yes, generally speaking, you can't get an MRI. That's better, let's just go with that. It's, there's a lot more to do with like metals and magnetism when it comes to MRIs, but generally speaking, you can't get an MRI. That's better, let's just go with that. Yeah. There's a lot more to do with metals and magnetism when it comes to MRIs, but generally speaking, you can't. But at the time, you were definitely going to try to get the bullet out. So if the wound was not open far enough for you

to just kind of pick it out, you would either open it up further by cutting. And these were techniques that they'd actually already developed from arrows. So a lot of this, they would just be like in the book, it would say like refer to arrows here. And then they'll tell you how to take the bullet out.

That'd be early in the book. So you either cut the wound up and further to dig the bullet out. Or what you would do is just keep stuffing dry packing into the wound because it is as it absorbed like all the liquid, like the blood and the stuff in there. It's gonna expand and like open the wound up further. Great. And then you can just kind of get some, you can get some bullet forceps and yeah. And that led to the invention of new forceps bullets did.

Well, that's finally something good from guys. Well, we had to have new forceps to grab the bullets. Great. One thing I did read that it was important at the time that you wanted the patient to stand in the same position that he or she was in when they got shot while you were extracting the bullet. I don't know. So it was it easy, like a straight,

so you were kind of in like a hunched over or were you like springing up with your arms up in there with like a, like a, ah, expression on your face, like just do that, hold still. Just wait. I'm gonna dig a bullet out of you and then pour some hot grease in it. Hold still.

I ain't hanging there for me. In 1552, a big advance was made by Alfonso Ferrio, who was a surgeon who started to use some ligature like tying off blood vessels to stop bleeding, which is crazy because he wasn't always clear who was a surgeon who started to use some ligature like tying off blood vessels to stop bleeding, which is crazy because he wasn't always clear on the difference between arteries and veins. So how he figured, I mean, it's without that knowledge

of the circulatory system, it's amazing, but it did move the field forward somewhat. He also advocated that instead of, at the time he would sound for bullets. Oh, what is it? Like, try to use like a sounding to like... What is, what are you talking about? Like you would like like...

Like looking for... Like using a divination rod to fly the water. Like sounding for bullets, yeah. And he kind of advocated, you just kind of like dig around with your fingers. Sure, get in there. It's probably like looking at a haunted house, you're digging through a b bowl full of spaghetti and eyeballs. He actually created a tool for it

that he called an Alfonzium. His name is Alfonzo, which is my favorite surgical tool. I don't think we use an Alfonzium anymore to my knowledge. But the Alfonzium, I finally found a picture of it. And it kind of reminded me of like a really fancy like claw machine.

Mm. Like you would like kind of, it was like three fingers on like a spring and you would like stick it in and then like clamp it around something and drag it back out. Great. Okay. Got it. He also advised like warm oil and vinegar baths. He said some good stuff like immobilize if it's around a joint immobilize the wound, massage

it, do slow, slow range of motion. So he had some good stuff like immobilize if it's around a joint to mobilize the wound massage it do slow range of motion So he had some good ideas But but on the flip side he also said that At the at the time and this would have been all throughout probably most of what we're gonna talk about You would also bleed the patient sure so they've come in they've had a Wound they probably lost a lot of blood part of your treatment is definitely gonna be cutting them and bleeding them, or putting some leeches on them and bleeding them at some point.

He did advocate waiting three days before you do it though. Like let them level out first. That's good, and then get in there, just get all that bad, bad bullet blood right out. Now, we've talked about Ambrole, Paray, before famous French surgeon, and he, definitely, I mean, he advanced the field of surgery in a lot of different ways,

but definitely for bullet wounds as well. He actually kind of did it accidentally. He was using hot oil in the wounds as was the fashion as we discussed. But one night he ran out. So he had to just use what he had. So he started using what was described as a digestive, which I thought of like the biscuit.

