Paul Scrivens documents his conversion of an FDA online database to a new, cleaner version : webdrugdatabase.com . Very nice, clean site, and easier to use than the FDA’s version .
Clean and purty, just as a designer would make it.
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All of us Anatomy TAs were freaking out yesterday, excited to see a situs inverus cadaver . (Situs inversus occurs when all your organs are flipped to the opposite side. So your heart’s on the right, your liver’s on the left, etc.) I was helping people dissect yesterday when I saw one of the team’s bodies where the apex of the heart was pointing toward the *right*. First I thought, “Did they detach the heart and flip it around? But it was firmly stuck in there. I started to get excited, thinking it had to be situs inversus, so I felt down toward the *left* side of the diaphragm, and felt the liver. There it was!
I called the professor over to confirm it, and he agreed–it was the first case he had ever seen. Very exciting. The whole lab swarmed to check it out, and I called the other TAs over to see it. Absolutely fascinating. I can’t wait to see the abdomen.
Situs inversus is a 1/10,000 occurrence, and some believe it occurs due to a mutant cilia protein that causes the cilia to beat in the opposite direction. This then pushes developmental proteins in the fetus to the opposite side, and voila, mirror image.
Unfortunately for the dissecting students, they’re going to be *totally* confused. I told them to make sure they primarily study different bodies… otherwise, they’ll be totally lost.
Matthew Holt just posted a zinger summarizing some points of the NHS in Britain and the Japanese health care system. A great summary read. Go now!
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Sorry, teenagers. Acne’s gonna have to stay. It’s good for you.
No, really.
Propionibacterium acnes is the bacteria that lives in your skin’s sebaceous glands and causes pimples. However, we really don’t give it enough credit. It secretes fatty acids into our skin that help keep _other_, more harmful bacteria, out of our skin, and therefore, out of our bodies.
And E. coli , the bacteria that you always hear about that makes us so sick? They’re found in *huge* quantities in our intestines. They synthesize vitamin K and B, and help us digest our food. And by living in our intestines, they fight for food with other more harmful bacteria.
I was having a theoretical microbiology debate with my friend Ronnie yesterday while we were pre-dissecting for anatomy (that’s one of the dorkiest medical sentences ever written), and we decided it’s pretty much complete, total war all over your body. Bacteria are so numerous and so omnipresent that we’re pretty much still around because they want us to be. We’re big walking petri dishes, people. We provide a safe, warm, moist, dark environment with plenty of food (the food we eat, as well as all the dead skin we flake off). There are enough bacteria around that want us around to usually keep the really bad ones at bay. Granted, sometimes we have to keep them in line ourselves, using antibiotics or our immune systems.
And there’s no messing around in the bacterial world. It’s kill or be killed. They’re single-cell organisms. If you wound them, they’re done. No wonder they want to copulate so quickly. Wouldn’t you if you didn’t think you’d live another 10 minutes?
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The fastest growing bacteria can double every 10 minutes (it takes human cells about 24 hours).
If these bacteria were given unlimited nutrients and a stable environment, they’d be larger than the size of the Earth in 1 day.
Amazing, isn’t it?
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Health insurance costs for employers have increased by 59% since 2001 . How much longer can (will?) employers continue to pay?
As we continue to see this, my guess is we’ll see more and more employers dropping dependents’ coverage before they drop workers’ coverage all-together.
This will mean more uninsured, and more kids trying to enroll in S-CHIP.
from Ross’s Public Health Press
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Americans rate Canada’s health care better than health care in the US , and a working paper proposes that the SES-health gradient difference between Canada and US citizens decreases at age 65 , miraculously the same age Americans get Medicare.
Our President, ladies and gents :
bq. At a rally of cheering supporters in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, Bush made his usual pitch for limiting “frivolous lawsuits” that he said drive up the
cost of health care and run doctors out of business.
But then he added, “We’ve got an issue in America. Too many good docs are getting out of business. Too many OB-GYNs aren’t able to practice their
love with women all across this country.”
(via another graham )
Did you know:
Your hypothalamus (think big brain control center) tells your body what temperature to maintain. If you’re sick, your immune system will release chemicals that cause your hypothalamus to increase your thermostat. A fever. You’ve probably had one. Your blood vessels constrict. You shiver to increase muscle heat. Your muscle is broken down to make heat.
But if your hypothalamus can induce behavioral changes to make you warmer: put on more clothes, get in certain body positions. And if you introduce the equivalent chemicals into fish, they swim toward warmer water to warm themselves. And with lizards, they’ll seek sunlight.
Cool, huh?
Our family dog, Napoleon (my mom’s a Francophile), had been sick for a couple months with a fibrosarcoma in his neck. He died on Thursday. It’s weird reading “intro to neoplasms” and actually finally knowing what a fibrosarcoma *is*.
We’re also learning microbiology (the study of bacteria, viruses–stuff that makes you sick), which has given me quite an interesting contrast. It’s amazing how resilient our bodies are–we inhale something like 10,000 bacteria every *day* and don’t usually get sick. Our body’s immune systems work 24 hours a day, and their efforts largely go unnoticed.
But on the flip side, it’s amazing how _fragile_ our bodies are, too. How your body’s always performing a balancing act, keeping you at the same temperature, keeping your heart pumping at the right speed for your level of activity (or inactivity), keeping your blood going where it needs to go. Remove one of those pieces, and everything falls apart so quickly. Napoleon’s tumor may have metastacized to his lungs, affecting his breathing. But since the lungs are where you get oxygen, it affected his behavior, too, I’m told. He was slower. Quieter.
And when you decrease the lung activity too much, your body doesn’t get oxygen, and it deteriorates so rapidly. All the pieces are so interdependent. It’s like we’re constantly walking a tightrope on stilts. One little goof and we come crashing down.
