That’s right, Vicks VapoRub will do to toenail fungus what kryptonite does to the Man of Steel. What Will Muschamp does to offenses throughout the land, but I digress…
According to this piece in the New York Times, rubbing your infected toenail(s) once or twice a day with Vicks VapoRub will em, rub Digger(below) out of your life.
That screen shot is one of the greatest moments in the history of television advertising.
IV Therapy Flash Cards
By Lynn D. Phillips
* Publisher: F. A. Davis Company
* Number Of Pages: 225
* Publication Date: 2009-03-30
* ISBN-10 / ASIN: 0803621418
* ISBN-13 / EAN: 9780803621411
Table of Contents:
Section 1: Infection Control Related to IV Therapy 1–27
Section 2: Fluid, Electrolytes, and Parenteral Solutions 28–55
Section 3: Equipment 56–78
Section 4: Technique/Maintenance Peripheral IVs 79–100
Section 5: Technique/Maintenance Central IVs 101–113
Section 6: Complications 114–136
Section 7: Infusion Modalities 137–146
Section 8: Transfusion Therapy 147–160
Section 9: Nutritional Support 161–165
Section 10: IV Therapy Bonus Cards, Illustration Credits 166–170
Guide to Pronunciation:
Pronunciations are spelled phonetically; pronunciations, diacritical marks (long and short vowels), and
stressses on syllables ( ‘ for primary and ” for secondary) follow Taber’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary.
See “Features and Their Use” in the dictionary for more information.
Getting the Most Out of Your IV Therapy Flash Cards
Purpose of Flash Cards
You’re on your way to mastering IV therapy vocabulary! Using these flash cards will develop
your ability to focus and achieve deep memory learning. They will help you not only learn
the terminology, but they will help you relate those terms to the nursing content you are
studying. It is important to make a connection between the term, its meaning, and how it
functions in the language of nursing. So I designed the flash cards to allow you to see the
word, read the word (out loud is best), use the word, and associate the word with other
related concepts.
How to Use Flash Cards
This set of flash cards is unique because it gives you opportunities to actively associate each
word or phrase with your studies. Here are some strategies I recommend to get the most out
of the time you spend with the cards. But these are not the only ways they can be used; see
if you can think of others that better suit your learning style.
1. Write the word on a separate piece of paper and recite the word out loud.
2. Work with a partner, take turns saying words out loud to each other, and recite their definitions.
Check your achievement by turning over the cards to see if you provided the
correct definitions.
3. Draw a picture of the word on a separate piece of paper if you are having trouble remembering
it. This is called concept mapping—an example is on the back of this card.
4. On the back of each card is a “notes” area that you can use to include associated
concepts from a textbook or lecture. Example:
?Notes: Phlebitis occurs frequently from mechanical or chemical irritation to the vein.
Must anchor IV securely
5. To review for a test, mix up the sections, and use these same strategies as above to test
your understanding of all the words and concepts.
Concept Mapping
Concept mapping is a thinking tool that reflects externally what is going on in your brain.
Each map is unique to the student creating the map. The steps are simple and can be
used for any nursing content.
1. Write the word on a blank piece of paper.
2. Create stems off the word using different colors, and curve the stems leading from the
central word.
Note: The brain connects better with free flowing curves rather than straight lines.
3. Write words on the stems that connect ideas to the center word. (Narrow-tip colored
marking pens work great.)
4. Write one word on each stem and make the stem the length of the word.
5. Draw smaller branches coming off each large stem, again the length of the word you
are going to write, and only one word per branch.
6. Draw pictures if you wish, adding them next to the appropriate stem. Search for images
online or create your own drawings. The brain connects to the word or term through
pictures.
DOWNLOAD LINK: 1506 KB
http://rapidshare.com/files/295750773/0803621418_Therapy_Flash.rar
From the blog Science-Based Medicine comes this charming smack-down of another branch of woo growing out of complimentary and alternative ‘medicine’ (CAM): behavioural optometry. Ever heard of it? Neither had I. But if this is what passes for a practicing doctor from this ‘discipline’ then we’re better off in our ignorance.
Steve Novella writes:
Charlene Werner is getting a lot of attention she probably did not anticipate or desire. She is the star of a YouTube video in which she explains the scientific basis of homeopathy. Before you watch it, make sure you are sitting down, relax, and brace yourself for an onslaught of profound scientific illiteracy combined with stunning arrogance. For those with more delicate constitutions I will give you the quick summary:
Einstein taught us that energy equals matter and light, but because matter can be condensed down to a very small space if you remove all the empty space between the elementary particles (I am paraphrasing to make her statements minimally coherent), we can mostly ignore matter. Therefore energy is light, and we are all made of energy – not matter (or at least so little matter, you can ignore it). Stephen Hawking then came up with string theory, which tells us that all matter (which we can ignore) is made of vibrating strings. Therefore we are made of vibrating energy. All diseases are therefore caused by unhealthy vibrational states, and all disease can be treated by returning the body to a previous healthy vibrational state. This can be done with homeopathy, which extracts the vibrational energy out of stuff and places it in a small pill that can be used at any time.
Supernatural — of or relating to an order of existence beyond the visible observable universe; especially of or relating to God or a god, demigod, spirit, or devil (Merriam-Webster)
New Gilroy Dispatch columnist Erika Mailman (welcome to the club!) recently wrote about her 17th-century ancestor who was twice accused and acquitted of being a witch. With our 21st-century sophistication, we smugly scorn the ignorance and gullibility that allowed our forebears to accept supernatural explanations for mysterious phenomena.
Mailman correctly notes that witch hunts aren’t confined to history. She cites present-day witch hunts in Africa, India and Papua New Guinea and looks for motivations, concluding that witch hunts often result from “desperation, as war-torn families found themselves with limited food supplies. If one person is pushed out of the house, there is more food for those doing the accusing.”
Her assessment might be correct in some cases, but it misses the bigger picture: Tolerance of supernatural beliefs allows witch hunters to successfully persecute innocent victims.
If enough people reject supernatural explanations as the utter nonsense that they are, if they demand evidence for assertions, identify and reject fallacies, and think critically, witch hunts will disappear like dodo birds and dinosaurs.
Unfortunately, that’s hard work, so it’s not the way most people operate, even in the savvy 21st century.
Even today, because so many people hold supernatural beliefs and so few are willing to challenge them, we see parents who reject medical care for their children, instead relying on prayer and faith healing.
In a recent case, Wisconsin parents received six-month jail sentences and ten years of probation after their 11-year-old daughter died from untreated diabetes. Insulin, a discovery of rational, science-based western medicine, could have saved her, but these Christians chose their supernatural beliefs at the cost of their daughter’s life. The New York Times reports that 50 similar convictions have occurred in the United States since 1982.
