Medical students spend countless hours learning about disease and the bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites that cause it. As they transition from the classroom to the hospital wards in their third year, the students finally get to put this knowledge to good use with patients.
It’s a heavy responsibility—so heavy that a pair of second-year students at Albert Einstein College of Medicine felt some light-heartedness was in order. They asked their classmates: “If you could be any disease, what would you be and why?”
The answers are amusing, irreverent and even a bit bawdy.
But the responses also provide serious insight into how students view the organisms they spend so much time contemplating. After all, what better way to fight a potentially deadly enemy than to try and get inside its head? Clearly some of these students have given it a great deal of thought.
Here’s a clip with some of the best answers:
