By the way...

You may find yourself asking, "What's a medical student doing drooling over basic molecular biology papers."

Well, I'm a little MeST uP. (Pronounced "messed up").

You may find yourself asking, "What does that mean?" This is the short of it - an MD takes 4 years. A PhD in biology should, according to NIH, take 4 years. An MD/PhD takes (about) 8 years. At the end of this time you walk out with two doctorates.*

You may find yourself asking, "What can one do with an MD and a PhD?" The answer is this: Anything you fricking want. Seriously - you want to practice, go practice. You want to teach, go teach. You want to do research, of any kind, do so. You want to do some kind of bizarre hybrid in an effort to make all the years sunk into your degrees pay off? Go for it (It's difficult to do this well, but not unheard of).

*They take this very seriously at my institution. When you defend your PhD thesis, you do a hooding ceremony, graduation, parents come out, blah blah blah. When you graduate from Med school, you do a hooding ceremony, graduation, parents come out, blah blah blah. No requirements for either degree are waved. The idea is that we actually are earning two degrees, not two chunks of degree.