Weighing Costs and Benefits Part II: Benefits

Today the Free Range Lab Rat, yours truly, continues my extended series on the Chemistry Experiment, that effort to find the chemicals that will make a dent in the suffering of those with mood disorders.

I asked, Will it work for me?

And the doctor answered, We won't know until you try it. 

THAT is the Chemistry Experiment. 

So three weeks ago I published my

Manifesto

If I am a lab rat, I will be a free-range lab rat.

Because I am a free-range rat, I decide which experiments I am willing to try.

Of course I do.  The doctor expects me to decide.  Why else did she say,

You have to weigh the costs and benefits. 

Only -- there is no scale.  Which led me, two weeks ago to continue my manifesto.

I now insist that I contribute more to this enterprise than my body.

So I have decided to create the scale.  I call it an Algorithm.  Algorithm is science-speak for a set of logical rules applied to objective data to solve a problem.  The problem to be solved is 

Do I Want To Put These Chemicals Inside My Body?

It turns out there are lots and lots of these costs and benefits to weigh.  The numbers you get in your fifteen minute med check are abbreviated and oversimplified to the point of useless.  So this is going to take a few weeks.  I am breaking it down, one step at a time.  Like I said, a set of logical rules applied to objective data to solve a problem.  I promise as few numbers and as many pictures as possible.  Plus another musical interlude.

Two weeks ago, I made a list of factors, all the things that go into the scale.  Today we look at the good side, what the doctor calls BENEFITS.

Here goes. 

Effectiveness Rate

Weighing the Costs and Benefits Part I -- What Counts?

Manifesto

If I am a lab rat, I will be a free-range lab rat.

There.  I feel better already.

To recap from last week:

You Have to Weigh The Costs and Benefits

That is what the doctor says.

Last week I promised I would develop a way to do that.  So this week we play math games.  For the next few weeks, actually.

Now, don't freak out.  I am not going to ask you to do math.  I am going to make up some rules.  You are along for the ride.  Though do feel free to suggest better rules.  Plus, I promise lots of pictures.  And a musical interlude.

I am a rat.  I live in a laboratory, where I participate in the Chemistry Experiment.  Along with other scientists, I am trying to find the chemicals that will make a dent in my mood disorder.  Not theirs.  Mine.  Which is how I got the rat end of this job.  But because I am a free-range rat, I get to decide which experiments I am willing to try.

I now insist that I contribute more to this enterprise than my body.

Manifesto of a Lab Rat -- Weighing the Costs and Benefits Part I

I Am A Lab Rat.  Yes, I am.

Here is the deal.  I was lucky enough, and you were lucky enough to be born after the discovery of penicillin (1928).  Well, I don't know when you were born.  But evidently penicillin was discovered before it became a life or death issue for either of us, or I wouldn't be writing and/or you wouldn't be reading Prozac Monologues.  This is good.

In another age, my ruptured appendix might have been treated with leeches.  That would not have been good.

As far as my more immediate health challenge goes, we are barely out of the leech stage.  Okay, that's a bummer, the timing of my life, that is.  But like I said, ruptured appendix, penicillin.  It could have been worse.

Research Into Mental Illness -- Rats

In the treatment of mental illness, they have figured out that leeches don't work.  They think chemicals might. They just haven't figured out which ones.  They are working on it.  They have lab rats, rattus norvegicus to be specific, who do the heavy lifting in this Chemistry Experiment.  Some people question the ethics of what gets done to these poor rattus norvegicuses who participate with not a single informed consent form in sight.  But that not only is another post, it is another blog.