Tag Archives | Medicine

What It’s Like Living Without The Ability To Feel Pain

By JacobSloan on July 18, 2012 in News 4

A reminder that suffering has its purpose? 31-year-old Steven Pete was born with congenital analgesia – a rare genetic disorder rendering him unable to experience pain, though he has a sense of touch. Via the BBC, he explains that life without pain is a curse:

Steven Pete and his brother were born with the rare genetic disorder congenital analgesia. They grew up – in Washington state – with a sense of touch but, as he explains in his own words, without ever feeling pain.

It first became apparent to my parents that something was wrong when I was four or five months old. I began chewing on my tongue while teething. They took me to a paediatrician where I underwent a series of tests.

During my early childhood I was absent from school a lot due to injury and illness. There was one time, at the roller-skating rink. I can’t recall all of the details, but I know that I broke my leg.

… Read the rest

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International Body Harvesting Network Uncovered In Ukraine

By JacobSloan on July 18, 2012 in News 2

Transplanted body parts could save your eyesight, your smile, your ability to walk … but the question is from where they were taken. The Sydney Morning Herald peeks inside a booming new business:

“Two ribs, two Achilles heels, two elbows, two eardrums, two teeth, and so on” … On February 24, Ukrainian authorities made an alarming discovery: bones and other human tissues crammed into coolers in a grimy white minibus. Investigators grew even more intrigued when they found, amid the body parts, envelopes stuffed with cash and autopsy results written in English.

[It] was not the work of a serial killer but part of an international pipeline of ingredients for medical and dental products that are routinely implanted into people around the world … the remains of dead Ukrainians were destined for a factory in Germany belonging to the subsidiary of a US medical products company, Florida-based RTI Biologics.

RTI is one of a growing industry of companies that make profits by turning mortal remains into everything from dental implants to bladder slings to wrinkle cures.

… Read the rest

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Invention Makes It Possible To Live Without Breathing

By JacobSloan on June 29, 2012 in News 1

We’ve breathed the same old way for far too long — it was high time for an update. Initially, it will be an emergency medical solution, but perhaps someday a workaround for living in a hopelessly polluted world. Via Unexplained Mysteries:

Scientists have invented particles able to keep a person alive even if they are unable to breathe. The breakthrough treatment works by oxygenating the blood through an injection that can keep someone alive for up to 30 minutes even if they are unable to breath at all and could save thousands of lives. The injected particles contain oxygen within a layer of natural molecules known as lipids.

Previous attempts at developing a treatment of this nature had failed because the injections caused a gas embolism rather than oxygenation of the cells. ”We have engineered around this problem by packaging the gas into small, deformable particles,” said scientist John Kheir.

… Read the rest

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How Psychedelic Drugs Can Help Patients Face Death

By majestic on April 24, 2012 in News 7

The return of psychedelics to the medical arsenal seems to be well under way. Lauren Slater writes for the New York Times Magazine about Charles Grob, “a psychiatrist and researcher at Harbor-U.C.L.A. Medical Center who was administering psilocybin — an active component of magic mushrooms — to end-stage cancer patients to see if it could reduce their fear of death”:

…When the research was completed in 2008 — (and published in the Archives of General Psychiatry last year) — the results showed that administering psilocybin to terminally ill subjects could be done safely while reducing the subjects’ anxiety and depression about their impending deaths.

Grob’s interest in the power of psychedelics to mitigate mortality’s sting is not just the obsession of one lone researcher. Dr. John Halpern, head of the Laboratory for Integrative Psychiatry at McLean Hospital in Belmont Mass., a psychiatric training hospital for Harvard Medical School, used MDMA — also known as ecstasy — in an effort to ease end-of-life anxieties in two patients with Stage 4 cancer.

… Read the rest

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Why Some Civil War Soldiers Glowed in the Dark

By Join Or DIE on April 6, 2012 in News 4

Matt Soniak writes on Mental Floss:

By the spring of 1862, a year into the American Civil War, Major General Ulysses S. Grant had pushed deep into Confederate territory along the Tennessee River. In early April, he was camped at Pittsburg Landing, near Shiloh, Tennessee, waiting for Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell’s army to meet up with him.

On the morning of April 6, Confederate troops based out of nearby Corinth, Mississippi, launched a surprise offensive against Grant’s troops, hoping to defeat them before the second army arrived. Grant’s men, augmented by the first arrivals from the Ohio, managed to hold some ground, though, and establish a battle line anchored with artillery. Fighting continued until after dark, and by the next morning, the full force of the Ohio had arrived and the Union outnumbered the Confederates by more than 10,000.