Even today, because so many people hold supernatural beliefs and so few are willing to challenge them, we see people remaining in a sweat lodge to the point of physical illness, coma and death in pursuit of spiritual enlightenment promised by a New Age guru.
Even today, because so many people hold supernatural beliefs and so few are willing to challenge them, millions suffer and die from AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases due to pronouncements from the Pope, acting as the allegedly infallible spokesperson for his religion’s supernatural being, that forbid condom use.
I’ve long argued that religion (that is, belief in the supernatural) must not be exempt from rational criticism. You’re welcome to guide your own behavior by whatever beliefs you want, but you are not welcome to affect my behavior, the health and safety of others, or public policy based on your faith.
If your supernatural belief (that is, religion) demands that you shun physician-assisted suicide, by all means, comply. But if you want to ban physician-assisted suicide for others, you need rational, logical, non-faith-based arguments to support your position.
If your supernatural belief tells you that same-sex marriage is wrong, then, please, don’t ever marry someone of the same gender. But if you want to ban same-sex marriage for others, you need rational, logical, non-faith-based arguments to support your position.
If your supernatural belief tells you to shun medical care and rely instead on prayer and faith, you’re welcome to make that decision for yourself. But if you prevent your sick children from seeing doctors, be prepared to face criminal prosecution and loss of custody when your prayers and faith fail to heal them.
If your supernatural belief tells you to abide by the ten commandments or the tenets of Shariah law, feel free to subject yourself to them. But if you want to post them in taxpayer-funded facilities, think again. Our Founding Fathers wisely put the concept (yes, not the words, but most definitely the concept) of separation of church and state in the First Amendment so that no one’s supernatural beliefs can trump our constitutional rights and responsibilities.
Until we get to the place where supernatural beliefs — whether they’re held by members of mainstream organized religions or fringe sects — are only tolerated in private, and where behaviors that affect others and public policies are guided by reason, logic and critical thinking, we’re not as far removed from our witch-hunting ancestors as we might think.
That’s the truly frightening realization that the pretend supernatural beings — the ghosts, zombies, vampires and witches — who ring your doorbell this weekend should trigger.
There are days when we wish we had all the answers, and knew exactly where we are headed. Do people join medicine for the love of money or for the love of curing people. Lately, I have started to wonder. Are we just a number in their office and I do not mean a call number but a dollar number. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a medical system that looked at a person WHOLEistically….
I am sure there are lots of people out there like me…who are frustrated more than anything about getting the run around from one place to another and from one doctor to another. Is that really the solution? Don’t they think that all these symptoms might really be a way of a persons body reacting to one thing…and maybe there is one answer. The human body is a very complex yet smart creation. It has a way of telling you that somethings not right..and our job is to figure it out. The doctors easy solution lies in looking at your body in pieces and ignoring the whole. They would rather move you along..its kind of like the game I played of pass the parcel when I was little. Except in this case I am the parcel…
And when they have exhausted their time with you(which could be a whole 10 minutes) they do proceed to tell you that its probably all in your head. I know the human mind is an amazing thing with very powerful characteristics…but can you actually simulate physical signs? Maybe they want us to believe in the power of the secret and if we believe we are okay..we will really be okay! It works..it really does to a certain extent…but then when the underlying factors start flaring up again- you wonder..you really wonder if your mind is not powerful enough! Maybe its not your body that has the problems but your mind.
Well…another day..another round of passing around from here to there. There is not much one can do but face every moment with a smile and say I am strong and I can do this! I will not let people pull me down! Life is too precious a gift to be thrown away! Use the love of the people in your life to stay strong, focused and motivated to find a solution!
I can barely feel the warmth of my chai cup anymore…down to the bottom but never out!! Till tomorrow! Huggs …
A really nice must have for Adult, Family Nurse Practitioners involved in Primary Care Services for Adults.
Product Description
The Tarascon Primary Care Pocketbook, Third Edition is packed with essential lists, figures, and tables concisely covering the full spectrum of primary care medicine, providing instant reminders of hard-to-remember yet vitally important clinical facts for the primary care physician. While it has been designed for the busy family physician, internist, primary care nurse or other health care provider, it is also the perfect succinct resource for specialists who – if necessity – are periodically required to dabble in more general practice issues. Additionally, this pocketbook is the ideal guide for trainees on ambulatory rotations. Tarascon Primary Care Pocketbook is meticulously referenced and has been peer-reviewed by an expert multi-disciplinary editorial board.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Tarascon Primary Care Pocketbook, Third Edition (Paperback)
From the Journal of Health Services and Research Policy comes a paper that examines the principles of evidence-based practice within a host of Complimentary and Alternative bodies of practice (CAM). Their conclusion is that, for the most part, these bodies do not recognize evidence-based practices as essential for their health care offerings. They conclude that this absence ” discloses double standards in UK health care which may compromise patient safety.”
Doctor Steve Novella comments on this paper over at Neurologica Blog:
At least with the organizations named above, there is a lack of dedication to evidence-based practice in their codes of conduct. This, of course, is just one line of evidence and not definitive in and of itself, but it does reflect the broader observation based upon many lines of evidence that there is an inherent lack of respect of scientific evidence within the culture of CAM.
There is a parallel to be drawn with the creationist movement in the US. Creationists today talk about academic freedom, opposing dogma, fairness to those with alternate opinions, teaching the controversy, and including discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of scientific theories in the classroom. Taken in isolation and out of context, each of these points may seem legitimate. But we know what the ultimate purpose of all of this is – to promote a sectarian anti-scientific and overtly religious view of the origins of life at the expense of the quality of science education. The creationists are not fooling anyone with the slightest knowledge of recent history.
In the same way CAM proponents talk about health care freedom, scientific dogma, closed-mindedness, discrimination, respect for local cultures and nature, and broadening our concepts of science and evidence. But in reality this is all a cover, and at the core the CAM movement is all about creating a double standard to shield their preferred ideologically driven modalities from being held to a scientific standard.
From The New York Times
PAULINE W. CHEN, M.D. Published: October 15, 2009One night during my training, long after all the other doctors had fled the hospital, I found a senior surgeon still on the wards working on a patient note. He was a surgeon with extraordinary skill, a doctor of few words whose folksy quips had become the stuff of department legend. “I’m sorry you’re still stuck here,” I said, walking up to him.
He looked up from the chart. “I’m not working tomorrow, so I’m just fine.”
I had just reviewed the next day’s operating room schedule and knew he had a full day of cases. I began to contradict him, but he held his hand up to stop me.
