The blood substitute PolyHeme has been previously discussed on MetaFilter, but new evidence shows that PolyHeme actually raises the chances of death by nearly 30%. PolyHeme was notable mostly for the reaction to its clinical trials, which, controversially, did not require patient consent.
posted on Apr 29, 2008 - View this thread

Awaiting autopsy, the newly deceased lies supine, naked, on a metal table. The head is positioned as if the closed eyes were looking straight up. The arms are at the side. The knees and elbows are straight. The ankles are bent forward, not to the side, at an angle of about 45 degrees. I have seen the bodies this way of persons I had known, persons I had spoken with the previous day. And sometimes a live patient, consulting me for a physical examination, will lie the same way on the examination table, naked, looking up, arms at his side; and my thoughts turn to the autopsy suite. I wonder if I will someday see him too lying this way, recently cold, and I wonder about the complicated awful predicament of the physician.

Thirty-six years after the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse recommended that "simple possession" of pot be decriminalised, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) has introduced a bill, co-sponsored by Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), to remove federal criminal penalties for possession of up to 100 grams (about three-and-a-half ounces) of marijuana and the not-for-profit transfer of up to one ounce (28.3 grams). Drug reform advocates lit up hailed the legislation as "an important step toward bringing federal law into line with scientific fact, practical reality and public opinion." Is America, at long last, having a collective moment of sanity?
posted on Apr 20, 2008 - View this thread

Are you batshitinsane? Viruses and/or bacteria may be the cause.
posted on Apr 19, 2008 - View this thread

Who Are We? Coming of Age on Antidepressants. [Via Mind Hacks.]
posted on Apr 16, 2008 - View this thread

Sick Around the World, the newest documentary piece produced by PBS's Frontline asks: "Can the U.S. learn anything from the rest of the world about how to run a health care system?" Having previously shared a Pulitzer Prize with The New York Times, and produced such quality programs as Bush's War, this should be well worth a mere hour of your time.
posted on Apr 15, 2008 - View this thread

The Kanzius Machine: A Cancer Cure? 60 minutes (12:38) investigates an amateurs garage technology that some are saying "in 20 years of research this is the most exciting thing that I’ve encountered" and one Nobel Prize winner said it "will change medicine forever." The nanotechnology-based cancer therapy without side effects is nearing trials.
posted on Apr 15, 2008 - View this thread

Scientists have discovered that "endometrial regenerative cells" (ERC's) -- in other words, human menstrual blood -- contains stem cells. ERC-derived stem cells seem to have a number of superior traits to both bone marrow derived and umbilical cord derived stem cells, the previous gold standards: they can give rise to a variety of different cell lines without differentiation, they multiply more quickly than other stem cells, they are able to replicate more times without adversely mutating, and they apparently do not need to be closely genetically matched to the recipient. Now some women have even begun banking their menstrual blood to preserve their stem cells through a company called "C'Elle: Your Monthly Miracle" -- check out their FAQ and online video. This follows last May's announcement that menstrual blood derived cells can pretty much cure Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy in mice, a disease for which there is no current therapeutic treatment available.
posted on Apr 14, 2008 - View this thread

The state of Oregon is holding a health insurance lottery where 91,000 hopeful enrollees will be competing for a couple thousand spots under the Oregon Health Plan, the state's Medicaid program. OHP was created to cover those who made too much to enroll in traditional Medicaid but too little to afford market healthcare, and this development comes as a result of budget cuts and a subsequent enrollment closure in July of 2004. It's a far cry from the universal health care coverage that the plan was suppose to lead to, and marks a dramatic turn for the state's once-ambitious health care reforms.