The Union troops began forcing the Confederates back, and while a counterattack stopped their advance it did not break their line.

… Read the rest

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Cheney Heart Pump in High Demand

By HAL9000 on March 27, 2012 in News 9

Reports Katie Moisse on ABC News:

The pump that kept Dick Cheney’s blood flowing while he waited for a heart transplant has seen a surge in popularity, a trend credited in part to the 71-year-old’s successful 20-month stretch with the device.

“The reality is that many patients have come to us asking about the ‘Cheney pump,’” said Dr. Robert Kormos, director of the Artificial Heart Program at the University of Pittsburgh, referring to the Left Ventricular Assist Device or LVAD that pumped Cheney’s blood on behalf of his failing heart. “His positive presentation while on the device has very much been positive for the public impression of the therapy.”

For Cheney, the Left Ventricular Assist Device or LVAD was a bridge therapy, a temporary fix while the former vice president climbed a lengthy transplant waiting list. Cheney received his new heart Saturday at a hospital in Falls Church, Va. But for some patients, the device is a long-term solution to heart failure, a condition that kills 300,000 Americans each year …

Dutch Man Laughs At Anything After Hip Surgery

By bluemana on March 21, 2012 in News 8

We all can learn from this (be sure to have CC on for subtitles for the video). Via CBS News:

Huug Bosse underwent hip surgery two years ago and now can’t stop cracking up no matter how hard he tries. “It appears that due to the operation, due to the anesthesia, he was laughing more,” Bosse’s wife told the Dutch TV show Man Bijt Hond. “When you are having a discussion and all he does is laughing, then it gets annoying.”

Can this bizarre behavior be explained by a medical condition?

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How Corporations Corrupt Science At The Public’s Expense

By JacobSloan on March 12, 2012 in News 7

The Union of Concerned Scientists explains how they do it. To sum up:

Corporations suppress research. (“After pork producers contacted his supervisors, a USDA microbiologist was prevented from publishing research showing that emissions from industrial hog farms contained antibiotic-resistant bacteria.”)

They ghostwrite articles. (“A 2011 analysis found evidence of corporate authorship in research articles on a variety of drugs, including Avandia, Paxil, Tylenol, and Vioxx.”)

They create front organizations. (“The Center for Consumer Freedom is a nonprofit that targets dietary guidelines recommended by the FDA, other government agencies, medical associations, and consumer groups. It was founded with a $600,000 grant from Philip Morris, but has also received funding from Cargill, National Steak and Poultry, Monsanto, and Coca-Cola.”)

They corrupt advisory panels. (“A few weeks before a CDC advisory panel met to discuss federal lead standards, two scientists with ties to the lead industry were added to the panel. The committee voted against tightening standards.”)… Read the rest

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Heart Disease Drug Found To Reduce Racism

By JacobSloan on March 9, 2012 in News 51

A pill to prevent subconscious racism? If only we’d known that it was this easy … the Telegraph reports:

Volunteers given the beta-blocker, used to treat chest pains and lower heart rates, scored lower on a standard psychological test of “implicit” racist attitudes. They appeared to be less racially prejudiced at a subconscious level than another group treated with a “dummy” placebo pill.

Scientists believe the discovery can be explained by the fact that racism is fundamentally founded on fear. Propranolol acts both on nerve circuits that govern automatic functions such as heart rate, and the part of the brain involved in fear and emotional responses.

Experimental psychologist Dr Sylvia Terbeck, from Oxford University, who led the study, said: “Given the key role that such implicit attitudes appear to play in discrimination against other ethnic groups, and the widespread use of propranolol for medical purposes, our findings are also of considerable ethical interest.”

Bird Flu, Pig Flu, Now Bat Flu? This Man is Stunned

By HAL9000 on March 2, 2012 in News 3

Reports the AP via Newsday:

For the first time, scientists have found evidence of flu in bats, reporting a never-before-seen virus whose risk to humans is unclear. The surprising discovery of genetic fragments of a flu virus is the first well-documented report of it in the winged mammals. So far, scientists haven’t been able to grow it, and it’s not clear if — or how well — it spreads.

Flu bugs are common in humans, birds and pigs and have even been seen in dogs, horses, seals and whales, among others. About five years ago, Russian virologists claimed finding flu in bats, but they never offered evidence.

“Most people are fairly convinced we had already discovered flu in all the possible” animals, said Ruben Donis, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scientist who co-authored the new study.

Scientists suspect that some bats caught flu centuries ago and that the virus mutated within the bat population into this new variety.

… Read the rest

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