“Time in the O.R.,” he said with a broad grin, “is not work; it’s play.”
For several years my peers and I relished anecdotes like this one because we believed we knew exactly what our mentor had meant. All of us had had the experience of “disappearing” into the meditative world of a procedure and re-emerging not exhausted, but refreshed. The ritual ablutions by the scrub sink washed away the bacteria clinging to our skin and the endless paperwork threatening to choke our enthusiasm. A single rhythmic cardiac monitor replaced the relentless calls of our beepers; and nothing would matter during the long operations except the patient under our knife.
We had entered “the zone.” We were focused on nothing else but our patients and that moment.
But my more recent conversations with surgical colleagues and physicians from other specialties have had a distinctly different timbre. While we continue to deal with many of the same pressures that my mentor dealt with — decreasing autonomy, increasing administrative requirements, less control over our practice environment — the demands on our attention have gone, well, viral.
Extreme multitasking has invaded the patient-doctor relationship.
Click here to read the entire article.
For related Wisdom titles click here.
I admitted my daughter for delivery in a Premier, first corporate Hospital in India, now at Bangalore(Branch Office?)
The ChieF Doctor for Gyn,is looked upon with awe by the other Doctors and support staff of the Hospital,not to speak of the patients.
This gentleman,who is around 50, exudes arrogance to the point of irritating patitents;never allows patients to express their complaints/symptoms;in fact he does not allow patients to sit even;he dismisses them in a few minutes, with routine instructions;if you interrupt for clarification, God save you;in every breath, he shall say’ let Natutre take care’, but prescribe ‘n’ scans;if you ask him whether it is safe to avoid lying on the back in advanced stages of pregnancy(as elders say it may be harmful for the mother, the answer is’shut up,you better listen to these old women’I wonder how his mother deliverd him,definitely not in a speciality Hotel, sorry, Hospital.Derisive to the core of Indian thoughts on Delivery, some of which are accepted by medical science, he dismisses other supporting Doctors/staff’s view, as in when an elderly, experienced Scan Department Head suggested not to scan the baby after birth often, he ridicules him.
He demanded the scan to be done immediately, for he wanted close the file!(We did not do the scan.)
Support staff are afraid to air their views on any subject, including the weather, if you are his patient.
What A Doctor!
As comic relief, one should see the Plaque in the Hospital, which after listing major advancements in Gyn.in the History of Medicine, states,after Caesarian Section, the achievement in the world is”…..Hospital offers world class Prenatal and post natal care in India”
Can you beat it for sheer effrontery?
“The new test used in addition to Leaving Certificate results to select entrants to medical school is a barrier to poorer students becoming doctors, an equality expert has claimed. The Higher Professional Aptitude Test (HPAT) was used for the first time to measure suitability of applicants for medicine degrees and the scores were combined with Leaving Certificate results of all applicants with at least 480 points …” (more)
[Niall Murray, Irish Examiner, 19 October]
The Swine Flu is a Hoax Engineered by Baxter International and Friends
Don’t Take the Vaccine
(I know this sound fucking crazy.
It is.)
Over most of this past year, our media has been filled with hype, fear, and hysteria surrounding the H1N1 virus. We are told that this could become a pandemic of unprecedented proportions, that hundreds of thousands of people could die, and that our only hope is to trust our public health officials, get in line, roll up our sleeves, and take the vaccine. I believe that these three points spewing from the asshole (I’m sorry, mouth) of every corporate television newscaster in the country are fundamentally incorrect and misleading, and that if the public follows these directions massive catastrophe will occur. I realize that to many people this will sound irrational and paranoid, but I believe that there are many facts validating this hypothesis. I will attempt to present them here.
In order to address this supposed “crisis”, let’s turn to a suspiciously similar “crisis” in our recent history. There was a swine flu scare in the 1970’s much like this one, in which there was fear of massive infection spread by some of the media (which was slightly less centralized then) and the government decided that every man, woman and child in the country should get a vaccine. It is a publicly accessible fact that during this last swine flu scare, more people died from the swine flu vaccine than from the swine flu itself. Many otherwise healthy vaccine recipients also suffered (many of them to this day) different kinds of paralysis and neurological damage. Most of these patients have received no compensation from the government, which refuses to recognize or address their condition.
60 Minutes, which had a lot more balls back in those days, ran a show on this in which they interviewed the ex-head of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention which issued the vaccine and asked him if he knew that the vaccine would have these effects. He said he did not. The reporter then went to an ex-employee of this old CDC director, a man named Michael Hatwick whose job it was to understand the side effects of the vaccine. This man told the reporter that he was very familiar with these damaging side effects and that he reported this to his boss. When told that the ex-director denied these claims, Hatwick’s response was “That’s nonsense. I can’t believe that they would say that they did not know that there were neurological illnesses associated with influenza vaccine. That simply is not true. We did know that.” This show aired once on television and was never shown again. Luckily it has surfaced on the internet. If this information is true, if we can trust that 60 minutes thirty three years ago was not run by wackjob paranoid conspiracy theorists but did real, genuine investigative journalism, then we have compelling evidence that the last time around, the government knew that the vaccine was sickening, crippling, and sometimes deadly but gave it to whoever would take it anyway. This has massive implications for the situation today, and I encourage the reader to determine these for themselves.
Baxter International is a health care company based in Deerfield, Illinois. They are a major manufacturer of vaccines, and stand to make massive profits from a H1N1 vaccine if the swine flu continues to spread and cause panic and fear. Sometime last year, Baxter “unintentionally” sent various drug companies samples of the normal flu that also contained the deadly H5N1 or “bird flu” virus. Additionally In the January 2008 issue of Cosmos magazine, Gary Nabel, the Director of the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases admitted that he and fellow scientists were attempting to engineer a pandemic strain of the H5N1 virus. Seeing as the current “swine flu” is actually a combination of the actual swine flu, bird flu, and human flu, it would appear likely that this virus originated in a laboratory and not in the body of a sick pig, and came to be through some kind of collusion between pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies and private and government bioterrorism researchers.
As the media hype spreads and people panic, the solution that the medical, pharmaceutical, and governmental authorities will offer is to take the H1N1 vaccine. Health care workers and soldiers in the army are already being required to take this vaccine in order to keep their jobs. So what is in this vaccine which the last time around killed more people than the flu it supposedly protects against? In addition to ingredients which may be harmless, it contains a variety of harmful chemicals. It contains live H1N1 virus. Batches of vaccine have been proven to contain mercury. It also contains squalene, which has been directly linked to Gulf War Syndrome. The British government sent a confidential letter to neurological doctors regarding the vaccine telling them to watch for a brain disorder called Guillan-Barre syndrome. The US CDC did the same thing a few weeks later. The Czech Republic has refused to offer Baxter’s vaccine to its citizens on safety grounds. Pharmaceutical industries have already in the United States been granted protection from lawsuits about vaccine side effects, which is highly disturbing.