Digestive biscuits, yeah. But it's not. Not that. No, it's a mixture of rose oil and egg yolk and turpentine. And he used that in the wounds instead of the hot oil. And he found that those patients did better. The ones with the rose oil, egg yolk and turpentine did better than the oily ones.

And so somehow this advanced the field. I think that the main thing is that he started to move us away from the idea that things were poisoned. It's pretty impressive though, he actually did scientific testing. Don't see a lot of that this time period. No, that's true. He compared the two.

He actually laid awake all night worrying about them and dreaming that all the patients that used the digestive on were gonna die. And then he came in the next morning and wrote that it was all different. Like everybody with the digestive did better. So like pouring boiling oil on somebody who's got a gunshot wound is a bad idea. But he did, he did figure out better ways to remove bullets, better ways to close wounds, what wounds you should leave open and let heal by secondary intention because they were

infected and other way we didn't know that, but he figured out some good stuff about tying off blood vessels. Really smart guy. Again, though, all these really smart guys who do some good stuff, there's like these weird little facts. Like, one thing about Paray is that his digestive appointment was based on a secret antidote that he obtained, a recipe that he obtained from an Italian surgeon in Turin. And he writes about this encounter where he traveled to find this like famed Italian surgeon who had this like amazing ointment that was perfect for any wound, but hopefully for gunshot wounds.

And this is what he says he did. He went to him and the surgeon said, here's what I need you to do. Go out and find me two puppies, one pound of earthworms, two pounds of oil of the lily, six ounces of vanishing turpentine and one ounce of brandy. That's just horse apples. And I'm assuming like a Holocaust cloak too. Yeah, right.

So once he... That's a Holocaust cloak too. Yeah, right. Yeah. So once he- That's a Princess by reference. By the way, not a Holocaust reference, if you're not familiar. Oh, no, yeah. Now that's from the Princess Bride. Yeah, if you know that you can set on fire. It's not like, it's not like a Cape the Hill or War.

No, no. No, no. No, just, okay. And also if you didn't get that, stop listening to our podcast immediately. And please go read the Princess Bride. And then you can watch it too. And also, if you didn't get that, stop listening to our podcast immediately, and please go read the Princess Fried, and then you can watch it too. Just watch them every other day.

No, read the book. Anyway, so he went and he found all these ingredients, ingredients, and he brought them back to the surgeon who unfortunately boiled the dog's in oil. Accidentally. Accidentally. Accidentally. He added the earthworms that he did take the trouble of killing beforehand by putting the pound of earthworms

in white wine because it was thought that you would kill them and then also make them expel the earth. It was an- So just to be clear, he gave a humane death to the earthworms, boiled the puppies alive in oil. Yeah. Cool dude. Cool dude. Not our best example. Well, it wasn't for a, it was his hero, this Italian surgeon who is nameless in the literature. So he didn't also follow this crazy concussion. His was not identical with no, not at all. I bet if you're going to find one thing, I know which one is going to be.

He didn't because at this point, once you've got like the puppy in Earthworm and wine mix you're gonna strain it through a towel and then toss in some turpentine and Brandi which I assumed at this point was just a drink The whole thing and then you've got this one and his was similar I guess in the sense that I had turpentine in it, but he didn't do all that other stuff. Thank you That's also not what Brandy is. It's like a eighth of a cup. It's not on Brandy.

Well, that's more for drinking to deal with like the reality of what you've just done. I want to hear more about all this Sydney, but we have to take a quick break. And so we're going to do that right now. Is that okay? Sure. Let's go to the building department. Let's go to the Boolean department. Let's go. The medicines, the medicines, the askin' if my God, before the mouth.

So in 1718, a big improvement in the treatment of gunshot wounds is when the German surgeon Heister comes up with the tourniquet, which how is that related to a gunshot wound? Well, up to this point, it's crazy because I would try to find these old manuals on treatment for gunshot wounds, like these old, like more surgery manuals. And I kept thinking I clicked on the wrong link because they would just be these huge,

like these huge descriptions of amputation, field amputation, and it's because that was largely what happened. You got shot in the leg or the arm and we just cut the limb off because otherwise you were going to die. The tourniquet helps to save your life. Now eventually you do get amputated, but you don't have to do it in the field necessarily. Yeah, and I think there's a misconception.

