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December 14, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Intellectual property laws designed to help protect the ability of researchers to retain compensation for major innovations have led to a uniquely problematic “innovation” in the laws themselves, where specific genes, or the informational access to them, are patented, barring individuals or their physicians from dealing directly with those genes except through the for-profit patent-holders.
December 3, 2009 :: staff :: One Comment
The date was 3 December 1984. The people of Bhopal, India, were the victims of a chemical spill of unprecedented proportions. 40 tons of toxic gas spilled into the city, killing tens of thousands of people. Methyl isocyanate, the substance that caused the mass death, prevents oxygen from entering the blood when inhaled. In just one night, thousands were killed, literally drowning in their own bodily fluids. At least 15,000 more people were killed over the next several weeks, and many believe the total number of those killed from exposure to methyl isocyanate is well above 30,000.
November 28, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Scientists have discovered evidence that human hearing is in part dependent on tactile cues that come not from audible sounds, but from pressure fluctuations and air-particle displacement against skin around the ear.
November 23, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Malaria is one of the 21st century’s great plagues. It is responsible for anywhere from 1 to 3 million deaths per year, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa. Efforts to eradicate the disease are mounting: in the year 2000, just 3% of children under 5, in sub-Saharan Africa, slept with mosquito nets; by 2008, that figure had risen to 56%. Aid groups now project that aggressive preventive measures can protect 100% of the population by the end of 2010 and reduce the number of deaths to near zero by 2015.
October 7, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
One in 91 American children is now reported to be afflicted with autism spectrum disorder. A number of potential culprits has been suggested over the years, as autism figures have steadily risen, including vaccines, antibiotics, hormones, pesticides, coal waste and radiation.
October 2, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Clean, safe drinking water is scarce for over 3 billion people across the world. At least 1 billion literally never have access to clean, safe drinking water, putting them at constant risk of severe thirst-related ill health effects, infectious diseases or toxic contamination. Over 100 countries face either sporadic or chronic crisis-level problems related to clean water scarcity.
August 31, 2009 :: staff :: One Comment
A new innovation developed by scientists in Israel may be able to detect traces of lung cancer in human breath, by identifying molecules linked to the condition. The device would be hand-held and easy to use, and could potentially be available at any family doctor or general practitioner’s office, in the future.
August 23, 2009 :: staff :: One Comment
Life expectancy in the United States is 78.11 years, 50th in the world, behind the Wallis and Futuna Islands and just ahead of Guadeloupe. Canada is 8th, at 81.23 years; France is 9th, at 80.98; Sweden is 10th, at 80.86. Despite Canada’s “socialized” healthcare system, the average Canadian can expect to live more than three years longer than the average American.
August 14, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
One of the great complaints heard from groups opposing comprehensive health insurance reform, especially from quarters where the chief concern is to prevent a drop in private profit related to healthcare services, is that reform will strip away incentives to devote funding to medical research, in pathologies, treatments and technology. This is a point of philosophical dispute, but to make sure we enact reforms that will not curb research incentives, we should institute a new medical research tax credit.
August 11, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Hours before sunrise, a crowd numbering in the hundreds had already begun gathering outside the Inglewood Forum, in hopes of being able to take advantage of a free health check-up offered by the Remote Area Medical Volunteer Corps (RAM). RAM will be hosting the free health clinic from 5:30 am to 6 pm over 8 days, in hopes of bringing much needed routine medical care to the urban uninsured excluded from the healthcare system due to cost.
July 28, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
DNA is an amazingly efficient memory bank for the design and scheduling of biological development. Cell DNA have their own replication systems, but human scientists who want to interfere with the content of the genome have been working to find ways to achieve artificial replication and synthesis of disparate properties, and now they may have achieved a landmark breakthrough.
July 28, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Researchers have stumbled upon a surprise possible treatment for swelling of nerves in the spinal cord. It turns out that FD&C blue dye No. 1 bears certain key similarities to a compound used to treat nerve inflammation. Since there is no active immediate treatment for spinal cord injuries, and secondary inflammation often leads to long-term damage, this treatment holds great promise. The one side-effect observed: the rats’ skin turned blue.
July 22, 2009 :: staff :: 2 Comments
Preventive use of antibiotics has one salient effect: it speeds the evolution of targeted bacteria, allowing them to develop pervasive resistance to known treatments. In short, preventive administration of antibiotics makes diseases far more dangerous. The US government is now seeking to end the practice of administering antibiotics to livestock, which health officials believe is putting human health at risk.
