Pathology Michaelmas Term - essay questions.
Because of the time of my teaching there are no planned tutorials during the first 3 weeks of term. The set work therefore consists of 5 essays, plus two to be completed over the Christmas vacation.
The essay titles are listed here so that you can manage your work as flexibly as possible. However, even if you chose to do the reading / preparation work for each essay ahead of the week in which it will be handed in - DO NOT write the essay more than a week ahead, because it is important that you use the feedback from each piece of set work to improve the way in which you work / prepare your essays.
Unless specifically instructed otherwise, you should only spend 45 minutes writing your essays, and you should write them with all source materials and notes put away, and should not refer to them while writing.
Term-time titles:
1. “You are in charge of a biological warfare development group for a well equipped and well financed country. You have so much money that you can construct your bio-weapons from scratch, not simply by making minor modifications to existing organisms. Describe on what basis you would select its virulence determinants, and what properties you would combine (with examples from real pathogens where you can) to create your super weapon. How do you think your new organism will behave once released, and how would you release it?”
(This essay is intended to stimulate considerations of the relationship of the normal physiology as well as virulence determinants of the organism, and also a consideration of the way in which the properties of a pathogen affect it's transmission-colonization cycle.)
2. "How do previously sensitive bacteria change to become resistant to antibiotics?"
3. "What factors contribute to successful and unsuccessful wound healing?"
For this essay, I recommend that you include surgery textbooks and literature in your information gathering. Surgeons have a vested interest in wound healing, particularly plastic surgeons, and they have particularly skills and interests in this area.
4. "How does the innate immune system protect against infection without causing injury to the host?"
5. "What are the main ways in which the innate and adaptive immune systems interact?"
Vacation titles:
1. "What aspects of viral transmission and replication determine their points of vulnerability to treatment and immune responses?"
2. "What are the mechanisms by which infection can lead to the development of cancer?"
Optional 3rd vacation essay title: "What are the roles and differences between oncogenes and tumour suppressor genes?"