I think a lot of people like have about tourniquets. I know I certainly did before you like before you, like, told me about them at some point, like I kind of assumed they were like a, there's something you gotta take free, seriously. You gotta be really sure it's turnipit time, right? Exactly, you don't wanna just willingly throw on a turnipit because when you are using a turnipit, you are saying whatever's happening

is life threatening to the person. And so I'm willing to risk losing this limb in order to save this person's life. It is literally only used in life for limb. We actually, if you use a tourniquet in the field, one thing we advocate, like if you're out at a site somewhere on the side of the road or out in the wild, somewhere where like you're not

gonna be maybe in direct contact with the hospital just yet, if you put a tourniquet on a patient, you write a T on their forehead. It's a quick way of communicating to the people in the ER wherever they end up. Like, this patient has a tourniquet somewhere, strip them down and look for it because the sooner they can get it off, the more likely they are to save the limb. That's a side note. Cool tattoo idea. No, don't. Please don't do that. Other improvements in the 1700s include understanding

that bullet wounds also cause, and we kind of knew that they were different wounds, but that we start to understand that they caused crush injury to the surrounding tissue because of the air compression. And so then we start to better understand like head injuries and intercranial hemorrhage and stuff that results from bullet wounds, from just the velocity and the air pressure from the bullet moving,

not just the actual physical bullet itself. In the late 1700s and the War of 1812, we start to see improvements just because of improvements in our front line surgery efforts. We see stretcher brigades to get wounded men off the field, faster so we can care for their bullet wounds quicker. We see surgeons move to the front line to take care of the damage quicker. And in the 1800s, we get some better guidelines for like, when a bullet wounded extremity

is going to be amputated, how you do it, you know, and then Lister comes along and we get like antiseptic theory, and so then we're not doing it in such a sloppy, dirty fashion, so to speak. And so then that greatly improves the mortality from a bullet wound. And that's, like I said, I'm kind of just moving more by work, because this is really where we learned a lot about bullet wounds, and we're one, we are start out by irrigating the wounds daily with like a chlorinated solution, which sounds like a good idea, right?

It sounds good, you're cleaning it out, right? But the problem is that you're opening the wound daily in order to do so. All right. And so while you're, yes, the instinctually that sounds good, right? Keep it fresh, aired out that kind of thing. It was a move in the right direction, but at the same time, you don't want to continue to just like reopen a wound. Right.

Expose it to stuff. Natural healing can't take place. Right, and you're also exposing this wound to whatever is on the person's hands or the sheets or the, you know, whatever. So a surgeon went it or came up with a new method, the ore method that involved to breeding the wound, then you pack it with a vaseline gauze

and then you put a cast on it and you leave the cast on, this is true, until the smell gets so bad you can't bear it and then you take the cast and change it out and change up the dressing. What a metric. And in World War II, we actually get a lot better at handling bullet wounds because we start doing a lot of research into, this is sad to say, we start doing a lot of research into which

weapons will create the most damage to the other side. Great. And in researching how best to hurt somebody. That's always been my problem with guns. Right, is that they don't damage people enough. Yeah, they still hurt people enough. It was actually, it was filed under a branch of underwater ballistics because here's a fact for you. A bullet hitting a body, the body sort of reacts like liquid does when a missile is hitting

it and moving through it. So if you want to think about that. And we start to learn that there's the cutting of the tissue by the bullet and stuff that we had already kind of understood, but as we get a better understanding of physics, in ballistics, we know a little better is that there are shock waves that damage the surrounding tissue. This is crazy. So we know that like, there is clearly,

