It has been fascinating the last few years, especially the last two, to witness the exponential knowledge explosion in science and medicine. Much of the technology growth is coming in the area of nanotechnology, or more specific to medicine, nanobiology.

Nanotechnology is a field of applied science that fabricates materials and devices that lie in the range of 100 or so nanometers (billionths of a meter). A couple of years ago I read about "respirocytes" which are mechanical devices intended to duplicate all of the important functions of red blood cells, only several hundred times as efficient. I imagine with a transfusion of them one could hold ones breath under water for an hour or more.

Now researchers at University of Basel, Switzerland are developing a technique to upgrade cell metabolism without genetic alterations, instead using nanoscale plastic packages of enzymes dubbed artificial polymer organelles. Human cells have internal subunit called organelles. These organelles are to a cell what our organs are to our bodies. Depending on what enzymes are in the organelle they can be quite useful for different therapies.


While I love to sun bathe I'll forgo the sunshine diet and keep my meat and potatoes, thankyou.

Some may find this funny, and I suppose that in a way it is. However I have known people with real bad phobias, and no matter how illogical their fears may appear to us, they are very real to them. The only way they can lead a normal life if to face those fears, with professional help if they can't handle it alone.


I don't think McFarren was being truthful about her moving around in the bathroom either. If she had been she wouldn't have been stuck to the toilet seat to the extent her skin had grown around it.

Not that McFarren forced her to stay there, but I'm sure that she was afraid to leave her "safe" area. She could have been afraid of people visiting the house, or maybe some of McFarrens friends visited now and then, and the bathroom is the only place you are not likely to be bothered.

Via Boots & Sabers

What is their connection?

Chemicals that contaminate our food, water, environment and our bodies have been rising. Some of these chemicals are estrogen from birth control pills and hormone replacement therapy.


But think again if you think this is only for the birds.


The saying that "you are what you eat" holds true... whether we know we are eating it matters not.

Huh! *blink*


The Ireland doctors told him there was nothing they could do, but he heard about a miracle operation being performed in England.


Fascinating. He may not have the best sight, but being able to see at all has to be much better than total blindness.

 
Wisconsin presently has the best health care in the country. Doyle as well as many in Wisconsin state government want to change that. Why? Because they are not much interested in improving health care, only universal coverage. Simply saying that everyone has health insurance is meaningless if it isn't quality care. Making health care free (at least for lower income people) is worth many votes at election time.

If really you think universal coverage is good, look at the waiting lines in Canada. Britain has universal coverage too, but almost 900,000 are waiting for admission to NHS hospitals, with the shortage of care the cause of more that 50,000 operations canceled every year. Sweden has universal health care, but if you need heart surgery the wait can take as long as 25 weeks. Universal Health care is substandard health care in any country around the world that has implemented it.

A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2006 found that while many Americans were not getting a high standard of care, whether or not they had insurance was largely unrelated to the quality of care. Which do you think is less expensive, having the cost of treating the poor passed along to us in higher taxes, or the bureaucracy of government managed health care?

Wise up people. Universal health care does not mean universal access. Access to a list IS NOT access to health care. What universal health care access does mean is access to less quality health care, because that kind of care is rationed health care. Maybe while you wait you should consider how much chronic pain you can stand.

Please watch this five and a half minute video clip.


A Short Course in Brain Surgery



It seems that there should be something workable without resorting to government run health care which has been a proven failure. Retail clinics are springing up around the nation, and offering easier access to high-quality care at better prices than hospitals and affiliated clinics.


The problem is that regulations on retail convenient care clinics varies state to state, and many states are trying to at least regulate if not eliminate them. Recently on this forum I posted about Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino trying to block retailers from opening medical clinics inside stores in Massachusetts, contending that making money off of sick people is wrong. I have to wonder if he thinks doctors should work for gratis. The American Medical Association is pushing for government intervention to reduce the spread of retail convenient care clinics.

