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Archive for the ‘Modern Medicine’ Category

Studying Gonads

Posted: Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010

Testicle and ovary have been studying hard over at University of North Texas‘ human anatomy lab! Thanks to Cara Fisher, who is a faculty member at the school’s Health Science Center program for Cell Biology and anatomy, for these fabulous photos. Cara gave the plush ovary to her best female anatomy student and the testicle to her best male anatomy student — don’t you wish you were in her class?

Will to Pill

Posted: Friday, October 22nd, 2010

Has your doctor ever taken money from a pharmaceutical company? Now you can search for yourself. Dollars for Docs is an in-depth look into how the pharmaceutical industry persuades doctors to write prescriptions for their products. Check out this fascinating story over at NPR, which undertook this collaborative investigation with ProPublica, a non-profit newsroom, along with The Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune and Consumer Reports. Also visualizing our overmedicated culture is artist Jean Shin, who created this outstanding pill bottle chandelier and installation, entitled Chemical Balance.

In and Out

Posted: Wednesday, October 20th, 2010

My pal Marcus got up close and personal with intestines at the Grossology exhibition at the Saint Louis Science Center in Missouri. Here he is emerging from the rectum onto a vinyl poo pillow! Awesome!

Mind Your Heart

Posted: Wednesday, October 20th, 2010

If you’ve ever felt like following your heart instead of your head, there’s a good reason why — our hearts might be a lot smarter than we give them credit. Listen to this fascinating BBC story about how some cells in the heart may have memory and store emotions. Shortly after she received a heart transplant, one woman suddenly started to feel like February 17th was a very important date. She later discovered that was her donor’s birthday — an important day, indeed. Learn more about why the heart is smart.

More Than M*A*S*H

Posted: Monday, October 18th, 2010

Being an army medic must be like working in an emergency room on steroids. The chaotic lives of medics working in Iraq are brought into sharp relief by the photographs of James Natchwey, who began chronicling injuries from the war after he was injured there in 2003. This truly remarkable series of black and white pictures, called The Sacrifice, is on view at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles as part of an exhibit of incredible documentary photography called Engaged Observers. Natchwey’s photographs are striking in that they are gorgeous and utterly disturbing all at once. Shown together, they paint a devastating portrait of modern war injuries and the men and women who help heal them.

Destroy Your Liver!

Posted: Thursday, October 7th, 2010

October is National Liver Awareness Month so we wanted to make sure you knew the Five Fastest Ways to Destroy Your Liver:

1. Booze it Up! No fewer than ten alcoholic drinks a day will effectively shut down your liver, so drink up! Some of the most enjoyable side effects of liver scarring — called cirrhosis — include: jaundice, fluid retention and, for the gents, enlarged breasts and shrinking testicles. Simply replace water with vodka and you’ll be steps from total liver failure!

2. Have unprotected sex! When you wanna feel the love, be sure to leap into bed without a condom with someone who’s already got the Hepatitis virus — sex is the easiest way to contract it! Either A,B or C will do, but B and C are the most damaging, so try to catch one of those. Hepatitis is a form of liver inflammation that can cause fatigue, abdominal pain and nausea. The good news? Even if you develop a few pesky Hepatitis symptoms now, you can still develop actual liver failure later.

3. Overmedicate! Even overdoing it with Tylenol can cause acute liver damage. The liver’s processing power is mighty, but in large amounts acetaminophen can directly damage liver cells. Pop no fewer than 4 grams of extra-strength Tylenol to shut down your liver in just two weeks!

4. Shoot Up Drugs! Not be outdone by Tylenol, shooting drugs like heroin or methamphetamine straight into your veins is a faster and more efficient way to destroy your pesky liver. Not only do the drugs themselves harm and overtax the liver, but sharing needles could lead to Hepatitis B and C. Two for one special!

5. Eat like crap! Put yourself in the grave early by downing plenty of fatty sugary foods like donuts and deep fried Twinkies. If you eat a Krispy Kreme bacon-chocolate cheeseburger in a restaurant where the staff refuses to wash its hands, you could get your fat and some Hep A on the side (the virus lives inside an infected person’s poop, so it’s most easily contracted when someone doesn’t wash hands after using the bathroom).

As you can see, you have to put in a little extra effort to destroy you liver. But if you work hard at the drugs and drinking, you can do it! You won’t live long without your liver, so once your liver is on the fritz, you can join the tens of thousands of people waiting for years for a liver transplant. Be sure to avoid regular exercise, don’t eat vegetables, don’t drink plenty of water, and most of all, stay away from your doctor!

Heart Strings

Posted: Friday, September 17th, 2010

I know, I know, again with the Cleveland Clinic, but these gorgeous simple organ line drawings from a recent ad campaign were what I was looking for when I came upon their designer hospital gowns.

Haute Hospital

Posted: Friday, September 17th, 2010

If you’ve ever suffered the indignity of wearing an ugly and revealing hospital gown, designer Diane von Furstenberg has got your back. The woman behind the iconic printed wrap-around dress connected with the Cleveland Clinic to improve the look of hospital gowns for its patients. Tres chic, but apparently hospital guests are as picky as your average fashionista — men think the colors are too feminine, the fabric shrank a bit on the wash and some say the snaps don’t close well (problems are being corrected). The designer wrote on Twitter: “We are very proud of our hospital gowns for the Cleveland Clinic. We worked hard at it and we hope it will make patients happier! DVF”

Two Better Than One?

Posted: Monday, August 30th, 2010

Why do we have two kidneys, but just one heart? Wouldn’t it make more sense to have extras of everything in case something goes wrong? Why can’t we be like the lowly earthworm, with five different hearts? Or those girls with two bladders and two uteruses? Or that other girl with four kidneys? Some extras make sense — for example, having two eyeballs gives us better, binocular, vision. The heart and brain have two parts each, of course, but each side has a different function. One chamber of the heart pumps out oxygenated blood, the other pumps in deoxygenated blood; and each lobe of the brain is responsible for different functions and operations. The liver regenerates, so need for two of those, and you can live without the spleen and gallbladder. But as for the double kidneys, we’re not sure why one wouldn’t suffice to clean the bloodstream, and why do we need two lungs? Rutgers University anthropologist Susan Cachel told Discovery Health the one heart/two lung system started about 300 million years ago, when we emerged from the muck onto land. For whatever reason, that’s what we needed to survive on land, and it’s remained the same ever since. Not a very satisfying answer, if you ask me, but there you go.

Urine My Heart

Posted: Wednesday, August 25th, 2010

Will you take this kidney to be your lawfully wedded wife? I do! Rick White and Kelley Agard, both of Iowa, were married on Monday and Kelley’s donating her kidney to Rick — who has polycystic kidney disease — today. What a fabulous bride!

 
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