A journalist named Jane Burgermeister has filed criminal charges with the FBI against Baxter International, Avir Green Hills Biotechnology (an Austrian company), the United Nations, the World Health Organization, several banks, and a variety of public officials in the US, including president Barack Obama asserting that this is a conspiracy to commit mass murder. It is unclear as of yet whether anyone at the FBI has taken these charges seriously, but legally they are obliged to investigate if there is evidence.
So what can we do about this frightening situation? We can learn as much about it as we can an spread that information. We can attempt to expose this process, and most importantly, we can choose not to take the H1N1 vaccine and encourage those we know to do the same. This may be difficult as many draconian state and federal laws have been passed in order to coerce people into vaccination. It is not too late to stop this, the information is spreading, many health workers are becoming aware of this crisis, and people are talking and organizing. If we act quickly and correctly, together we can avert this unnatural disaster.
I know this sounds like some crazy paranoid conspiracy theory shit, but you don’t have to believe me. What you can and should do is analyze my sources, find other sources, both independent and corporate (so-called “mainstream”), and come to your own conclusions. I was very wary of believing this theory when I first learned of it, but I came to share its conclusions after doing research. You do your own research, come to your own conclusions, and I suspect you also will find that this is true, but I can’t tell you for sure.
Sources:
Jane Burgermeister’s case
60 minutes on the 1976 scare
H1N1 being born in a lab
:
This above source, cryptogon.com, contains excellent research on this subject that I could not hope to mimic. There are many good links on this subject there.
Vaccine Ingredients:
http://www.infowars.com/nurses-plan-rally-to-protest-mandatory-swine-flu-shot/
(infowars occasionally carries info of a questionable nature, such as assertions that all black blocs are agent provacateurs, but I believe this article (and many others like it) is legitimate.)
http://politicolnews.com/n1h1-vaccine-dangerous/
http://www.naturalnews.com/026717_swine_flu_flu_vaccine_swine_flu_vaccine.html
Some of the information in this essay has come from things I read in the past the sources of which I could not easily remember or access, but I am pretty confident as to its validity.
This article is the sixth in a multi-part series to monitor and explain the swine flu, vaccines, and mind control.
Another recent experience left me floored. My 10-year-old daughter is very bright, but she’s bored in school because she gets her work done before everyone else, then sits there with nothing to do. It’s only a matter of time before she starts getting in trouble, in my opinion, so my husband and I started looking for alternative schooling for her. We found Milton Hershey, a private school that is funded through ownership of 50% of Hershey Chocolate. Milton Hershey has about 1800 students right now. Students are separated by school level and gender, and they live on the campus year-round. The children are allowed to spend five weekends home per year, and up to 6 weeks in the summer. They also provide the kids with all medical and dental care, all clothing for school and play, and require them to participate in at least 2 after school activities. When they graduate, they get a large amount of money for college. This year’s top-level students got $80,000 each towards college.
After going through the somewhat invasive application process and sending all the verification to the school, we were called to come down for an interview. We stayed overnight in a tiny motel at MH’s cost. At 7:45 am, we started the interview process. We filled out questionaires, talked to staff, and our daughter was given some testing, including an IQ test. There were two other families there at the same time, and we were all loaded onto a bus and driven to one of the resident halls. The home we toured was occupied by 8 elementary-aged boys, the youngest of whom was only 4! The house was gorgeous, very clean, and probably the largest house I’ve ever seen in my life. I was impressed!
As we walked along, I noticed how everything was TOO perfect. They have 8 little boys living here, yet NOTHING is out of place anywhere? I only have 2 boys, and I find that to be near impossible (I have 4 girls, also). As we walked into the laundry room, it was explained that the children must do the laundry. Fair enough, but they cycle the chores every two weeks, and I’m trying to figure out how that four-year-old manages to read the instructions on how to do the laundry – and when it’s your chore, you have to wash everyone’s laundry, not just your own. Each item has a printed tag with someone’s name on it so it can all be sorted.
We were led down the hallway to see the bedrooms. These, too, were insanely perfect. The “house mother” told us that they inspect the rooms every day, and nothing is allowed to be out of place. She opened a closet door, then said something about that particular boy leaving an item on the closet floor and not keeping his closet clean. (I saw the closet, it was beautiful with one shirt that seemed to have fallen down from a hangar.)
After that we were led back to the admissions office for some lunch, courtesy of Milton Hershey. The food was tasty, and I’m a very picky eater.
During the tour and lunch, we were accompanied by a young man who said he was a Junior at the school. He was also a student employee working for the admissions staff. While we were eating lunch, I asked him some questions, since I’d rather hear from a student who’s living the life rather than the staff who are paid to tout the school’s horn. The boy’s responses alarmed me. Or perhaps more accurately, his DEMEANOR alarmed me. I had noticed that he did not speak unless spoken to, and his answers to anything were brief and to the point. He never answered more than was asked, and once he finished speaking, his eyes returned to the floor. He did look us in the eyes when speaking, but only when speaking. He seemed uncomfortable, although he was kind, friendly, and knowledgable.
One of the medical staff had handed me forms to sign for my daughter’s medical care, if she was accepted to the school. I was fine with all of it, until I got to the vaccine consent form. Milton Hershey requires all students to recieve all available vaccines the entire time the are enrolled. The woman gave me the “fact sheets” that the doctor gives out, including all the ones my daughter has already had, plus one for Hepatitis A, HPV, yearly flu shots, and YES the swine flu shot! At that point I was having major reservations, so I asked if all the staff must also get every shot. I was told no, the staff is not required, just the students, and I said I was not sure I could sign that consent form in good conscience, but my husband and I would discuss it.
A few days later, I left two messages – one for the woman in the medical department, and one for our admissions advisor. Then I waited. And waited. And waited. Finally, someone called me back. My question was whether the religious exemption would be acceptable in leiu of consenting to the vaccines. I was told that since Milton Hershey is not a public school, they are not required to accept any exemptions. I asked what they would do if a child had an egg allergy, and the response was that none of the children have had an egg allergy, but certification from a medical doctor would be accepted, and that child wouldn’t get the flu shot. But all the other ones stand.
Oy vay. I again said that my husband and I would need to discuss this, but that I didn’t think we would be able to consent.
Now we have to decide between giving our daughter an unbelievable education and all the things she needs to be successful, including college, or keeping her home and finding another alternative means of educating her. We’re not opposed to our children working hard for what they get, but this seemed so good! Too good to be true.