I guess I have ranted long enough on this, but it really bothers me that people do not understand the dangers of government managed health care.

BMI (brain-machine interface) has reached a new level, that could be great news for the severely handicapped people who cannot contract so much as one single leg or arm muscle.


Great news for paralyzed people and amputees.

Read the rest here. Via Kurzweil.AI

Breakthroughs in medical science are seemingly becoming a daily occurrence. If this one is as good as it looks, it will end a lot of suffering and loss of mobility.


Via Kurzweil.AI

I'm far from being a supporter of Government run health insurance, nor do I think most Americans want it. But if we have to go down that road, this is probably the best plan I have seen.


There are key similarities to the Healthy Wisconsin proposal but with less government involvement.


I don't know that this is the answer, but it is a better proposal than I have seen to date.

H/T to Owen at Boots & Sabers who sees the proposal as "big business" wanting off the hook to reduce expenses that they often have to pass on to employees.

Today the President used his veto on the SCHIP (State Children's Health Insurance Program) legislation. Bush had asked for an additional $5 billion in funding for the program. The bill presented increased funding by $35 billion and included an additional 4 million children. The problem is that the legislation would allow insurance coverage to some families with an income as high as $83,000 annually. Some of the cost for the extra funding was to come from a $0.61 tax increase to $1 a pack tax on cigarettes.


It is just isn't right to include insurance coverage for children from upper middle-class families. Poor families will be paying more taxes to cover children from more wealthy families.

Hell if that is going to make sense, then it would make sense to extend welfare and food stamps to upper middle-class families too. After all, food and a place to live are more important than health insurance, and any emergency treatment cannot be refused anyone including illegal immigrants. [/Sarcasm]

I will concede that health insurance for poor children is a good thing, but we don't need to extend it to families that can afford their own.

Socialized health care is one thing. Health care with mandatory preventative checkups is getting a little too socialist, and far afield of free choice.


So, do you suppose under Edwards plan we would all have to have a mental fitness checkup? Most of us have pretty good idea how fickle the field of psychiatry can be.

Based on information compiled by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Wisconsin ranks number one in the nation. As I reported early in July, the Wisconsin Democrats want to change that. Wisconsin's Democrat controlled Senate wants to raise our taxes by $15 billion (more than we raise from corporate income taxes, sales taxes and income taxes combined) to pay for this experiment of a totally government-run health care system.


This is giving to you with one hand, while taking much more from you with the other hand. Also Wisconsin Senate Democrats want to:

Create the first child care tax deduction in state history, but increase birth certificates fees; double fees to pay child support; create a new fee for those receiving child support.

End the tax on job creation in this state, but make it more expensive to drive to work with a $270 million tax on oil companies that you pay at the pump.

Increase the tax deduction for higher education, but while increasing tuition.

Make all social security 100-percent tax free, while raising property taxes. The median home will be up $400 in this budget cycle, due to a governor Doyle veto.

The federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has ranked Wisconsin number one in the nation for health care quality. The rankings are based on 129 measurements of quality in 4 different care areas.


But the Democrats controlling the Wisconsin legislature want to change that.


If this goes through as planned, those in Wisconsin that can afford it, will be driving to Minnesota or Illinois rather than wait in line for healthcare like Canadians. Canadian healthcare is very good if it wasn't for the wait. It's probably true that those in the US without insurance, get substantially worse care than most Canadians. However the way to fix that isn't by making healthcare service equally poor for everyone.

Update: With the recent Senate passage of the state budget, a proposal to extend health benefits to the domestic partners of all state employees has gone further than it ever has before.

It's also the most comprehensive proposal to date, covering all state employees — not just University of Wisconsin System staff — and municipal employees.

This has passed in the Senate budget, but thankfully it is unlikely in the Republican controlled assembly.