there's a cavity formed by the path of a bullet, right? Like, there's the hole that it makes and then the tunnel that it travels through. There is actually a temporary cavity. From the shock waves, stuff is spread out and there is a temporary hole cavity that is formed inside the body that is 27 times larger than the permanent cavity that remains. So there is, like, you can do these like still motion photographs of the bullet entering and like what happens after that. I mean,

they did this again with like water and liquids and stuff like that to try to figure out how it works. And like everything spreads out really far from the shock waves and then comes back together, but that helps us to understand all the bleeding that happens because it's not just the path of the bullet where the bleeding is happening, it's all the damaged tissue around it. And so we start learning that like all that damaged tissue

while it's bleeding, if we can go in and stop the bleeding, all that tissue is salvageable. So we can clean out the like the bad stuff, get the bullet out, clean the wound right away and all and stop that bleeding and all that tissue will actually, it'll be okay. So it kind of helped us figure out why everything was such a mess and what we could do to stop losing so much tissue from a bullet wound and you know, stop bleeding. And then of course, in World War II, you know, in the 40s we see antibiotics, hit the scene, penicillin comes around and this hugely reduces the rate of like

chronic bone infections from bullet wounds and that kind of stuff. By Vietnam, we were much better at figuring out how to reconstruct blood vessels, which made amputation no longer the main treatment for a bullet wound. And nowadays, you know, I could go into, there's endless things that you could no longer the main treatment for a bullet wound. And nowadays, I could go into, there's endless things that you could say about how good we are at stopping bleeding, at ligating blood vessels and reconstructing blood vessels,

at cleaning out wounds and keeping things clean and antibiotics and antiseptic technique, we're good at removing bullets and preventing infection and limb loss, we surgery, we can do now because we can put people to sleep and intubate them and support them until they get better. And so, you know, we're really good at treating gunshot wounds as long as they make it to our ER.

We're really good at that now. We have lots of ways of doing it. But I would propose the best treatment for a gunshot wound would be to stop shooting each other. That would be my main idea. Well, I mean, I could tell you a million ways to kind of like take care of yourself when you got, if you get the flu, you know, how to treat yourself and like make yourself better quicker and then that kind of thing. But what I would probably tell you is to get a flu vaccine. There is no gunshot wound vaccine that I can promote for you.

If there is one, I would say this because if you've been listening to a lot of the talk about gun violence, that's on TV right now, then you've probably heard something about a lack of research we have into gun violence. Have you heard anything about this, Justin? Is this something that you're familiar with? Yes, I am, and not just because you've mentioned it to me in passing. The lobby groups have basically lobbied to stop looking into gun violence. So that's exactly right.

In the 80s and 90s, we were doing, and I like to think about things in a scientific way. So this is me approaching, there is a problem in the US with people dying as a result of guns. And so let's look at a scientific way to stop so many people from dying, from gunshot wounds. In the 80s and 90s, we were doing a lot of research and making a lot of progress to try to figure out

if we were going to pass laws to try to prevent gun deaths, what would they look like? What would actually work? Because let's not just do it willingly because we're angry or we're scared or we're sad. Let's do it, do things that work. And we found some upsetting facts. For instance, there is a study in the 90s

that showed that having a gun in the 90s that showed that having a gun in your home increases the likelihood that you will die from a violent death. It's more likely to kill you a family member or be used in a suicide than it is to defend you from somebody. But lobby groups, the NRA in particular, did not like the results of these research. So they started pushing Congress to ban any kind of research. The wording is that any research that might advocate gun control, and they actually defunded the CDC to the exact tune of the amount of money that they had spent on firearm injury research the previous year.

And all other government organizations have met a similar fate, so nobody's doing this research right now, compounded with the fact that the assault weapons banded in 2004, and other little laws, like for instance in some states, do you know that I, as a doctor, could not ask you, for instance, as Charlie's dad? I couldn't say, hey, Mr. McRoy, do you have a gun in your home? To talk to you about the importance of discussing gun safety and that kind of thing with your child. I would not be allowed to ask you that question because it would be a violation of your privacy. Now I consider that part of my job as a doctor to kids because I do take care of kids. Yeah. But there are some states where I would not be allowed to ask you that question.

