CHICAGO, IL – The American Association of Physical Exam Tools & Instruments (AAPETI) has announced that penlights are officially extinct, Gomerblog reports.
“It is with both sadness and relief that we declare penlights dead and gone,” said AAPETI President Dr. Dexter Radcliffe. “We want to say a heartfelt thank you to penlights for their contribution to modern medicine, which isn’t much frankly.”
Penlights faded into the background with the advent of smart phones. As health care professionals regularly used the flashlight function on their Androids or iPhones, penlights stopped reproducing. Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest applied, and penlights rapidly disappeared into obscurity.
“Good riddance,” one hospitalist told Gomerblog. “Every time I bought a new penlight it would die after two uses, if I didn’t flat out lose them. Those things were useless.”
A penlight was last spotted in the hands of an “old-school” neurologist back on April 9, 2017. Interestingly enough, that was also the same day a head mirror was last seen (spotted on top of a rounding otolaryngologist’s head). Head mirrors have been on the AAPETI near-extinct watchlist since January 9, 2019.