My family is rich in nearsighted vision or myopia.
Myopia is basically the result of the eye getting longer from front to back. It is correctable via the use of concave lenses. My story is that the more intelligent one is, the more nearsighted you are. Science might not back that up but my superior intellect tells me it is so haha.
I was having a hard time focusing on the blackboard in a second grade class. My parents were told and immediately took me to an optometrist.
Annually, I came to know that my glasses were going to have to be increased in strength. With the increase in strength comes lessening of peripheral vision (side vision) and growing “coke bottle bottom glasses”.
Age 13(in 1959), I got contact lenses which gave me normal albeit lens corrected vision. I was always the most nearsighted patient for any eye doctor that I went to. Hard lenses have been on my eyes ever since.
Age 52, I had some bleeding in my retina that healed itself but took part of the field of vision in my left eye. I was told that my retinas were stretched to their limits.
This year in March, age 61, the right eye was getting worse. My doctor noted that my vision with lenses on was now 20/50. He could see no reason for it despite giving me numerous eye scans using the latest scientific machines.
By April it had progressed to 20/200 with my lenses on (lens corrected). The number mattered little as I could no longer see anyone's face much less the big “E”.
They discovered that in the very center of my vision that I had hemorrhaged. A little group of capillaries or blood vessels had formed on the back side of my retina. They were pushing up and distorted my vision plus I was still bleeding.
I shuddered at the news. My cousin's wife Trish had a similar experience a few years back. Although she had enough money to travel long distances and afford the top doctors in America, they were not able to save her vision.
The young doctor is a son of a pioneer in eye care and the head of a prestigious opthalmology department at a Mid-West university. He told me up front that my insurance probably would not pay for the treatment that he was to suggest. Lasers could not help as the offending blood vessel network was hidden on the underside. Lay people believe that lasers work wonders for blind people. The truth is that lasers are a crude tool at the molecular level. They are used for many things but not all.
He wanted to try an eye injection. There were some existing drugs to use. He offered to use new drugs of which there were two to choose from...Avastin and Lucentis. I had heard of these. They were approved as colon cancer meds. He would be using them off label or in another fashion than they were approved for. He said there had success in eye usage but no promises.
He told me the cost of Lucentis was $2000 per shot. I told him to order me the dog and white cane. Continuing on he said the Avastin was $250 per shot and of course I jumped on that one.
One of the great sales techniques is to start high and it is easier to sell the lower priced items. He could have sold me on about anything at that point.
The meds were ordered and I was back in the chair 3 days later. The night before I had dreams about an elaborate sci-fi helmet holding my head to a large granite block to avoid sudden quick movements of my head during excruciating pain. The sci-fi dream also had a suction cup device to hold the eyeball motionless.
What kind of drugs was I on to invent that scenario.
The doctor's assistant liberally swabbed my eye with a combination of disinfectants and numbing solution. After 15 minutes I actually began to look for the helmets and suction cups.
The doctor came in and said look up. He injected the surface with additional pain killing solution. Damn, I didn't feel a thing. A couple minutes later, he said look up again and I felt a little discomfort as a needle went through the inside wall of my eye. A somewhat iridescent swirl that reminded me of a 1960's psychedelic movie briefly appeared in my vision. Doctor said “Well that's it”. It was over in seconds and my fears of futuristic medicine went away. I couldn't believe it was so darn easy. Even if it doesn't work, it will be worth hearing the moans when I tell my squeamish friends. Hehehe
About 5 days later, I began to see some minor improvement. On the sixth, it was even better. I went in for a follow up the next week and enjoyed watching the usually staid retinologist kick up his heels in joy over my improvement.
6 weeks later I received another injection just to make sure. My vision is now 20/30 corrected and distortion is virtually nil.
Thank God this was available when I needed it. Too bad that my now late cousin did not get to have this done.

Dr. Evangelos Michelakis, Assistant Professor, University of Alberta appears to be onto something that kills most cancers including lung, breast and brain cancer cells. It is a fairly safe drug that is cheap to make called dichloroacetate.


