Tag Archives: Health Care

Home Engineering: Dialysis machine

A baby dying from kidney failure was saved when her doctor designed and built her a dialysis machine from scratch in his garage.
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The job of the kidneys is to ‘clean’ the blood, and if they fail, a dialysis machine can do this job instead.
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However, Dr Coulthard, together with senior children’s kidney nurse Jean Crosier, devised a smaller version, then built it away from the hospital. Millie was connected to the machine over a seven day period, allowing her own kidneys to recover.

Rebecca, from Middlesbrough, said: “It was a green metal box with a few paint marks on it with quite a few wires coming out of it into my daughter – it didn’t look like a normal NHS one.
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The machine is still in use, helping babies in similar circumstances to Millie, but Dr Coulthard told the Newcastle Journal newspaper that an official version was needed. “This machine is only being used on the tiniest, earliest babies where there is nothing else that can be done.

“But if we had a machine that we could use much more freely, then we would be able to deal with many more babies and have a much greater chance of saving lives.”

How Prozac Sent Science Inquiry Off Track

I post often on examples of scientific inquiry in action. I think it is an important way to see how science works while searching for answers. The process is not a simple one, but after a solution is found it can often be presented as obvious. But while trying to find answers it is quite difficult.

How Prozac sent the science of depression in the wrong direction

But the success of Prozac hasn’t simply transformed the treatment of depression: it has also transformed the science of depression. For decades, researchers struggled to identify the underlying cause of depression, and patients were forced to endure a series of ineffective treatments. But then came Prozac. Like many other antidepressants, Prozac increases the brain’s supply of serotonin, a neurotransmitter. The drug’s effectiveness inspired an elegant theory, known as the chemical hypothesis: Sadness is simply a lack of chemical happiness. The little blue pills cheer us up because they give the brain what it has been missing.

There’s only one problem with this theory of depression: it’s almost certainly wrong, or at the very least woefully incomplete. Experiments have since shown that lowering people’s serotonin levels does not make them depressed, nor does it does not make them depressed, nor does it worsen their symptoms if they are already depressed.
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In this sense, Prozac is simply a bottled version of other activities that have a similar effect, such as physical exercise.
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It is jarring to think of depression in terms of atrophied brain cells, rather than an altered emotional state. It is called “depression,” after all. Yet these scientists argue that the name conceals the fundamental nature of the illness, in which the building blocks of the brain – neurons – start to crumble. This leads, over time, to the shrinking of certain brain structures, like the hippocampus, which the brain needs to function normally.

Pesticide Laced Fertiliser Ruins Gardens

Home-grown veg ruined by toxic fertiliser

Aminopyralid, which is found in several Dow products, the most popular being Forefront, a herbicide, is not licensed to be used on food crops and carries a label warning farmers using it not to sell manure that might contain residue to gardeners. The Pesticides Safety Directorate, which has issued a regulatory update on the weedkiller, is taking samples from affected plants for testing.

Problems with the herbicide emerged late last year, when some commercial potato growers reported damaged crops. In response, Dow launched a campaign within the agriculture industry to ensure that farmers were aware of how the products should be used. Nevertheless, the herbicide has now entered the food chain. Those affected are demanding an investigation and a ban on the product. They say they have been given no definitive answer as to whether other produce on their gardens and allotments is safe to eat.

It appears that the contamination came from grass treated 12 months ago. Experts say the grass was probably made into silage, then fed to cattle during the winter months. The herbicide remained present in the silage, passed through the animal and into manure that was later sold. Horses fed on hay that had been treated could also be a channel.

Plastic Balls for the Resevoir

photo of Los Angeles resevoir

This photo looks like a April fools joke but I think it is real. Los Angeles Drops 400,000 Balls in Reservoir to Fight Suspected Carcinogen

So why deploy these balls — which are typically used by airports to prevent bird congregation on runways — in particular? Some of the other alternatives, such as a large tarp or metal cover, were considered too costly or impractical. The balls, on the other hand, are (relatively) cheap — costing 40 cents each — and are safe for drinking water; black is also the only color able to deflect UV rays.

The DWP has ordered 6.5 million of these balls, 3 million of which it plans on using to blanket the Ivanhoe and Elysian reservoirs. So, yeah, this probably isn’t the best solution for the city’s water woes but, given the circumstances, maybe the only “realistic” option in the short-term.

