Brenda Talavera was pretty matter-of-fact when her doctor suggested that they implant a stimulator the size of a small cell phone inside her brain.
"If it was going to make me better, do it," the Seattle woman said while standing in her living room filled with hockey memorabilia. "If it didn't work, they could remove it."
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| ©Andy Rogers / P-I
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| Brenda Talavera uses a tethered wand to collect information about her epileptic seizures that's stored on the device implanted in her brain. She then uses a computer to transmit the data to her doctor. Talavera is part of a clinical trial at Swedish that is testing the effectiveness of the Responsive Neurostimulator System, which detects abnormal electrical activity in the brain and then delivers electrical stimulation.
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Comment: Do we really want to get comfortable with
this kind of technology?
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| ©David McNew/Getty Images
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| Nalgene brand water bottles had used bisphenol-a, which some studies in animals linked to hormonal changes.
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Nalgene, the brand that popularized water bottles made from hard, clear and nearly unbreakable polycarbonate, will stop using the plastic because of growing concern over one of its ingredients.
The decision by Nalgene Outdoor Products, a unit of Thermo Fisher Scientific, based in Rochester, came after reports that the Canadian government would declare the chemical bisphenol-a, or BPA, toxic. Some animal studies have linked the chemical to changes in the hormonal system.
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| Alex Lenkei could hear bones cracking but felt nothing
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A hypnotist stunned medics by snubbing anaesthetic and sending himself into a trance before undergoing surgery.
Mind-bender Alex Lenkei, who could hear the cracking of bones as the surgeon sawed at his hand but felt nothing, is thought to be the first person in the world to perform the feat.
A Washington Psychotherapist Suggests How to Tell . . . and How to Treat the Symptoms
You may not realize it, but a great number of people suffer from EDD.
No, you're not reading a misprint of ADD or ED. The acronym stands for empathy deficit disorder.
Comment: The article certainly reads like an apology for psychopathy by assuming that all individuals who lack empathy are suffering from EDD. The examples he gives, people in positions of authority or power, sound like psychopaths, not people suffering from a "disorder".
The question that comes to mind, however, is to what extent there could be such a disorder as a result of the control of society by psychopaths. When one is raised in a place such as the US where all the standards are set by deviants, where the idea of individual material success is hammered into everyone from birth, where all the criteria for success have to do with wealth, position, material goods, and where clawing your colleague to get to the top is encouraged, it may well be that many people get what little spark of empathy they might have driven out of them at a young age.
The Canadian government is said to be ready to declare as toxic a chemical widely used in plastics for baby bottles, beverage and food containers as well as linings in food cans.
Japan's health ministry said Tuesday it plans to inoculate thousands of health officials with a government stockpile of vaccines to prepare for a possible bird flu pandemic in humans.
Under the plan, pending approval Wednesday, about 6,000 quarantine and immigration officials, doctors and other health workers will be vaccinated by the end of this year, Health and Welfare Ministry official Kishiko Yamaguchi said.
The H5N1 virus known as Avian flu or the bird flu is undergoing what experts are calling a troubling pattern of mutations which are allowing the virus to spread from human to human.
South Korea has confirmed their fourth outbreak of this virus, this year, according to
Kim Chang-sup, an official for South Korea's Agriculture Ministry.
Martha Rosenberg
AlterNetTue, 15 Apr 2008 02:54 UTC
In lieu of exercise or a healthy diet, Americans now have the option of losing weight with a drug that causes bowel incontinence.
Since GlaxoSmithKline's (GSK) high profile launch of alli last summer, the first FDA-approved diet drug sold over the counter, the only figures that have flattened are sales.
Two million starter packages sold in the first few weeks at $49.99 for 60 pills and $69.99 for 120, thanks to a $150 million populist rollout that included displays in Targets, Wal-Marts and warehouse clubs.
A gene mutation responsible for the most common form of inherited colon cancer is older and more common than formerly believed, according to a recent study.
The findings provide a better understanding of the spread and prevalence of the American Founder Mutation, a common cause in North America of Lynch syndrome, a hereditary cancer syndrome that greatly increases a person's risk for developing cancers of the colon, uterus and ovaries.
The same investigators discovered the mutation in 2003. That research identified nine families with the mutation and concluded that a German immigrant couple brought the mutation to North America in 1727.
The genes most widely believed to cause schizophrenia are, in fact, unlikely to play a role in the condition, according to the most comprehensive genetic study of its kind.
Comment: Do we really want to get comfortable with this kind of technology?