Dichloroacetate (DCA) is a product of water chlorination and a metabolite of certain industrial solvents. DCA is not patented which would make it dirt cheap to produce.

Thanks to TallDave's comments over at Dean's World.

It seems that Medical research and the advances in the last 50 years, outstrip advances in other technological fields: Or perhaps they are simply more dramatic, as reported by Roger Highfield, in London.

"Scientists have created a flock of designer hens genetically modified with human genes to lay eggs capable of producing proteins for drugs that fight cancer and other life-threatening diseases."

"Researchers in Edinburgh, Scotland, have produced five generations of birds that are capable of producing high concentrations of potentially life-saving proteins."

Andrew Wood, of Oxford BioMedica, said: "This could lead to treatments for Parkinson's disease, diabetes and a range of cancers."

News Article

My only passing fear is that PETA, (A bandwagon for the mentally afflicted) after discovering these are Designer Chickens, will be riding their "human hating" bandwagon over to Scotland.

Quote for today:

"Choose
The single clenched fist lifted and ready,
Or the open hand held out and waiting.
Choose:
For we meet by one or the other."

Carl Sandberg

Remember the Star Trek medical scanners that were waved about the patient and diagnosis pronounced in just mere seconds? University of Twente researchers in the Netherlands have developed a sensor that is ultrasensitive, and can probably be reduced to a hand held unit. The unit will detect various pathogens and their concentrations (even low concentrations) in minutes. Perhaps a little slower than Dr Crusher's equipment, but its still in development. Current methods detect pathogens after conciderable prep time drawing fluid, mixing chemicals and may take days to get a result. Not very convenient if you have a contagious outbreak.


Medicine is one of the fastest growing areas of our technology. I can't wait to see what arrives in another decade.

Via KurzweilAI.net

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that by the end of this century lifespans will at least double. Not only that but the quality of the later years will be as good or nearly so as youth. The science behind it is not only plausable but quite a bit of it already known. There is little skepticism that the remaining obsticles can not be over come soon. That and some opposition to overcome from partisans of mortality on the extreme right and left.

The left may tout social degeneration due to a huge population sharing limited resources, while some on the right will proclaim the quality of a finite life and a better after life. Therefore many extremists will not welcome the conquest of death.


h/t Lucianne

These advances are just in biotechnology, but we are also making great strides "nanorobotics." The merging of biology and nanorobotics (biorobotics) opens to us every possiblility imaginable from medicine to enhancing human intelligence times thousands. I intend to post more on biorobotics later.

Back in November I reported on the Myth that earing too much cholesterol or saturated fat will cause your blood cholesterol to rise to dangerous levels. It looks like we have another myth touted as fact that for years has had backing of the medical community.

This is the largest study in history to find whether a low-fat diet reduces the risk of getting certain diseases. The findings by this National Institutes of Health study were that the diet has no effect at all.


Medical advice for a healthy life are too often the result of indirect evidence. As one doctor said, "it makes sense to eat well, control weight and get regular exercise." In other words sensable eating, not eating particular foods are the key to health.

Doctors have been telling us all our lives that what we eat will determine whether we will be at risk for certain diseases, but one after another these scientific sanctioned advisories are falling into the myth catagory. Dietary fiber has failed to protect against colon cancer, vitamins thought to protect against cancer have failed to have any effect. It has been shown that there is no connection whatsoever between the cholesterol in food and cholesterol in blood.

For those that believe that either a that low-fat diet, or a low-carbohydrate will help loose weight, niether is supported by this study. As for myself I will take my fathers advice. Enjoy life and do all things in moderation.

Well if you find youself short you may soon be able to just print some new ones.

Strep throat with the fever, headache and the aches that go with it may soon be preventable with a vaccine. Great news for northern state parents were it is one of the most common reasons that children see their pediatricians.