Los Angeles Department of Water and Power drops 400,000 balls onto Ivanhoe Reservoir:

The water needs to be shaded because when sunlight mixes with the bromide and chlorine in Ivanhoe’s water, the carcinogen bromate forms, said Pankaj Parekh, DWP’s director for water quality compliance. Bromide is naturally present in groundwater and chlorine is used to kill bacteria, he said, but sunlight is the final ingredient in the potentially harmful mix.

Photo by (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

Call me a bit skeptical. Adding a huge number of plastic balls to a water supply in order to try and prevent a chemical reaction caused by added chemicals and sunlight seems a bit crazy to me. But who know maybe it is a good idea.

Big Fat Lie

Big fat lie

‘I got actively attacked, but I guess I had to be,’ Taubes says. ‘What are the chances of writing an article that says the entire medical establishment is wrong, and them going, ” Good point, thank you, Gary. Can we give you an award?” When people challenge the establishment, 99.9 per cent of the time they are wrong. If I was writing about me, I’d begin from the assumption that I am both wrong and a quack.’

At least he is right on this. You challenge the accepted scientific understanding and this is what will happen. But if the evidence is there scientists will be won over by the evidence over time.

‘Reading the research was a reawakening for me,’ he says. ‘I did all the things that the rest of us did. I ate a low-fat diet, went to the gym and was getting heavier anyway. But once you flip your way of thinking about it, it seems so absurd: the idea that what you put in minus what you expend equals how fat you are. Our bodies don’t work like a car. We are not thermodynamic black boxes; we are biological organisms and we have evolved complex systems of hormones and enzymes and proteins. That’s how we are regulated.’

The obesity epidemic began in America during the late 1970s, which is also when the low-fat, high-carb diet-and-exercise revolution began. ‘You have a starting point,’ says Taubes. ‘The question is what is causing it? Then I realised that we were first told to eat less fat in the late 1970s, and, if you eat less fat, you start to eat more carbohydrates – it’s a trade-off.’

The whole healthy eating debate is sure not easy to figure out. But I think some things are clear. Eating too many calories and not exercising enough are problems. And it also makes sense that it is not only the number of calories that matter but what type. We are biological beings and how we process food is not just by a count of the calories. It seems the evidence of bad effects of too much carbohydrates is growing.

It also makes perfect sense that our bodies evolved to store energy for worse times (and some of us have bodies better at doing that). Now we are in a new environment where (at least for many people alive today) finding enough calories is not going to be a problem so it would be nice if we could tell our bodies to get less efficient at storing fat for bad times ahead. But we can’t so we need to take actions to remain healthy given the how our body reacts to what we eat and do. And it seems one of those actions might mean we have to eat less than we might want to.

Robotic Prosthetic Arms for People

Dean Kamen latest invention was funded by DARPA. Once again he is doing amazing stuff. It is great what engineers can do (many worked together to get the progress so far) when given the opportunity. We need many more such efforts.

Dean Kamen Lends a Hand, or Two (August 2007):

DARPA has spent almost $25 million funding two independent teams, Mr. Kamen’s DEKA Research & Development Corp. and a group at Johns Hopkins’ University in an effort they hope will ultimately lead to commercial prosthesis that can be controlled from the human brain.

The innovation in the DEKA arm lies in its ultra light weight carbon shell, giving the user an exoskeleton with which to gain the leverage necessary to do some of the extraordinary things the system makes possible, such as lifting a 40 lb. weight.

To make the system function, the DEKA engineers coated the inside of the shell with a mosaic of thin air bladders that can be individually filled with air to offer padding and rigidity necessary to make possible normally ordinary tasks such as operating a portable power drill. When the arm is not in use the system deflates, or can even alternately fill and empty to offer a massage effect, so that it is not painful to wear for long periods.

The DEKA system is controlled by a joystick that is moved by the remaining portion of the user’s arm and by a second control mechanism in the user’s shoe. Mr. Kamen said that despite the complexity of controlling an ensemble of motors and mechanical servo devices, a user can gain basic functional control in just one day.

Learning from Leprosy Diagnosis

A Scary Diagnosis Hits Home

The diagnosis that ultimately resulted — leprosy — turned the Blanchards’ world upside down and rippled through the lives of many people they knew or had contact with. It also raised issues that are often confronted when any contagious disease is diagnosed, particularly one with scary connotations: What precautions should be taken to protect the rights of the affected individual as well as the health of the community?
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For the Blanchards, some of the answers lay almost literally in their back yard. Baton Rouge is home to the National Hansen’s Disease (Leprosy) Clinical Center, part of the U.S. Public Health Service.
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About 300,000 new cases of leprosy are diagnosed annually, according to the World Health Organization. Now known as Hansen’s disease, after the Norwegian scientist who discovered the mycobacterium that causes the illness, it affects about 2 million to 3 million people worldwide.