Go to Part 7.
Previous Articles:
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5
Came across a thought-provoking (and sad) entry on the Get Religion blog , which is the place to go when you want to find out / discuss why newspeople can’t seem to report religion issues accurately…if they even report them.
In this post, Elizabeth Eisenstadt Evans ponders the questions being raised in a series of New York Times articles:
Anyone concerned about America’s fertility industry should ponder “21st Century Babies” being posted in installlments on the the New York Times website. Writer Stephanie Saul is doing an excellent job of revealing the moral dilemmas and, frankly, distress and suffering that may occur when potential parents decide to try in-vitro and intrauterine insemination.
As it turns out, the second NYT article in the series has to do with (*ahem*)… ’selective reduction’:
Generally speaking, Saul doesn’t mince words in delineating the awful choices that patients and doctors may have in balancing one life against others. Yet in that context is it is very odd that she places a few religious ideas so deep in her story that they almost seem to play lesser roles. And yet it is likely that they are actually quite important.
Sauls carefully notes that causing the death of some fetuses (any word choice can’t capture this) is “known as” selective reduction. But the pro-life movement, as Sauls comments later in the story, call the same procedure elective abortion. The words “selective reduction” dance in and out of quotes in a way that seems to signal either ambivalance or poor editing. And the fact that this procedure has ethical and religious implications should have been closer to the top.
Read E.E.Evans post–she raises important points regarding the issues vis à vis the ‘reporting job’, and then read the NYT series linked there. I was actually rather impressed with the NYTimes article–having a rather low opinion of the Grey Lady. But oh…did that article make my heart ache.
In our grief and inability to deny ourselves anything, to accept our individual suffering — in this case, fertility problems — we are climbing the Tower of Babylon. What happens when we try to take on God-like decision-making are these horrendous outcomes. For instance–trying at all costs to ‘bring life into this world’ leads to the death of four innocents. And no, this isn’t the same as any miscarriage. Woman was not built to carry 6 children in womb. She is a human, not a cat.
I am continually ashamed at the arrogant ideas of my youth (when I thought the Church wrong on its teachings of birth control, fertility issues, etc.) and equally amazed at the wisdom of the continuous teaching of the Magisterium. Thank you, Christ Jesus for giving us the Mother Church. Holy Spirit, continue to guide and protect her teachings.
God, have mercy on us….for we really don’t seem to know what we are doing.
Three in a casket.
Unless you’re over 50, you probably don’t have much experience with polio. It’s a nasty viral infection, which can in bad cases cause paralysis of legs, arms, and in the worst cases, your whole body. Polio gave us the Iron Lung (for paralyzed victims who otherwise would die of asphyxiation) and the March of Dimes, which started out raising money for polio research.
A vaccine pretty much eliminated polio from the U.S. and most of the developed world in the 1950s. And candy is part of the story.
In the late 1950s, polio researcher Albert Sabin developed a live virus vaccine to protect against polio. The vaccine had to be taken by mouth. The problem was that it was bitter tasting. Adults might swallow it anyway, but the primary intended beneficiaries of the vaccination programs were children. The obvious solution: put it in candy.
As early as 1959, scientists and confectioners in the U.S.S.R. had collaborated to produce a candy that could deliver the live virus. We don’t know what the confection tasted like, but it must have tasted pretty good. Over 1.5 million Russian children were successfully immunized by eating the vaccine candy.
Here in the U.S., Sabin’s live oral vaccine was approved for general use in 1961. Unfortunately, the Russian candy never made it across the ocean; instead, hrough the 1960s, the oral vaccine was administered to millions of adults and children as a sugar cube. The vaccine was effective; poliomyelitis is virtually unknown in the U.S. today.
A 1968 article in the New York Times makes the polio vaccine program sound like a party. “Children Frolic and get ‘Candy’ Polio Vaccine” describes a festive event organized by the NYC Health Department at the George Washington Houses in upper Manhattan. With music, toys, balloons and free orange juice, public health officials hoped to draw in pre-schoolers who had not yet been vaccinated against polio. At the event, each child received sugar cube tinted lilac with two drops of the Sabin live oral polio vaccine. Some kids, loving candy, came back for a second piece.
Too bad every vaccine can’t be candy!
Sources: “Children Frolic and get ‘Candy’ Polio Vaccine” New York Times May 22, 1968; “Polio virus Put in Candy” Science News Letter June 27, 1959: 405; “Polio Vaccine Given in Candy, Soviet Says," New York Times Nov. 26, 1959.
I was browsing a Funny Times magazine yesterday and came across a cartoon on the Health Care Debate. I thought it might be fun for them that’s interested to guess the Month and Year this cartoon was published in the Funny Times.
Submit an entry in the comments section and the first entry with the correct information will win their choice of the following prizes (what’s laying around the house that I can post to you cheaply):
A packet of mixed heirloom and non-hybridized open pollinated seeds for next years garden: tomatoes, okra, squash, cantalope, green-beans, purple peas and green peas. Or a packet of 3 blank note cards bearing images of the flower series by artist Karen Parker. I want thank Lloyd Dangle, cartoonist and let him know that I removed the copyright date for the purposes of this contest. But acknowledge that the copyrights to this work lie with him.
Have fun and always remember: And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack. And you may find yourself in another part of the world. And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile. And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful Wife. And you may ask yourself-well…how did I get here?
Link to Larger Image
Same as it ever was.
I don’t want to talk about vaccines and autism for the same reason I don’t feel like standing up and repeatedly smacking my head against the wall. I would, however, like to pass along the following information about the H1N1 flu vaccine and mercury.
There are three different companies that make H1N1 (swine flu) flu shots. Of those only one, Sanofi Pasteur, has a shot FDA approved for kids less than 4 years old. Sanofi Pasteur makes three different H1N1 flu shots, one of which is FDA approved for kids older than 3, the other two are approved for kids all the way down to 6 months.
Of the 2 Sanofi Pasteur shots approved for kids older than 6 months:
-one is 0.25 mL prefilled syringe (an individually packaged shot) which contains no mercury
-one is 5.0 mL multidose vial (a bottle of vaccine that 10 shots can be drawn out of) which contains 25 micrograms of mercury per shot.
A mercury free H1N1 vaccine is out there for your kiddo if you are so inclined, don’t let any fear mongers tell you otherwise.