July 20, 2009 :: staff :: 2 Comments
This is what the debate in Congress is all about: Whether we’ll keep talking and tinkering and letting this problem fester as more families and businesses go under, and more Americans lose their coverage. Or whether we’ll seize this opportunity – one we might not have again for generations – and finally pass health insurance reform this year, in 2009.
July 19, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Carbon offsets allow the use of carbon-emitting processes to help fund and develop clean alternatives, which can then compete with and possibly replace the offending carbon-emitters. But there are also ways in which carbon offsetting can be used to combat poverty around the world. If offsets are focused on reducing bad habits, resulting from those engaging in those habits having either no alternative or no training to find alternatives, people living in the poorest conditions can find themselves benefitting from the clean energy revolution.
July 16, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
The influenza A/H1N1 virus, popularly known as “swine flu” was officially declared a pandemic in June. Shortly after the pandemic declaration, it was confirmed that H1N1 was confirmed in human patients in 74 countries. In the 5 weeks since then, it has spread rapidly and is now confirmed to have caused human infection in 140 countries.
July 15, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 5 Comments
Margaret Chan, director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), has told the Guardian newspaper’s Aida Edemariam that swine flu, the A/H1N1 multiple-reassorted virus strain, could be “the biggest” pandemic ever seen, in terms of its spread to so many countries around the world, though that doesn’t mean it will be the most deadly.
July 15, 2009 :: staff :: 3 Comments
The World Health Organization (WHO) has issued a report finding that the pandemic spread of the influenza A/H1N1 virus, known as “swine flu”, is now “unstoppable”. The WHO is calling on governments to speed efforts to develop a vaccine and select which segments of their populations will be given priority, based on public health considerations, after health workers.
July 14, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
The New Scientist magazine is reporting on an intriguing and brazen new Pentagon program that would create living “OrthopterNets”, communication networks made of insects implanted with special technologies to modulate their wingbeats. Crickets, cicadas and katydids, all use their wings to generate sounds, the patterns of which communicate information to others of their kind. The Pentagon wants to use this natural communications network to prompt the insects to emit specific sounds in the presence of specific chemicals.
July 14, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
What methods and strategies can be developed for speeding MRSA-effective Manuka honey to production and distribution for clinical treatment? What similar discoveries hold promise for treating multi-resistant bacteria?
July 13, 2009 :: Riga Listin :: One Comment
Dr. Regina Benjamin, a winner of the MacArthur Foundation “Genius grant”, and a committed rural doctor who has served the poor in Bayou La Batre, Alabama, spending her own money to provide care for those who could not afford it, has been named by Pres. Obama to serve as surgeon general of the United States. Her nomination was announced in a live event at the White House, with Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius in attendance.
July 12, 2009 :: staff :: 2 Comments
Honey is a surprisingly complex and mysterious substance, known to have antibacterial properties, but which continues to reveal new qualities apparently favorable to human health. Now, scientists in Australia have discovered that a specific type of honey, is highly effective at killing the multi-resistant “superbug” MRSA. The discovery could give medical science a way to combat the spread of multi-resistant bacterial strains.
July 8, 2009 :: staff :: One Comment
The Hot Spring Network has opened a discussion, in collaboration with Café Sentido, on the need to diversify the global wheat crop in order to prevent an evolved crop fungus, Ug99, from destroying as much as 80% of the global wheat harvest.
July 2, 2009 :: Denver Lessing :: No Comment Yet
Over the weekend, the nationwide media in the US were overtaken by a firestorm of speculation that Michael Jackson’s premature and sudden death, at the age of 50, was the result of a deadly cocktail of powerful painkillers and anti-depressants. Family and friends have complained of a close entourage of “enablers”, helping to intensify a long-running addiction and lead the pop star to his demise. One is tempted to ask, however: where were the doctors?
June 11, 2009 :: Severino Villalonso :: 4 Comments
The new multi-reassorted strain of flu, Influenza A H1N1, also called “swine flu”, has been officially declared a global pandemic, with over 28,000 confirmed cases of infection across 74 nations. The classification is a geographical judgment, referring to the flu strain’s spread on multiple continents, but does not related to severity. Officials said the pandemic appears to be of moderate severity.
June 11, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 3 Comments
The “public option” for healthcare reform is about competition. With that competitive edge —no profit motive—, such an insurance plan could reduce costs across the board, for all who seek coverage. This raises the question of whether a new paradigm might be private not-for-profit insurers, possibly organized through doctors’ associations and hospitals, which seek to establish a more reliable payment structure, under a larger-pool of coverage.