(Previously in dystopic health care developments)
posted on Mar 30, 2008 - View this thread

Can People Regenerate Body Parts? "Progress on the road to regenerating major body parts, salamander-style, could transform the treatment of amputations and major wounds."
posted on Mar 18, 2008 - View this thread

The history of the home pregnancy test kit. via the NIH History Office
posted on Mar 9, 2008 - View this thread

Hannah Poling is a nine year old girl with mild to moderate symptoms of autism, which developed three months after she received vaccinations. The Department of Health and Human Services announced that her family will receive a settlement from the vaccine compensation fund. Autism activists are encouraged, but the DHHS officials insist they are not admitting a link between autism and vaccines and maintain that for most, vaccines are safe. Rather, they say, the series of vaccines Hannah received exacerbated an underlying mitochondrial condition, causing the symptoms of autism.
posted on Mar 7, 2008 - View this thread

“Just put your feet up here and let your legs go all floppy. Just flop your knees apart. OK, just relax.” On this week’s episode of CBC Radio's “White Coat, Black Art” [mp3], Dr. Brian Goldman talks to both patients and doctors about that important, intimate, yet often alienating experience called the pelvic exam. In case you’ve ever wondered, “How DO male doctors feel when they do a pelvic exam?”, this show may provide some interesting answers.
posted on Mar 4, 2008 - View this thread

Doctors successfully removed a two-inch nail from a man's genitals yesterday. Doctors pulled the nail out of his urethra on their first attempt and later said the man could have died if the object had not been spotted on X-ray. The man had admitted himself to SMC on Sunday night with extreme abdominal pain and was unable to speak. The man told doctors the last thing he remembered was having something sprayed in his face and being fondled by one of his assailants before he blacked out.
posted on Feb 14, 2008 - View this thread

Mythbusting Canadian Health Care, Part I. Part II: Debunking the Free Marketeers. [Via Orcinus.]
posted on Feb 13, 2008 - View this thread

So apparently it's not the lack of oxygen which causes cells to die. Rather, getting oxygen back, which triggers the same cell death mechanism that guards against cancer, causes cell death.
posted on Jan 19, 2008 - View this thread

Retrospectacle on the Plague. Shelley Batts is a neuroscience PhD candidate who writes the great blog Retrospectacle [Prev]. She's recently posted a series on the bubonic plague: It's real and perceived causes (1 2), the bizarre medical garb doctors used, and modern cases of Yersinia pestis* infection in the U.S. and the world.
posted on Jan 18, 2008 - View this thread

"Researchers found that failing to publish negative findings inflated the reported effectiveness of all 12 of the antidepressants studied." See also: Serotonin and Depression: A Disconnect between the Advertisements and the Scientific Literature.
posted on Jan 17, 2008 - View this thread

Dr. President: "The next president of the United States of America will control a $150 billion annual research budget, 200,000 scientists, and 38 major research institutions and all their related labs. This president will shape human endeavors in space, bioethics debates, and the energy landscape of the 21st century." With the coming election, the AAAS has created a new website and devoted a section of their journal Science to the Democratic and Republican candidates' positions on science and technology issues. But to help further clarify their positions, some people are calling for the candidates to have a presidential debate on science and technology. [Via The Intersection and Wired Science.]
posted on Jan 9, 2008 - View this thread

Huang Chuncai poses before his second tumour operation. (slideshow)
posted on Jan 8, 2008 - View this thread

Trial by Transplant. "Most transplant recipients are grateful beyond measure. Amy Silverstein's view, after nearly two decades with a donated heart, is more conflicted and often bleak. Much of her life, as described in Sick Girl, has revolved around nauseating drugs, ongoing fatigue, painful tests, ER visits and hospitalizations without end—and the constant fear that the next heartbeat could be her last. At low ebb, she has teetered on the edge of giving up."
posted on Jan 7, 2008 - View this thread

The Checklist - "If a new drug were as effective at saving lives as Peter Pronovost’s checklist, there would be a nationwide marketing campaign urging doctors to use it" [single page]
posted on Jan 2, 2008 - View this thread

Interactive Features at the Children's Hospital Boston's Website. [Via Mind Hacks.]
posted on Dec 17, 2007 - View this thread