And what I would say is that if you want to know if you're feeling helpless and you're feeling scared and you want to know something we could do, that would be the thing to push for. Instead of let's just pushing for stricter gun laws, that probably is the answer, but which gun laws somebody needs to write them, somebody needs to word them. I would say that we need to just look at this scientifically. Right, we're not, I mean, we're not advocating anything other than, let's get some more information to science podcasts, right? Yes, it is a science podcast, but my job, one of my jobs as a physician is to put injured people back together. jobs as a physician is to put injured people back together. And I would like to see a lot fewer injured people personally. And I think that there is an impetus on us as humans

to figure out why so many people are getting shot in the US and do something to stop it. All I'd add, because you spoke about it very eloquently. All I'd add is that I'm not in a position to tell anybody how we can rewrite gun laws in this country to make it safer to live and raise kids and stuff. I'm not that smart, but I do know that there is a very powerful group that has worked really hard to stop people from even talking about it. And when you get to that point, even if you do think people should be a lot of unguns, if a group is trying really hard to keep people quiet and to keep people from asking questions. That's got to raise your,

I mean, it's going to set off a lot of bells for you no matter what you believe. At least that's what I think. If you're an honest person, then you should want there to be light shown on stuff. And the only reason we have made advancements like we have in medicine is because we've shown the light on this stuff. And if you think that like an issue this serious couldn't benefit from that. And if you think that it's worth supporting a group that's trying to keep us from doing that, then I really don't know what to tell you. That's where I'm at. So that was our, that was our really heavy serious. Happy holidays. Christmas fuck. Yeah. So anyway, sorry, I'm sorry, Justin. Sometimes I can't keep my mouth shut.

Well, I just can't. Well, the little one. I can't help myself. Today you'll learn your place, etc, etc et cetera, the kitchen, et cetera, et cetera. I learned to defer to you, your your man, your protector, your guardian. Anyway, this has been our show. Thanks, taxpayer, let us use their song of medicines as the intro, not show our program. Take it, maximum fun network for us to be a part of their, their, their family of podcasts. Funnel on great shows, maximum fun.org. Listen, we are doing a my other podcast, my brother and my brother and me. We do kind of an annual charity drive to help out people here in the mountain

state. And West Virginia, we're sitting. I live and where all of us hail from. We're trying to basically get some stuff for people who don't have a lot this holiday season And if that's something that you'd like to be involved with if you get in a couple bucks or what have you You can get all the information on that on the my brother my brother me Facebook group We go actually posted on the saw bones group we haven't already you can also go to mbmbm.tumbler already. You can also go to mbmbm.tumbler.com and find out how to help there. We sure appreciate it. Also, we're doing a show with my brother and brother me on December 21st, 8 p.m. here in Huntington. I'll take it to like 20 bucks, I think. And if you want to get tickets to that,

it's going to be a lot of fun. You can go to canonites.net and get the tickets for that. Or canelmites.org, if you want to treat it like a charitable organization that option is open to you as well. Anyway, that's good. And I really would, I would say, Justin, just to back up your point, I really would check out, as Justin said, the empty stockings group, the boys have helped to fill a lot of people's needs in this area at this time of year. Because you're working with local organizations, so like the the boys have helped to fill a lot of people's needs in this area at this time of year

because you're working with local organizations so like the stuff that you're donating, it's going, I mean, you are answering people's like direct needs that's going right to people, you're really helping like on a one-on-one level. It's a really cool thing that you don't always get an opportunity to do. It's fantastic, so go take part in that.

And I said, that's going to do it for us until next Wednesday. My name is Justin Maceroys. That's Sydney Maceroys. And as always, don't throw a hole. Alright! Maximumfund.org Comedy and Culture, Artistone Listener Supported