Where it is left untreated, Hansen’s disease is a leading cause of disability and devastating deformity. It remains endemic in Bangladesh, India, Brazil and elsewhere. In the United States, roughly 6,000 people have the disease. One hundred to two hundred new cases are reported annually, and, like BB Blanchard, about two dozen of those new patients have never been beyond U.S. borders.
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How transmission occurs is a mystery. Humans and the armadillo are the only two creatures known to get the disease. No one knows where the microbe hides in nature, although the suspicion is that the leprosy mycobacterium may be airborne like its bacterial cousin, tuberculosis.

Most people think of leprosy as a skin disease. But the rash that BB Blanchard had and the disfiguring lesions often associated with it are just a symptom. The mycobacteria burrow into nerves, where they often remain undetected for years or even decades.

Breastfeeding Linked to More Intelligent Kids

McGill study links breastfeeding to increased intelligence

The largest randomized study of breastfeeding ever (14,000 children for 6.5 years) conducted reports that breastfeeding raises children’s IQs and improves their academic performance, a McGill researcher and his team have found.

“Our study provides the strongest evidence to date that prolonged and exclusive breastfeeding makes kids smarter,” said Kramer, a Professor of Pediatrics and of Epidemiology & Biostatistics in the McGill University Faculty of Medicine and lead investigator in the study.

Kramer and his colleagues evaluated the children in 31 Belarusian hospitals and clinics. Half the mothers were exposed to an intervention that encouraged prolonged and exclusive breastfeeding. The remaining half continued their usual maternity hospital and outpatient pediatric care and follow-up. This allowed the researchers to measure the effect of breastfeeding on the children’s cognitive development without the results being biased by differences in factors such as the mother’s intelligence or her way of interacting with her baby.

The children’s cognitive ability was assessed by IQ tests administered by the children’s pediatricians and by their teachers’ ratings of their academic performance in reading, writing, mathematics and other subjects. Both sets of measures were significantly higher in the group randomized to the breastfeeding promotion intervention.

“The effect of breastfeeding on brain development and intelligence has long been a popular and hotly debated topic,” says Dr. Kramer. “While most studies have been based on association, however, we can now make a causal inference between breastfeeding and intelligence – because of the randomized design of our study.”

Fat Cell Count Set in Childhood

Fat cell number is set in childhood and stays constant in adulthood

As fat people have an abundance of fat tissue, the natural assumption is that fat people have more fat cells, or ‘adipocytes’. That’s only part of the story – it turns out that overweight and obese people not only have a surplus of fat cells, they have larger ones too.
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During adulthood, about 8% of fat cells die every year only to be replaced by new ones. As a result, adults have a constant number of fat cells, even those who lose masses of weight. Instead, it’s changes in the volume of fat cells that causes body weight to rise and fall.
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we couldn’t have a clearer indication of the importance of childhood as a window for preventing obesity and the chronic diseases affected by it – cancer, heart disease, diabetes and more.

The message is especially stark following the recent Foresight report, which estimated that if current trends are left unchecked, by 2050 a quarter of all UK children under the age of 16 will be obese. The knowledge that their fat cell count will then be set for life makes the cost of inaction even higher. Fortunately, it seems that the UK Government is taking appropriate steps and recently pledged over a third of a billion pounds on a concerted strategy to tackle childhood obesity.

High Fructose Corn Syrup is Not Natural Food

HFCS is not ‘natural’, says FDA

Products containing high fructose corn syrup cannot be considered ‘natural’ and should not be labeled as such, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has said.
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Industry group Sugar Association, as well as consumer groups such as the Center for Science in the Public Interest categorically maintain that HFCS cannot be considered natural because its chemical bonds are broken and rearranged in the manufacturing process. The debate raged on for one simple reason: FDA does not define the term ‘natural’, and it has therefore been left open to different interpretations.

However, in response to an inquiry from FoodNavigator-USA.com, the regulatory agency examined the composition of HFCS, which it said is produced using synthetic fixing agents. “Consequently, we would object to the use of the term ‘natural’ on a product containing HFCS,” the agency’s Geraldine June said in an e-mail to FoodNavigator-USA.com. June is Supervisor of the Product Evaluation and Labeling team at FDA’s Office of Nutrition, Labeling and Dietary Supplements.

High fructose corn syrup is also high on the list of problem foods from a health perspective.