Do Not Resuscitate. "For families facing the impending death of a loved one, few topics trigger more anguish than the Do Not Resuscitate order... There is little ambiguity in a DNR order: Emergency medical staff must withhold CPR and other life-reviving treatments if the patient's heart or breathing stops, allowing death." But, DNR orders aren't always cut-and-dried. There are many situations that complicate the medical professional's decision to comply. Related: Some people have opted to get a "D.N.R." tattoo, but others have wondered if it will hold up in court as a legal directive. [First link Via].
posted on Dec 11, 2007 - View this thread

Wednesday's Mythbusters episode had a known-quack "doctor" with a phony Ph. D? This guy says so about the beat-the-polygraph test's test-giver.
posted on Dec 7, 2007 - View this thread

For 200 years, the city has been the center of a shadowy network of bone traders who snatch up skeletons in order to sell them to universities and hospitals abroad. In colonial times, British doctors hired thieves to dig up bodies from Indian cemeteries. Despite changes in laws, a similar process is going strong today. (More on the unsettling subject of the human bone trade from the author of the first link, and his Wired article too. And Photos.) Via the excellent Sepia Mutiny.
posted on Dec 4, 2007 - View this thread

Richard Paey Speaks - An interview with the paraplegic man sentenced to 25 years in prison for treating his own pain, but now out after a full pardon by the Florida Governor.
posted on Nov 20, 2007 - View this thread

The Guardian discusses homeopathy: Jeannette Winterson supports it, Ben Goldacre opposes it.
posted on Nov 19, 2007 - View this thread

Symmetry. Shakespeare. Islamic medicine. Creative writing challenges. Four podcast series from University of Warwick.
posted on Nov 18, 2007 - View this thread

Sick City - Maps and Mortality in the Time of Cholera [print version] reviews Stephen Johnson's "The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic"*. Dr John Snow became the acknowledged modern father of epidemiology by identifying water as the transmission vehicle of a cholera outbreak in Victorian England.
posted on Nov 15, 2007 - View this thread

Creative Destruction: The Best Case Against Universal Health Care. [Via The Mahablog.]
posted on Nov 14, 2007 - View this thread

The poppy is bitterly ironic this Remembrance Day. Borrowed from John McRae's classic In Flanders' Fields, the poppy has shifted from a symbolic meaning to the central subject of an ongoing conflict. As international intervention in Afghanistan continues, opium production has reached record-breaking heights, with this single country now producing 90% of the world's total supply (utterly dwarfing global licit supply). Meanwhile, the world suffers a global opiate shortage(pdf), Canada's heroin maintenance project is threatened by politics, and the National Review of Medicine suggests that prescription opiates are far more dangerous than the "usual suspects".
posted on Nov 11, 2007 - View this thread

Visions From LSD Psychotherapy. Artwork created by patients undergoing LSD psychotherapy, from the book by Stanislav Grof. There are more resources on psychedelics at the Bibliographia Studiorum Psychedelicorum. [Via Mind Hacks.]
posted on Nov 6, 2007 - View this thread

Robin Prosser was a former concert pianist and systems analyst who suffered from an autoimmune disease similar to lupus for over 20 years. The disease left her in constant pain and made her allergic to most pharmaceutical painkillers. Only medical marijuana brought her relief, but last spring the DEA seized her medicine. Unable to cope with the chronic pain any longer, she committed suicide on October 18th. [Via Andrew Sullivan.]
posted on Oct 29, 2007 - View this thread

Don Berto’s Garden. "The plants of the ancient Maya whisper their secrets to those who speak a shared language."
posted on Oct 28, 2007 - View this thread

Upon the Nazi invasion of Poland, pediatrician Eugeniusz Łazowski and his friend Stanisław Matulewicz fabricated a fake typhus epidemic to save Polish Jews from the Nazis. Knowing that typhus-infected Jews would be summarily executed, non-Jews were injected with the harmless Proteus OX19, which would generate false positives for typhus.
posted on Oct 19, 2007 - View this thread

