medicine

Chris Knight's avatar

My sister is a physical therapist in a hospital that uses Nintendo’s Wii to engage patients in stimulating sports-like activity as part of their regimen. And now another toy of the modern era is finding employment in medicine: Apple’s iPod is helping patients recovering from strokes and suffering from dementia (like that which is symptomatic of Alzheimer’s) to reconnect with memories and emotions…

Listening to rap and reggae on a borrowed iPod every day has helped Everett Dixon, a 28-year-old stroke victim at Beth Abraham Health Services in Bronx, N.Y., learn to walk and use his hands again.

Trevor Gibbons, 52, who fell out of a fourth-floor construction site and suffered a crushed larynx, has become so entranced with music that he’s written 400 songs and cut four CDs.

Ann Povodator, an 85-year-old Alzheimer’s patient in Boynton Beach, Fla., listens to her beloved opera and Yiddish songs every day on

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Chris Knight's avatar

Stem cells hold great promise for medical research, but their use are very controversial because of their primary source: cell lines cultivated from fetal tissue.

But now there may be another route opening up. Researchers have discovered a method for “reprogramming” adult differentiated cells into a condition very much like stem cells. The team, working at Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts and led by Rudolf Jaenisch, detail in the journal Nature how they achieved induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells…

In the first in a series of experiments, the researchers grew individual immune cells, switched on their reprogramming genes and allowed them to continue growing and dividing. The team monitored how quickly the cells divided, and at what stage they began to produce a chemical signal that indicated they had become iPS cells. From time to time, the authors also checked some of the cells to make

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Chris Knight's avatar

Using software he developed and about $10 of standard off-the-shelf parts, a solid-thinkin’ dude named Aydogan Ozcan has converted camera-equipped cellphones into rather powerful microscopes.

When set up with the package, a cellphone like the Samsung model in the photo can image blood cells and bacteria. The phones can then send the data over a wireless network or be connected via USB to laptop computers. The potential for such devices are vast, considering that a doctor equipped with such a cellphone could diagnose malaria or other illnesses in very remote locations. What’s particularly interesting from a technical perspective is that Ozcan’s ‘scope does NOT use lenses for magnification at all! It achieves microscopy by using the phone’s camera to measure the scattering/interference pattern from light-emitting diodes shining on the sample. In other words, the package creates a magnified hologram of the sample being studied.

Very, very cool. Aydogan Ozcan ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

In what has to be one of the more bizarre bits of medical news we’ve heard lately, the blue dye used to give blue M&Ms their color has been found to help mend severe spinal injuries.

Researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York discovered that when tested on laboratory rats, Brilliant Blue G blocks the action of a chemical that causes more damage to neural tissue around an already injured area. Rats with damaged spines who received injections of BBG eventually regained the ability to walk, while those that did not receive the BBG treatment never recovered. The one side effect found so far: injections of BBG causes the skin to temporarily turn bright blue.

Research is still being conducted, but it’s thought that human trials with BBG may begin within the next few years.

(I wonder if Brilliant Blue G can counteract all those ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

As I write this, Drudge Report has a red-colored link to a story about Governor Rick Perry of Texas vowing that he would assert that state’s Tenth Amendment rights if he had to in order to oppose President Obama’s plans to nationalize health care.

Hey, I’m all for that. I think every state should consider using that Tenth Amendment. But does Governor Perry seriously oppose Obama’s mad medical plot on account of principle?

Because as recently as two and a half years ago Perry was very much for government-mandated medicine! It was in February of 2007 that he issued an executive order mandating that all girls entering the sixth grade be vaccinated against cervical cancer. The only vaccine available, Gardasil, is manufactured by Merck & Co.

And it soon turned out that Perry was more or less in Merck & Co.’s pocket, having received $6000 from the corporation’s political ...

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For all these years it’s been assumed that every cell of an organism shared the same DNA. The differentiation between cells only arising from the synthesis and properties of the associated proteins that were expressed by the DNA… but otherwise, a cell is the same as every other cell in the body.

Funny how quickly old assumptions can easily get tossed aside, ain’t it?

Now comes word that DNA is NOT the same throughout all cells of an organism… or throughout a human organism anyway. That’s the finding of a study in Montreal regarding the genetic causes of abdominal aortic aneurysms.

It’s both a fascinating read and a rather scary one, when you begin to consider all the medicine that has been based on the notion that our genes are uniform throughout our cells. And then, you have to wonder what the implications are regarding something like DNA evidence ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

I’d already thought that 3D printing is one of the neatest new technologies to have come along in recent years.

But look at what Jorge Lopes, a design student and doctoral candidate of the Royal College of Art, has done with it…

Marrying ultrasound imaging and MRI data to the rapid prototyping process, Lopes has engineered a way to create a life-sized exact model of a human fetus while it’s within its mother’s womb!

Whoa.

Lopes foresees the technology being used in the near future to give expectant parents a model of their forthcoming new arrival, as well as becoming useful in treating birth defects.

Absolutely, unbelievably mind-boggling stuff. Jorge Lopes is a genius!

Click here for the rest of the story and more amazing photos!...

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The picture on the right was taken about four years ago. It is of Brooke Greenberg and her younger sister Carly.

That’s Brooke on the left, when she was 12 years old. She is now 16 and looks the same as she is depicted in the photograph.

Doctors and researchers are stymied at how Brooke has hardly aged at all since she was born. She still has her baby teeth, and her bones are considered to be of a child who is no older than ten. Her mental capacity is said to be that of an infant. But her family maintains that in many other aspects she is just like any other teenage girl (she likes to shop, f’rinstance).

Click here for more about Brooke Greenberg and her family....

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