CDC website — scroll to the table near the bottom if you want to see for yourself
Posted by Audiegrl
Keith Olbermann and his dad
Keith Olbermann delivered an hour-long “Special Comment” Wednesday night on the urgent need for health care reform. Drawing on his personal experiences with the system, especially the ordeal of his father falling gravely ill and being hospitalized, Olbermann describes a decaying system that is failing to fulfill one of the most important priorities we have as a nation: taking care of our citizens.Free clinic in Los Angeles
At the end of the show, Olbermann states that he is going to demonstrate his support for reform by donating money to help the establishment of free clinics in the capital cities of each of the states of the six senators who are blocking reform.
U.S. Senator Mark Pryor (Democrat-Arkansas)
U.S. Senator Max Baucus (Democrat-Montana)
U.S. Senator Ben Nelson (Democrat-Nebraska)
U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu (Democrat=Louisiana)
In the clip below, Olberman and Nicole Lamoureux of the National Association of Free Clinics, discuss how Americans can show their support for health reform by supporting the NAFC and its efforts to help all Americans without health care. Watch…
more about "keith2", posted with vodpod
In a hour long Special Comment, Olbermann explains how the American health care system is broken, and why it’s so important that the government steps in to fix it. Watch the full hour here.
more about "Keith ", posted with vodpod
National Association of Free Clinics
Embrace the selfless individuals at the National Association of Free Clinics and make a statement in support of health reform. Find out what you can do here.
Why America’s medical industry hates the NHS
The Go Public cancer forum in Ottawa had many high powered, interesting speakers; most of them talked about the prevention of cancer as well as cancer control.
I’ve attended many cancer conferences, and I’ve never heard so much talk about cancer prevention. The figures are amazing; in general they range from 30% to 50%, with someone saying that 95% of cancer is preventable.
Why are so many people dying if we know that cancer can be prevented? Cancer rates are rising not falling – if we continue as we are, then 1 in 2 males and 1 in 3 females will have cancer by 2050. Today most people know someone who has cancer and we are all affected by this; imagine what it will be like when the rates are so much higher. Our thinking has to change if we’re serious about preventing cancer and reducing cancer deaths by half in the next generation.
It’s amazing we haven’t figured this out yet with all the money that goes in to research, but I know the fact that we’re human beings is a big part of the problem. For example, we all know about the foods that are bad for us; but as Dr. Andrew Weil said on the Larry King show, people eat what’s cheap and accessible. It’s easy to expect the health care system to fix the problems we bring on ourselves by over eating bad chemicals in food, and being a nation of people who love the taste of fats, oils, salt and sugar.
Changing habits can be difficult if we’re not committed. I know – I faced my mortality in 1987 with breast, colon and skin cancer. I would be dead by now if I hadn’t made a commitment to get well, and worked hard at improving my diet, exercise, relaxation, and stress levels.
I think one key factor is that I had a coach to help me. I wanted to change, but I didn’t believe I could do it, and I know many people who struggle with the same issue. If people are serious about wanting to change, and they partner with a coach, either a professional or a friend, they can achieve so much more than they can achieve alone.
Preventing cancer involves making healthy choices for what we eat, how we exercise, how long we sleep, and how well we manage our stress levels. These are the main factors, but many other issues are involved. I believe it’s important to let go of what gets in the way of us living a healthy life; the past is over and cannot be undone. We can all start now – right here – right now and go forward to a healthy future where we love ourselves enough to take good care of the mind, body and spirit we were blessed with when we were born.
Take action now so that you and your loved ones will not be surprised with a diagnosis of cancer. Start from here to go forward and find your own way to build a healthy life. The time to act is now!
Die diesjährigen Nobelpreisträger im Bereich Physiologie/Medizin wurden bekannt gegeben. Es handelt sich um Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider und Jack W. Szostak. Die Auszeichnung teilen sie sich für die Aufschlüsselung, wie Chromosomen von Telomeren und dem Enzym Telomerase beschützt werden. Das ist u.a. wichtig für die Krebsforschung, da Telomerase in Krebszellen dafür sorgt, dass diese sich unendlich oft teilen können und so im Körper wuchern. Im Umkehrschluss hängen Telomere mit dem Absterben andere Zellen nach vielen Teilungen zusammen.
Snip von Wikipedia:
Das Enzym stellt die Endstücke der Chromosomen, die so genannten Telomere, wieder her. Bei jeder Zellteilung geht ein Stück (ca. 100 Nukleotide) der Telomere verloren. Die Telomerase verhindert in bestimmten Zellen durch die Wiederherstellung der Telomere, dass die Chromosomen mit jeder Zellteilung kürzer werden und umgeht so das End-Replikationsproblem. Dieses entsteht, da die DNA-Polymerase DNA nach Bindung von Primern von 5′ nach 3′ repliziert. Da die Primer aus RNA bestehen, werden diese nach der Replikation wieder durch eine RNase H aus dem neuen DNA-Strang entfernt und die Lücke mit Hilfe der Polymerase I durch Desoxynukleotiden gefüllt. Die entstandenen Fragmente werden anschließend durch eine DNA-Ligase verknüpft. Da dies an den Enden nicht möglich ist und der Primer nur entfernt wird, geht ein Teil der Information verloren und die Enden werden somit ohne Telomerase bei jeder Replikation verkürzt.
Bis Montag, den 12.10 werden noch die Preise aus den anderen Kategorien vergeben.
Ignorance is no longer just for the blissful, it’s also for the sane.
For those who haven’t read my introductory post, I’m a receptionist at a small family practice clinic. Recently, I seem to lead a double life: one as an under-spoken secretary who knows her place and makes the damn coffee with a smile, the other as a hungry student looking for knowledge and truth that even my most highest authorities have not yet grasped.
I encountered something strange today as I opened my big mouth (something I sometimes do when I foolishly, momentarily believe someone might listen to the girl who answers the phones). Despite my better judgment, I proceeded to tell a nurse about the statistics I have found on the W.H.O website while doing a simple search regarding silver dental fillings and mercury. The response I got was less than favorable as she told me to “calm down, Katie. You don’t want to be like Suzy Johnson.” * She later continued the conversation by telling me I was acting “weird” and “obsessive” – all because I was concerned about one of the world’s leading health organizations admitting people were getting metal poisoning from one of the most common health practices: dental fillings.
Suzy is a patient who belongs in a psych ward much more so than a family doctor, always insisting the air itself is made of nickel and poisons her body. She gets heir hair strands regularly tested. On top of that, she’s a witch.
Now, despite the nurse telling me she was “totally joking,” I know only half of her meant it. My manager is another woman guilty of telling me I read too much and need to stop before I become obsessive. “You read some sad stuff,” she says. “Why don’t you read some Twilight?”
