Healthcare – Page 21

Biotech, DNA, Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough

CRISPR halted muscular dystrophy in dogs. Are humans next?

September 11, 2018

ABOUT TEN YEARS ago, British veterinarians discovered an unlucky family of King Charles Spaniels whose male pups sometimes came down with a mysterious set of maladies before their first birthday. They grew clumsy and weak, and they often choked on their own tongues. To blame was a mutation on their X chromosomes, in a gene that codes for a shock-absorbing muscle protein called dystrophin. When researchers at the Royal Veterinary College realized the puppers had a canine version of the most common fatal genetic disease in children—Duchenne muscular dystrophy—they began breeding the sick spaniels with beagles to start a canine colony in the hopes of one day finding a cure.

Today, scientists report they’ve halted the progression of the disease in some of those doggy descendants using the gene editing tool known as Crispr.

Continue reading… “CRISPR halted muscular dystrophy in dogs. Are humans next?”

Biotech, Health & Fitness, Healthcare, Medicine

A potential boom is coming in anti-aging drugs

September 5, 2018

As the average age in developed economies rises in the coming years and decades, one of the next big economic disruptions may be in anti-aging medicines, according to a report by Citi.

Why it matters: Already, the anti-aging market is about $200 billion, and the new boom could be in drugs that slow, reverse or prevent age-related disease, Citi says. On the other hand, if people are aging more slowly, and diseases are slowed or prevented, then other drugs, treatments and surgeries, which earn billions of dollars, may not be necessary.

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Augmented Reality, brain-computer interfaces, Breakthrough Thinking, Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough

VR is helping amputees feel their prosthetics as if they belonged to their bodies

September 2, 2018

Researchers at EPFL developed a system that combines virtual reality with artificial tactile sensations to help amputees feel their prosthetics as if they are a part of their body.

Via Mashable

3D Printer, Analysis, Biotech, cutting edge, Healthcare, Medicine

CDC uses HP bioprinters to speed up testing for new antibiotics

September 1, 2018

The pilot will help test effectiveness against superbugs.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention is turning to some bleeding edge tech in its bid to stamp out drug-resistant ‘superbug’ bacteria. It’s buying a slew of HP bioprinters (the D300e you see above) as part of a pilot program that could speed up the testing of more effective antibiotics. The machines will give regional labs in New York, Minnesota, Tennessee and Wisconsin their first shot at printing drug samples used for developing and running antimicrobial susceptibility tests. Hospitals won’t have to wait for testing or else risk mistakes like overusing drugs.

The testing will start at CDC’s regional labs in the first quarter of HP’s fiscal 2019 (between November and January). Its initial focus is on widely resistant bacteria. And HP won’t be done once th e bioprinters are in the Center’s hands. HP will help the CDC study the success of the pilot, tweak it if needed, and explore the possibility of wider-scale printer uses if the test proves successful. This may become an instrumental part of fighting superbugs if all goes smoothly.

Via Engadget

Analysis, Big Problems, Healthcare

The doctor is out? Why physicians are leaving their practices to pursue other careers

August 22, 2018

“After 20 years, I quit medicine and none of my colleagues were surprised. In fact, they all said they wish they could do the same,” said one doctor.

The Association of American Medical Colleges projects a shortage of 42,600 to 121,300 physicians by 2030.

The news that New York University will offer free tuition to all its medical school students, in the hope of encouraging more doctors to choose lower-paying specialties, offered hope to those wishing to pursue a career in the field.

However, becoming a doctor remains one of the most challenging career paths you can embark upon. It requires extensive (and expensive) schooling followed by intensive residencies before you’re fully on your feet. The idea, generally, is that all the hard work will pay off not only financially, but also in terms of job satisfaction and work-life balance; then there’s the immeasurable personal benefits of helping people, and possibly even saving lives. In terms of both nobility and prestige, few occupations rank as high.

Continue reading… “The doctor is out? Why physicians are leaving their practices to pursue other careers”

Biotech, cutting edge, Engineering, Healthcare

Don’t bug out: Spider-like microbots will get under your skin … in a good way

August 20, 2018

It might sound like the beginning of a nightmare, but researchers are developing a line of small, insect-inspired robots that could one day crawl into your body and help fix broken bits. They’re suspicious in their squishiness. Soft, flexible, and shaped like spiders. But their creators think future versions could be designed to perform tasks that are out of reach of humans.

In a paper published recently in the journal Advanced Materials, a team of roboticists from Harvard University’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), and Boston University report that they’ve created these multifunctional microbots thanks to a new fabrication process that lets them build millimeter-scale machines with micrometer-scale features. Similarly sized robots have been created before, but not ones as dynamic as this. To demonstrate their breakthrough, they created a transparent spider bot modeled off of the brilliant Australian peacock spider.