June 2, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
This issue, health care reform, is not a luxury. It’s not something that I want to do because of campaign promises or politics. This is a necessity. This is something that has to be done. We cannot avoid bringing about change in our health care system. Soaring health care costs are unsustainable for families, they are unsustainable for businesses, and they are unsustainable for governments, both at the federal, state and local levels.
June 2, 2009 :: staff :: 2 Comments
The Urban Institute found that 22,000 people died in 2006, in the United States, specifically from lack of health insurance. Other projections, which count the accumulation of long-term pathologies, compounded ill health or medical “error” involving staff calculations about the wisdom of providing the most costly care to those who can’t pay, run into the hundreds of thousands.
May 31, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
What can we do to impede the erosion of some of our most prized social-intellectual habits of mind, rooted in organic brain structure and in social networking (from campfire to empire, parliament to newsprint, to Twitter and The Hot Spring Network), while taking advantage of the power of the web?
May 24, 2009 :: staff :: 2 Comments
The influenza A H1N1 virus outbreak of this spring is alleged to have surfaced in a little town in rural Mexico called La Gloria, which happens to be next to one of the world’s most massive industrial scale pig farms. While humans cannot contract the virus by eating pork, the dire conditions and poor sanitation [...]
May 18, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
TheHotSpring.net :: John Kanzius discovered, through his experience with radio technology, that the use of metal nano particles could allow a targeted way to attack cancer cells and weaken or kill a tumor. The technology came to be known as Kanzius RF therapy, and remains experimental. It uses nano-scale particles of gold or carbon, which [...]
May 11, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 3 Comments
The US system of healthcare is fundamentally broken. Nearly 50 million people have no coverage at all. Add to that the 13 million undocumented immigrants who are unable to buy healthcare or qualify for government programs, and we have over 60 million inhabitants of the US with zero access to affordable healthcare. Every single uninsured inhabitant of the US pushes costs up, as the system has to absorb unpayable emergency healthcare costs for those individuals. So, for practical reasons as well as moral, we need to take seriouly that every person has a right to medical treatment.
May 8, 2009 :: Evelyn Winston Perez :: 2 Comments
The World Health Organization has found that 1,500 women are dying every day across Africa from pregnancy-related complications or during childbirth. The figure has not improved over the last decade, largely due to the lack of adequate medical facilities. An extremely high rate of maternal mortality, as many as 1,000 per 100,000 live births (fully 1% of women giving birth), makes the situation an extreme threat to women’s health.
May 4, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
Yi Guan —who gained worldwide fame as a virologist when he isolated the SARS virus in the masked palm civet, in specimens being sold at a feral animal market in Guangdong province, China— says the World Health Organization (WHO) was slow in responding to the outbreak of influenza A H1N1, otherwise known as swine flu. Yi has devoted most of his career to flu virology and has a doctorate in swine flu virology.
May 4, 2009 :: Webb Tisch :: One Comment
The outbreak of a new strain of flu, influenza A H1N1, in April 2009, has set the gears of global public health policy in motion, with aggressive quarantine efforts in Hong Kong, a blanket culling of pigs in Egypt (despite zero human or swine cases), and a ‘Phase 5′ warning from the World Health Organization that the outbreak constituted an imminent pandemic threat. But now there are hints the H1N1 outbreak may be largely contained in North America.
May 3, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 4 Comments
The Egyptian government has ordered a 100% blanket cull of its entire pig stock in response to the outbreak of “swine flu” in Mexico and the US. The problem is, the new strain of the virus, technically influenza A H1N1, has not been found in pigs. The H1N1 strain is a flu virus that affects the human population and is spread by person to person contact. It contains genetic material showing it is a hybrid flu containing genetic segments linking it to avian-borne, swine-borne and human-borne flu viruses.
May 2, 2009 :: staff :: One Comment
Over the last week, my administration has taken several precautions to address the challenge posed by the 2009 H1N1 flu virus. Today, I’d like to take a few minutes to explain why. This is a new strain of the flu virus, and because we haven’t developed an immunity to it, it has more potential to cause us harm. Unlike the various strains of animal flu that have emerged in the past, it’s a flu that is spreading from human to human. This creates the potential for a pandemic, which is why we are acting quickly and aggressively.
May 2, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
El gobierno de México ha ordenado cuarentena de 5 días, para interrumpir la extensión masiva del virus de influenza A H1N1, la gripe porcina. La cuarentena, si la población la sigue, tendrá el efecto de silenciar no sólo la fiesta del ayer, de la celebración del día mundial de trabajador, sino también del 5 de mayo, día de la independencia y celebración de la nación.