I don’t know when education and knowledge became something to be embarrassed of, but it desperately needs to stop. As a biology student who plans to go into medicine, I’m proud of my desire to know the truth. I’m proud of the amount of books I read, and I’m proud on the energy and time I spend trying to educate myself. I’ll be a better doctor for it. My future patients will be healthier because of it. It isn’t only that I’m not receiving words of encouragement from my co-workers; I’m being torn in the opposite direction and being blatantly told that I’m going overboard. And, of all people, by medical professionals. Medical professionals are telling me to stop reading so much about the medical profession. Isn’t there something wrong with that?
I’m sick of keeping my mouth shut, and the next time my co-worker tells me to put down the books, I won’t be so nice. Ignorance isn’t “cool,” and it should not be accepted by people as the norm, or interpreted as sanity. It’s time people realize that doctors are people just like the rest of us who only repeat what a higher authority deemed as fact. They only know that which they were exposed to, which isn’t always the truth. It’s time we stop putting some of the most toxic elements into our body – completely voluntarily – because our doctor insists it’s okay. You don’t have to have a medical degree to know that putting the most toxic metals into your body isn’t okay, and you don’t have to have passed medical school to be able to grasp that metal’s toxicity. Don’t feel intimidated by the information or the degrees on their walls. Be your own health advocate, because you are smart enough. You are capable of knowing something your doctor doesn’t. It is absolutely possible (as a matter of fact, common place) that your doctor may promote a practice that is hazardous to your health. Let’s keep in mind that although most doctors truly have every intention of supporting your health and overall well-being, they’re just as capable of being gullibly convinced of something that isn’t true as we are. It happens every day.
Don’t take my word for any of this, for Christ’s sake, read! Find information from both sides of the debate and go where your common sense leads you – not where “public opinion” leads you.
* name has been changed.
This really is my last blog. Hardly anybody reads this stuff anymore anyway. I’ll say no more here until I’ve got a finished Constitution for a new state and a renewed people.
So I’ll get on with it.
Today is the anniversary of Orville Wright’s flight to over 1000 feet; another first for the Wrights, and humanity. Comte de Lambert of France beat that record just sixteen days later. From there our machines went further and faster beyond the speed of sound and past the solar system…all within a hundred years. It took thousands of years to go from stone to bronze to steel.
It’s good to recall what engineers and scientists and entrepreneurs have done for our present comforts and longevity in just the past hundred years. Because, too often, politicians take credit for what should be properly attributed to refrigerated food supplies, antibiotics, time/labor-saving devices, and information technology from printing presses to Twitter.
By the work of our finest minds and hands, we should have much more leisure, much more wealth, much more productive and happy lives than we do. But we’re working longer and harder for less and less because we’ve never learned the lessons of I Samuel: 8, and we have, with our hands and minds and votes said, “In Politicians We Trust.”
The terms “conservative” and “liberal” have swapped and morphed and devolved so much that it’s now pointless to discuss what these terms mean today. Ditto the groups we call “Democratic Party” and “Republican Party;” the labels are actually implying the opposite of what they did a hundred years ago. So let’s just throw those labels in the dustbin for a while.
For the past hundred years, despite all the innovation and produce of our age, almost all politics can be boiled down to two key groups asking only two questions:
As far as I can tell, the FMers believe in magic. I’ve spoken to many FMers who actually believe that government can simply print money with no ill effects. And despite what most Republicans would say about themselves, they mostly fall into this group. They believe in political management of economics just as much as the OPMers do, and are more prone to put on blinders of faith and zealotry in defense of the indefensible. (C’mon…how can anybody defend George W Bush, let alone vote for him…twice?)
On the other side, the OPM-addicted want income redistribution because they think they understand human evil, and want to punish it. Rich OPMers know that poor people are fools and don’t know what to do with their money. Poor OPMers know that rich people are evil, and don’t deserve their riches. Both sides are more right than they’d like to believe, as in this case, it takes one to know one. Rich folks are fools if they think that brains and hard work alone got them where they are today; and poor folks are evil in coveting their rich brethren’s wealth.
While the constitutional convention of 1787 was a power grab, and socialism was born in Indiana some nine score and ten years ago, the seeds of our current destruction were actually planted about a hundred years ago, when powerful investment bankers began hatching a plan to take over the nation by turning a previously independent-minded, mistrustful and self-reliant populace into a Rob Peter to Pay Paul, FM versus OPM.tug of war.
And by 1913, it was all fact. Our money was stolen and replaced with “fiat currency” IOUs.
This is why I admire Ludwig von Mises. He wrote this about fiat currency in 1953:
“It is certainly possible to go on for a while in the expansionist routine of deficit spending by borrowing from the commercial banks and supporting the government bond market.
But after some time it will be imperative to stop. Otherwise the public will become alarmed about the future of the dollar’s purchasing power and a panic will follow. As soon as one stops, however, all the unwelcome consequences of the aftermath of inflation will be experienced. The longer the preceding period of expansion has lasted, the more unpleasant those consequences will be.
The attitude of a great many people with regard to inflation is ambivalent. They are aware, on the one hand, of the dangers inherent in a continuation of the policy of pumping more and more money into the economic system. But as soon as anything substantial is done to stop increasing the amount of money, they begin to cry out about high interest rates and bearish conditions on the stock and commodity exchanges. They are loath to relinquish the cherished illusion which ascribes to government and central banks the magic power to make people happy by endless spending and inflation.”
We’ve been inflating the monetary policy bubble at least since 1913, and probably in truth since about 1909, when bankers started to play the market like a fiddle and gain key allies in politics, support for income tax grew wings, and Taft’s list of errors laid the groundwork for Wilson’s victory in 1912.
It will indeed hurt a great deal when we are forced to stop the money presses, and I believe that is about to happen.
But I also must personally eat a little crow.
During the 2000 gubernatorial campaign I’d predicted that we’d get the Great Smack-down within ten years. During the 2008 campaign I’d said that it’d happen by the end of this summer or at least by late fall. But I think I’m wrong.
It’s my opinion that our fiat currency is held aloft by force and intimidation. I’d thought that by now the USA would have been so badly rotted from the inside and indebted to the outside that surely other global powers would’ve pushed us into the dust bin. Maybe I’d underestimated how screwed up other nations really are, and how their own internal rot and debt has sunk all ships of state down into the muck of debt-currency malaise. Maybe I’ve missed some screamingly important facts that elude me still.
But this is good news. Up to now I’ve been depressingly right in the broad brushstrokes of economic and social decay, and in the specifics of timing. But if I’m so off base about the collapse of the dollar, at least in my timing predictions, then maybe there’s hope where I have lately seen none.
Maybe voters aren’t terminally thoughtless and blind after all. Maybe we’ll snap out of our entrancement with the Great Golem of State, and recall how this nation started…and who we once were.
