Health & Medicine

Mighty health threats from little acorns grow

By Richard S. Ostfeld, Ph.D
2012 could be a terrible year for Lyme disease. To understand why, we need to go back in time to the autumn of 2010. Over vast parts of the northeastern USA the oak trees that dominate many forests let loose with a bumper crop of acorns. Oaks are notorious for producing highly variable seed crops, from a trickle of one or two acorns per square meter in some years to several dozen per square meter in others. When protein- and lipid-rich acorns are superabundant, white-footed mice are able to cache large numbers and feast all winter, surviving well and breeding early and often. Consequently, their populations can reach peaks of up to 200 individuals per hectare the summer following a good acorn year. Legions of mice scampering around on the forest floor spell good news for blacklegged ticks, the vector responsible for transmitting Lyme disease and other tick-borne infections.

Ladies: are you taking advantage of cervical screening?

By Ji Young Bang, MBBS MPH
Cervical cancer is globally the second most frequently occurring malignancy in women, with 400,000 new cases and 250,000 deaths each year. Cervical screening, which aims to detect pre-malignant cervical lesions known as cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN), involves sampling cervical epithelial cells via the Papanicolaou smear test or liquid-based cytology. In England, the National Health Service Cervical Screening Programme (NHSCSP) was set up in 1988 and currently all women between the ages of 25 and 64 years are eligible to undergo screening. Despite the widespread availability, are all women taking advantage of cervical screening? If not, what separates these women from those that do choose to participate in screening?

Older men do care…

By Dr Mark McCann
Older men have been getting a bad press. Women are admitted to nursing and residential homes at a greater rate than men of the same age and health. There is an assumption that the reason for this gender difference is that older men are less willing than older women to care for their dependent partners: that for cultural or personal reasons ‘old men don’t do caring’.

420, cannabis, illegality, and the cost of prohibition

By Mitch Earleywine
Cannabis became essentially illegal in the United States in 1937. Perhaps this 75 year experiment has provided enough data for some informed decisions. We’re up to over 800,000 arrests each year, with government spending billions annually on marijuana control. Yet more people have tried the plant than ever before. Several authors suggest that alternatives to prohibition might prove cheaper, send fewer people through our courts, and maintain respect for the law. It seems oddly un-American that a citizen can go to jail for owning a plant, especially here in the land of the free. But change is scary, and fear runs politics in frightening ways.

Propofol and the Death of Michael Jackson

One of the hallmarks of an expert is to make what they are doing look effortless. Whether it is tossing pizza, throwing a clay pot on a wheel, or executing the perfect forehand smash, the experts make it look easy. The part that we don’t see is the hundreds of hours of practice, and the hundreds of times it has gone wrong; the shreds of dough stuck to the light bulb.

Mindmelding: two brains, one consciousness?

By William Hirstein

Have you ever wondered if it is really possible for others to know what you are thinking? Our brains seem to allow both “internal” points of view, and “external” ones.  As individuals, we know them from the inside as we experience our thoughts, perceptions and emotions. Scientists, on the other hand, only know our brains from the outside, as they employ brain imaging, EEG, or other types of techniques.

The Ethics of Transplants – Why Careless Thought Costs Lives

By Janet Radcliffe Richards
The trouble with many significant advances in medicine is that that they take us out of our moral depth. They may raise quite different problems from the ones we are used to and, if we are not careful, we may inadvertently undermine the wonderful potential of new technologies by forcing them into existing legal, ethical and institutional frameworks.

Epidemiology and epigenetics – a marriage made in heaven?

By Caroline Relton
Epidemiology, a well established cornerstone of medical research, is a group level discipline that aims to decipher the distribution and causes of diseases in populations. Epigenetics, perceived by many as the most fashionable research arena in which to be involved, is a mechanism of gene regulation. What brings these perhaps unlikely partners together?

Do baby-boomers care?

By Nancy Guberman
Do baby-boomers see care as a normal natural extension of family obligations? A recent study in Quebec, Canada reveals that if baby-boomers in that province do consider care a family responsibility, they have a much more limited understanding of what this care entails than their predecessors and the state.

SciWhys: How do organisms develop?

By Jonathan Crowe
Each of our bodies is a mass of cells of varying types – from the brain cells that give us the power of thought, to the cardiac cells that form our heart and keep our blood circulating; from the lung cells that take in oxygen from the air around us, to the skin cells that envelop the organs and tissues that lie within. Regardless of their ultimate function, however, each of these cells has come from a single source – the fertilised egg. But how can the complexity and intricacy of a fully-functioning organism stem from such humble beginnings?

David Marsden: The Father of Movement Disorders

The final monumental work of the late Professor David Marsden – Marsden’s Book of Movement Disorders – is due for publication this month, almost thirty years on from when the project was initially conceived. In homage to the ‘father of movement disorders’, his friend and colleague, Ivan Donaldson, has written a personal reflection on great contribution and influence David had on the field of movement disorders.

SciWhys: a cure for Carys? Part Two

By Jonathan Crowe
Using science to understand our world can help to improve our lives. In my last post and in this one, I want to illustrate this point with an example of how progress in science is providing hope for the future for one family, and many others like them.

SciWhys: a cure for Carys?

By Jonathan Crowe
Using science to understand our world can help to improve our lives. In this post and the next, I want to illustrate this point with an example of how progress in science is providing hope for the future for one family, and many others like them.

From Personhood to Patienthood

by Harvey Max Chochinov

A senior colleague recently shared with me the trials of going through a bout of cancer treatment. Physicians are not known to make the best patients and the transition he described was not an easy one. At one point he said, “I wanted to hang a sign over my bed saying ‘P.I.P.’ – Previously Important Person.”

World Cancer Day: Q&A

On World Cancer Day 2012, we speak with Dr Lauren Pecorino, author of Why Millions Survive Cancer: the successes of science, to learn the latest in the field of cancer research. – Nicola

Organ donor shortage versus transplant rates

By David Talbot
The article in this week’s Times with the commentary written by Chris Watson illustrates the significant changes that have happened in transplantation over the last two years. In 2008, the Organ Donor Taskforce (ODTF) came up with 14 recommendations to address the problem of donor shortage, and then UK Transplant (which then changed to Blood Transplant) acted upon these.