April 30, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
The World Health Organization has questioned the global tally for confirmed deaths from the H1N1 “swine flu” outbreak, saying only 7 deaths from the virus have been confirmed, not the 149 to 159 previously reported. All 7 deaths took place in Mexico. The WHO, which yesterday raised its pandemic alert level to Phase 5 for the outbreak, says it has confirmed only 40 cases in the Americas, 26 in Mexico, resulting in 7 deaths.
April 29, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Dr. Margaret Chan, director of the World Health Organization (WHO), today announced that the global public health alert for the H1N1 flu outbreak from Phase 4 to Phase 5. Phase 5 means there is a genuine risk of a global pandemic, but the outbreak does not yet constitute a global pandemic.
April 29, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Gov. Kathleen Sebelius was today confirmed by the US Senate as Secretary of Health and Human Services, and sworn in as the latest member of Pres. Barack Obama’s cabinet. This White House photo by Peter Souza shows Sebelius being briefed today on the US response to the 2009 H1N1 flu virus outbreak, reported to have begun in Mexico City.
April 27, 2009 :: staff :: One Comment
As the US State Dept. has issued a travel advisory warning Americans to avoid unnecessary travel to Mexico, and the two countries are screening all travelers coming from the other nation, Canada, Spain and New Zealand have reportedly confirmed at least one case each of swine flu. The multi-strain flu virus is expected to meet little immunity in the human population, which it has not previously affected in large numbers.
April 26, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 3 Comments
The leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States is healthcare costs. The system, as it is designed is destroying people’s lives as punishment for their seeking means of staying alive or maintaining relative good health. This is a comprehensive failure of the system, at all levels. As of 2008, some 54.5% of personal bankruptcies filed in the US involved unpayable medical expenses or loss of income or insurance due to health-related causes.
April 26, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
The Secretary of Homeland Security for Barack Obama’s US administration, Janet Napolitano, today announced that the new strain of influenza commonly called Mexican Swine Flu constitutes an “incident of national interest” to US security. The new strain of flu has been found in at least 20 cases so far in the US, across 5 states, with all known patients so far recovering.
April 16, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
Electronic medical records (EMR), like health insurance, benefit from being spread over the widest pool possible. A system that aggregates and cross-references data from hundreds of millions of patients can find statistical evidence far more efficiently than today’s statistical modeling for health problems and solution improvement.
March 19, 2009 :: admin :: One Comment
Andry Rajoelina, legally 6 years too young, assumes Madagascar presidency, after Marc Ravalomanana is forced to step down. Ravalomanana had vowed to fight to keep his office and had proposed a referendum to let the people decide, but military forces stormed the presidential palace and the president resigned and fled.
From Johannesburg, Xinhua reports:
The main decision-making [...]
March 5, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 3 Comments
Saying the nation cannot afford any further delay, Pres. Barack Obama told a joint session of Congress last week, “let there be no doubt, healthcare reform cannot wait, it must not wait and it will not wait another year.” He promised he would begin meetings this week, to begin formulating the strategy that would best achieve the goal of “quality, affordable healthcare coverage for all Americans”.
January 8, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
In the first comprehensive study of the risks inherent in early Caesarean section deliveries, especially where they are repeated, results suggest a significant increased risk for the newborn, such as complications related to breathing.
According to the Washington Post:
The study of more than 24,000 full-term infants found that those delivered at 37 weeks to mothers who [...]
December 25, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The global aid group, Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF / Doctors Without Borders) has released its 11th annual report on the ten most severe humanitarian crises around the world. This years list cites mass poverty, resource scarcity and ungovernability in Somalia, Ethiopia and DR Congo, severe health risks to the populations of Zimbabwe, Burma (Myanmar) and DR Congo, and the constant danger of violence against civilians in Iraq, DR Congo, and Sudan’s Darfur region, along the Chad border.
December 17, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
A long-running bellwether legal case in Canada’s farming industry, which has left at least one farmer unable to farm any crop variety of rapeseed (canola) —for fear of having to pay accidental royalties to bio-chemical giant Monsanto—, highlights the need for comprehensive reform of international seed regulation standards. The Canadian courts ruled that the individual farmer had to shoulder the burden of ferreting out any instance of “contamination” of his crop by pollen from nearby genetically-modified (GM) planting, as Monsanto held a patent on the seeds. The farmer, and those who support his claims, argue that there is no means by which anyone can prevent cross-pollination from GM plants.
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