But just as with our nation’s founders, it will take pain. Lots of pain. More than we feel now. Our overly-revered founders had to get shot at and oppressed in ways we can scarcely imagine from our comfortable view of the world.
And that, I am more convinced than ever, is just around the corner.
Prepare.
The IgNobel Prize is a parody of the Nobel Prize and are given each year in early October for ten achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think”. They are organised by by the Harvard-based humour magazine Annals of Improbable Research.[SOURCE]
Here are the winners announced yesterday… there’s some pretty decent bar ammo here. Grab some coffee.. its Friday..practically weekend..enjoy.
VETERINARY MEDICINE PRIZE: Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson of Newcastle University, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK, for showing that cows who have names give more milk than cows that are nameless. REFERENCE: “Exploring Stock Managers’ Perceptions of the Human-Animal Relationship on Dairy Farms and an Association with Milk Production”
PEACE PRIZE: Stephan Bolliger, Steffen Ross, Lars Oesterhelweg, Michael Thali and Beat Kneubuehl of the University of Bern, Switzerland, for determining — by experiment — whether it is better to be smashed over the head with a full bottle of beer or with an empty bottle.
REFERENCE: “Are Full or Empty Beer Bottles Sturdier and Does Their Fracture-Threshold Suffice to Break the Human Skull?”
MEDICINE PRIZE: Donald L. Unger, of Thousand Oaks, California, USA, for investigating a possible cause of arthritis of the fingers, by diligently cracking the knuckles of his left hand — but never cracking the knuckles of his right hand — every day for more than sixty (60) years.
REFERENCE: “Does Knuckle Cracking Lead to Arthritis of the Fingers?”
ECONOMICS PRIZE: The directors, executives, and auditors of four Icelandic banks — Kaupthing Bank, Landsbanki, Glitnir Bank, and Central Bank of Iceland — for demonstrating that tiny banks can be rapidly transformed into huge banks, and vice versa — and for demonstrating that similar things can be done to an entire national economy.
CHEMISTRY PRIZE: Javier Morales, Miguel Apátiga, and Victor M. Castaño of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, for creating diamonds from liquid — specifically from tequila.
REFERENCE: “Growth of Diamond Films from Tequila”
PHYSICS PRIZE: Katherine K. Whitcome of the University of Cincinnati, USA, Daniel E. Lieberman of Harvard University, USA, and Liza J. Shapiro of the University of Texas, USA, for analytically determining why pregnant women don’t tip over.
REFERENCE: “Fetal Load and the Evolution of Lumbar Lordosis in Bipedal Hominins,”
LITERATURE PRIZE: Ireland’s police service (An Garda Siochana), for writing and presenting more than fifty traffic tickets to the most frequent driving offender in the country — Prawo Jazdy — whose name in Polish means “Driving License”.
PUBLIC HEALTH PRIZE: Elena N. Bodnar, Raphael C. Lee, and Sandra Marijan of Chicago, Illinois, USA, for inventing a brassiere that, in an emergency, can be quickly converted into a pair of gas masks, one for the brassiere wearer and one to be given to some needy bystander.
REFERENCE: U.S. patent # 7255627, granted August 14, 2007 for a “Garment Device Convertible to One or More Facemasks.”
MATHEMATICS PRIZE: Gideon Gono, governor of Zimbabwe’s Reserve Bank, for giving people a simple, everyday way to cope with a wide range of numbers — from very small to very big — by having his bank print bank notes with denominations ranging from one cent ($.01) to one hundred trillion dollars ($100,000,000,000,000).
REFERENCE: Zimbabwe’s Casino Economy — Extraordinary Measures for Extraordinary Challenges
BIOLOGY PRIZE: Fumiaki Taguchi, Song Guofu, and Zhang Guanglei of Kitasato University Graduate School of Medical Sciences in Sagamihara, Japan, for demonstrating that kitchen refuse can be reduced more than 90% in mass by using bacteria extracted from the feces of giant pandas.
REFERENCE: “Microbial Treatment of Kitchen Refuse With Enzyme-Producing Thermophilic Bacteria From Giant Panda Feces,”
(A brief intro)
I think we have finally reached the end.
Then again, I could be (and probably am) wrong.
For over a year now, I have been watching the insane antics of diehard Obama supporters, the ones that I call the Kool-Aid Brigade.
It wouldn’t matter what section of the cult that they were associated with, Organizing For America, ACORN, or just your run-of-the-mill everyday liberal loonies.
Each time I would see or hear of some totally outrageous stunt that they had pulled, I would think to myself:
“That’s it.”
“They couldn’t possibly disconnect from reality any further than that.”
Once again, the followers of the Chosen One have proved me wrong.
Years ago, John Lennon raised an uproar when he made a statement to the effect that the Beatles had become more popular than Jesus Christ.
I have always taken that to mean that he was saying that more young people were listening to Beatles…Read the rest of this entry
Artificial hearts were first developed in the 20th century, but they haven’t been practical devices for long-term implantation until just recently. Here’s a story about the first implantation of a promising new type of artificial heart that lacks the pulsation of a real heart: http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_436300.html
This article from 2006 describes some more details of the technology: http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/17523/
It seems that by doing away with the pulse, this artificial heart is able to be significantly simpler, smaller, and more robust than presently approved models. Instead of lasting for about 2 years, it can last for 10. Instead of being too large to fit into most women, it’s small enough to fit in virtually anyone. However, there are worries that the lack of a pulse could cause unforeseen issues in patients…I suppose we’ll see soon enough. Also, when I mentioned it to Matthew, he pointed out that in a disaster a first-responder might classify someone with such a heart as dead due to the lack of pulse.
In any case though, it’s good to see such progress in the development of artificial hearts. An artificial heart that is as good as a real heart would be a real lifesaver. According to the Wikipedia article on heart transplants, there’s need for about 800,000 heart transplants each year, but only about 3,500 that can actually go through each year due to an extreme shortage of donor hearts. Effective artificial hearts could save several million lives in a decade. It might even be able to save more lives than that, as it would be a much easier decision to implant, leading to more cases being considered for implantation, including lost causes and as a preventative measure in less developed cases. It might even be possible to keep such hearts on hand for emergencies, unlike transplants, though transplanting them in an emergency could be difficult. It might also be possible to do detection (or even control) within the artificial heart, so that subtle signs of trouble could be detected by the heart and the patient warned before a catastrophic event, so the patient can get to a hospital and the problem resolved before the heart fails. One last possibility is that a sufficiently small heart transplant could lead to the implantation of redundant hearts, so that a single failure would not necessarily be disastrous.
All of this could lead to longer lives, which is a good thing.