Continue reading… “Don’t bug out: Spider-like microbots will get under your skin … in a good way”

Analysis, Big Problems, Healthcare

The five universal laws of human stupidity

August 18, 2018

In 1976, a professor of economic history at the University of California, Berkeley published an essay outlining the fundamental laws of a force he perceived as humanity’s greatest existential threat: Stupidity.

Stupid people, Carlo M. Cipolla explained, share several identifying traits: they are abundant, they are irrational, and they cause problems for others without apparent benefit to themselves, thereby lowering society’s total well-being. There are no defenses against stupidity, argued the Italian-born professor, who died in 2000. The only way a society can avoid being crushed by the burden of its idiots is if the non-stupid work even harder to offset the losses of their stupid brethren.

Continue reading… “The five universal laws of human stupidity”

3D Printer, Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough

3D-printed nerve stem cells could help patch up spinal cord injuries

August 14, 2018

A 3D-printed device, loaded with neuronal stem cells, that can be implanted into an injured spinal cord to help “bridge” the damage,

Spinal injuries can be like downed power lines – even if everything on either side of the injury is perfectly functional, the break can effectively shut down the whole system. Now, researchers at the University of Minnesota have designed a device that could link everything back together again. A silicone guide, covered in 3D-printed neuronal stem cells, can be implanted into the injury site, where it grows new connections between remaining nerves to let patients regain some motor control.

Continue reading… “3D-printed nerve stem cells could help patch up spinal cord injuries”

Big Problems, Cancer, Corporate Manipulation, Healthcare, Science & Technology News

Why haven’t we cured cancer? American Cancer Society – world’s wealthiest “non-profit “

August 7, 2018

Have you ever wondered where all the money goes that you donate to the American Cancer Society ?With the advancement of medicine, you’d think scientists would have unlocked the cure by now with the ACS’s help. Right?.

Is there more to this story than meets the eye?Apparently, the American Cancer Society seems to like the status quo. People with cancer are unnecessarily dying, when a cure is probably within reach of American scientists.

There’s a lot of money to be made by chemotherapy and other primitive treatments especially for the board members and their companies that sit on the ACS board.

“The American Cancer Society is fixated on damage control— diagnosis and treatment— and basic molecular biology, with indifference or even hostility to cancer prevention.

This myopic mindset is compounded by interlocking conflicts of interest with the cancer drug, mammography, and other industries.

Continue reading… “Why haven’t we cured cancer? American Cancer Society – world’s wealthiest “non-profit “”

Augmented Reality, Healthcare, Virtual Reality

VR treatment, even without a therapist, helps people overcome fear of heights

July 29, 2018

OVERCOMING ACROPHOBIA. Afraid of heights? You’re not alone. In fact, acrophobia is one of the most common fears in the world. Now, a team of European researchers has found a new way to help people overcome their fear, no need to climb on any ledges or even talk to a therapist.

The researchers enlisted 100 volunteers for their study, all of whom had a clinically diagnosed fear of heights but were not receiving treatment for their phobia. The researchers then split the volunteers into two groups. Fifty-one volunteers served as the control, undergoing no treatment, while the other 49 had the opportunity to undergo a two-week-long virtual reality (VR) treatment regimen (47 agreed to the program, and 44 completed it). The researchers published the results of their trial in the journal The Lancet Psychiatry on Wednesday.

Continue reading… “VR treatment, even without a therapist, helps people overcome fear of heights”

Analysis, Healthcare, Inventions, Medicine

These mind-blowing images of the human body were made by a new kind of scanner

July 22, 2018

Phil and Anthony Butler aren’t just father and son. The physics professor and bioengineering professor (respectively) are also business partners. And this week, their company, MARS Bioimaging, unveiled a first-of-its-kind x-ray scanner 10 years in the making.

First, a quick recap of how x-ray imaging works. When x-rays travel through your body, they’re absorbed by denser materials (bones) and pass right through softer ones (muscles and other tissues). The x-rays that pass through unimpeded hit a film on the opposite side of your body. These show up as areas of solid black. The places where the x-rays couldn’t pass through appear solid white.

Continue reading… “These mind-blowing images of the human body were made by a new kind of scanner”

Health & Fitness, Healthcare, Medicine, New Discoveries

These anti-aging pills seem to be actually working

July 17, 2018

Pills hailed as the first real “anti-aging” drugs inched a little closer to the market after a study found they cut the number of respiratory infections in the elderly by half.

The drugs: The pills act on an aging-related pathway called TORC1. Inhibiting this pathway “has extended life span in every species studies to date,” according to Joan Mannick, who led the study for drug giant Novartis. Those species include mice and worms.

Continue reading… “These anti-aging pills seem to be actually working”