"Where there is no doctor", a "village health-care handbook", was originally published by Mexican health activists in 1973 as a response to a critical lack of medical care among Mexico's poor. Now available for free download, the book covers such topics as "Family Planning" [pdf], Healing without Medicines [pdf], Common Medicines, their uses and doses [pdf], the right and wrong uses of modern medicines [pdf], and (in the midwives edition) DIY abortion [pdf].
posted on Oct 9, 2007 - View this thread

Morbid Anatomy - an excellent blog with a focus on art, medicine, death, and culture. Great viewing anytime, but it might also be a good reference source for any macabre seasonal celebrations!
posted on Oct 8, 2007 - View this thread

Growing drugs in space. If the rainforest runs out of undiscovered medicines, just grow new drugs in space: Wired reports that "a swaggering Texas investor" wants to turn the International Space Station into a kind of orbiting drug lab: "If people knew what I already know," he says, "the International Space Station would be considered one of the most valuable resources our world possesses." Think of it as New Jack City in zero-G – full of weird, crystallized proteins (and billion dollar cures).
posted on Oct 7, 2007 - View this thread

Drugs Banned, Many of World’s Poor Suffer in Pain "Millions of people die in pain because they cannot get morphine, which is legal for medical use in most nations." [Via TalkLeft.]
posted on Sep 10, 2007 - View this thread

Canadian scientists heal spinal injuries with stem cells from skin (in rats). "Over the course of their research, the team found that skin-derived stem cells share characteristics with embryonic neural stem cells, which generate the nervous system. ... After 12 weeks, the rats were able to walk better, with more co-ordination."
posted on Sep 6, 2007 - View this thread

U.S. military practices genetic discrimination in denying benefits. "Those medically discharged with genetic diseases are left without disability or retirement benefits. Some are fighting back."
posted on Aug 20, 2007 - View this thread

The Visual Image of Chemistry: Perspectives from the History of Art and Science. [Via homunculus (no relation)]
posted on Aug 12, 2007 - View this thread

Historical medicine and health images - there's some fun browsing for aficionados of antique medical technologies, such as orthapedic devices, anatomical illustrations and models, public health materials, and much more. Each image can be enlarged and has explanatory text. (Just a small part of the 30,000+ image database of the wonderful site ingenious, previously brought to our attention by Fat Buddha.)
posted on Aug 3, 2007 - View this thread

Talk to Me Like My Father: Frontline Medicine in Afghanistan.
posted on Aug 2, 2007 - View this thread

The Placebo Effect In Action. "When patients believe a drug will help them, they sometimes heal themselves" (a report on a new study from Columbia University and the University of Michigan). And, an additional take on the Placebo Effect from the Skeptic's Dictionary.
posted on Aug 2, 2007 - View this thread

An excellent example of the consequences of the Supreme Court's Gonzales v. Raich decision: today the United States House of Representatives voted down a bill which would have prohibited the DEA from targeting State-authorized medical marijuana dispensaries. Almost simultaneously, the DEA raided 10 medical marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles.
posted on Jul 26, 2007 - View this thread

Recognizing Pain Management as a Fundamental Human Right. These pieces from the journal of the International Anesthesia Research Society argue that under-treated chronic pain is becoming a public health crisis which must be addressed. But a warning to pain doctors in the U.S. who prescribe opioids in doses that seem high to narcotics agents and prosecutors: “Be afraid.” [Via Hit & Run and TalkLeft.]
posted on Jul 8, 2007 - View this thread

The fight over an experimental cancer therapy gets ugly. The FDA's decision to delay approval of Provenge, an experimental therapy for advanced prostate cancer, has incensed patients and advocacy groups, who have launched a sophisticated lobbying effort calling for the drug's approval and questioning the motives of critics. Of course, investors in Dendreon, the creators of Provenge, have a strong financial interest in seeing Provenge approved. The New Yorker covers the complicated issues surrounding patient access to experimental therapies in this story.
posted on Jul 6, 2007 - View this thread

Medical Tourism in India (inspired by this post from miss lynnster)
posted on Jul 5, 2007 - View this thread