Malaria doesn't just go away

Ah, malaria; scourge of the tropics, the reason why I can't donate blood, and, thanks to her flat-out lies about DDT, why Rachel Carson is responsible for more deaths than Hitler. Andre Malcolm at Investors.com has a fascinating article on the disease that includes this telling observation:

Today’s generation – healthy and robust, beneficiaries of earlier, concerted efforts to wipe out malaria from America evidently have little empathy for doing the same efforts for Africans. Despite proof it can be done, a lazy argument that ‘we just have to live with it’ is making the rounds. Our forefathers didn’t accept that, why do the beneficiaries of their hard work shrug off their duty to the next generation or to those in this generation who are still under siege from this ruinous parasite? Our means are more than ever before in history, so why the unnecessary surrender? 

The second the world believed it might be vulnerable to dying by avian flu, the media gushed and money surged to the cause … evidently the same people who panicked about avian flu cutting their own lives short don’t think malaria can reach them, so they aren’t interested. No skin in the malaria game. The ‘we have to live with it’ is really, ‘they have to live with it. Yet, if malaria re-appeared in Philadelphia or in Washington, DC where it once flourished, how long would it take for the massive public panic and a frantic outcry to DO something?

People who don't read history forget that malaria wasn't always a tropical disease.  In the 19th century it ranged as far north as Minnesota and in East Anglia it was so endemic that the pubs used to put opium in the beer as a prophylactic.

It made the coaching inns every interesting when coach parties of outsiders not used to the stuff had a pint or two.

Paralysed woman controls robot arm

It's breakthroughs like this that are one reason why I don't have much truck with the euthanasia people.  While there's life, there's hope.

The tide turns

DARPA is looking at using tobacco to save soldiers who've been exposed to nerve gas.

And so it begins.

They're hiding something

The Centre for Disease Control put out a comic book about a zombie outbreak as a way of teaching the public about epidemics and public health.

Or so they claim.

Misophonia

Nickelback: A leading cause of misophonia.

It's amazing what you learn in the New York Times.  Apparently, I've been suffering most of my life from "misophonia"*; a condition that causes people who listen to certain sounds to fly into a rage.  I certainly suffer from that and very badly.  It's a relief to know this and now I can go forward in life.

Here I was all these years under the spell of a psychological condition while I thought it was just that Radio One broadcasts a load of mindless drivel and call it pop music, the BBC indulges reporters and presenters with appalling regional accents, actors have forgotten how to project, certain politicians never learned to engage the clutch in their brains, the whippet breeders down the road are conducting unholy experiments in the wee hours of the morning and quad-bikers have no consideration for writers trying to beat a deadline.

*Not to be confused  with miso soup, which is quite tasty.

The Mermaid

The Japanese develop the world's first self-propelled endoscope.

True, it may be a tremendous breakthrough that will save many lives and alleviate the sufferings of many more, but if anyone comes near me with that thing, I'm out the door.

Liverettes

Scientists from the Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center have managed to grow teeny livers in a laboratory.

The next step is to grow teeny onions to go with them

Sleep tight, America

A quote from Mr Barack Hussein Obama's new head of Medicare and Medicaid:

Cynics beware, I am romantic about the National Health Service; I love it. … The NHS is one of the astounding human endeavours of modern times.

Having lived under the NHS, I would advise everyone not to panic. Just keep calm, take a deep breath... RUN!

Gollum: Insane or extremely rational?

Nasty psychiatrissstss! Hates them, my precious! They locks uss up in padded cell! They makes uss look at inkblotsss! Tricksy, sly inkblotsss! Nasty Elvish pills burnsss our throat!
...

Yesss We Hatesss themsss Evil oness yess my preciousss we hatess themsss

But They Helpsss us!

No they hurtsss usss, hurtsss usss sore!

I can relate to that.

Butter ban

They can have my butter when they
pry it from my cold, greasy fingers.

Cardiac surgeon and staunch defender of individual liberty Shyam Kolvekar of London's Heart Hospital calls for an outright ban on butter.

That's it. Time to raise the barricades.

Curry cancer cure

Curry: Is there nothing it can't do?

Divorce: The second hand smoke of matrimony

If the health and safety Nazis are consistent, then divorce should be banned immediately as a cancer risk.

Homeopathic lager

Takes me back to my medical school days.

Swine Flu Update

Things get out of hand at the hundred acres woods.

Swine Flu Survival Kit

How to survive the swine flu outbreak? You could go with hand sanitisers, rubber gloves and face masks, but personally, I have other plans.

Maybe, But I Wouldn't Try It

BBC headline:

Can eating Chinese staples ward off breast cancer?

OW...OW... OW!!!

Count Dracula, Call Your Service

The United States Defense Department is developing a machine to manufacture real human blood using stem cells (and not embryonic, if I know anything about the field).

Blood drives a thing of the past and no danger of transmitting diseases; this is so ethical that I can't believe that it's a product of modern medicine.

The Bat Artificial Kidney

In later years, Batman's utility belt was put to less glamorous use.

Doggy Dialysis

NHS & BBC

The BBC marks the 60^th anniversary of the founding of the NHS with a story that sets the benchmark for objectivity:

Three generations grateful for NHS

This headline that would do credit to the North Korean news agency was balanced in the story itself by lines like this:

Anthony was born with blue asphyxia. Today he is convinced the NHS saved his life - and that of his mother.

And from there It gets downright sycophantic. Overcrowded hospitals? Endless waiting lists? Mixed sex wards? Treatment rationing? A haemorrhaging budget with an army of bureaucrats to a squad of doctors? Sorry, no mention of that here.

All we need now is a pronouncement from Minitruth that all diseases have been eradicated and we'll have the set.