Stories tagged human body
Thinking about donating your body?: This picture was found on flickr's "Creative Commons" page.
Courtesy kevin813Want to be useful? A once in a lifetime oppurtunity presents itself
long after you die. Many people nowadays have given their body to
science. This awkward suggestion benefits medical research and gives
u a chance to help out.
what do u think? Comment!!
Tags : Here’s an intriguing thought puzzle for those of us cruising into (or through) middle age: let’s say you could magically rejuvenate three organs like the heart, lung or liver; or entire systems, like your nervous system or immune system. Which three would you choose, and why?
What do you think> Leave us a note in the comments.
It's not just for high schoolers anymore: now adults can take the President's Physical Fitness test, too. You can log your data every day, and see how your state measures up. If you post your data, you can get an evaluation, and come back over time to see how your fitness level has changed. Or you can just sit on the sofa and browse the data, which is what I'll probably end up doing after an initial burst of enthusiasm. Hey, pass the chips, will ya?
The cells of our bodies are constantly in motion. In fact, zap them with light and they vibrate, creating sound – much too faint to hear, but sensitive instruments can record the vibrations. Two biologists at the University of Manchester in England have found that healthy cells vibrate differently than cancerous cells. They are hoping to use this to develop new, less-invasive tests to diagnose cancer.
Body Parts
Courtesy ClaudecfThe trade in human tissue is huge around the world. A cadaver dissected for parts can not only improve the life of someone stricken with say a bad knee or a bum ticker, but can also bring in tens of thousands of dollars of revenue to businesses involved in the tissue trade. Unfortunately, the demand seems to far outweigh the supply. And when supplies are low, black markets thrive.
For example, just last week a kidney theft ring was broken up in India, and there’s the whole issue of illegal tissue harvesting in China. But now it looks like our own country has a finger in it, too.
Civil lawsuits are running amok against some US companies that processed body tissues they purchased from a man accused of secretly and illegally chopping up human cadavers for resale of the body parts.
Michael Mastromarino, owner of Biomedical Tissue Services of Fort Lee, New Jersey, is charged with stealing bodies, opening graves, unlawful dissection, forgery, and enterprise corruption, and faces up to 54 years in prison. The company, which was closed down by the FDA in early 2006, was also cited for improperly screening tissue for communicable diseases. And now in an effort to reduce his jail time, Mastromarino appears to have had a change of heart and is ready to plead guilty. The deal would include cooperating with investigators, and perhaps turning against the companies he serviced.
"Let's just say that he is going to assist them and give any information he has about the processors and their role," said his attorney, Mario Gallucci.
The tissue processors who purchased the body parts from BTS include Regeneration Technologies Inc., LifeCell Corp. and Tutogen Medical Inc., and two nonprofits, the Blood and Tissue Center of Central Texas, and Lost Mountain Tissue Bank.
Mastromarino, a former oral surgeon, is alleged to have gone door to door to funeral homes looking to acquire human tissue. He is thought to have supplied about 10,000 people with spare parts through the tissue processing firms.
The processors "loved his tissue and encouraged him to get more and more", Gallucci said.
The companies are already facing hundreds of civil lawsuits from relatives of deceased family members whose bodies were involved in this grisly endeavor.
Medtronic, the Minnesota-based corporation, is also being sued because it received some body parts from Regeneration. But officials at the medical giant (which had no direct contact with Mastromarino) claim the suits are without merit, and don’t believe the plaintiffs have a leg to stand on.
Mastromarino’s testimony could mean lots more trouble for his former clients if he implicates them in the crimes.
"Mastromarino can certainly tell us things that may lead us in directions we haven't been able to go before," said one official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
But the companies insist Mastromarino was a shady operator and a hack who deceived everyone. They all claim they had no idea the material they purchased from him was illegally procured.
South Carolina attorney Kevin Dean of the firm of Motley Rice is handling hundreds of lawsuits against the processors and thinks Mastromarino’s testimony could prove useful for his cases.
"It seems to suggest that everything that the plaintiffs have said all along is completely accurate. That the tissue processors are more involved than they want everyone to believe," he said.
If Mastromarino really has something to get off his chest about the processors’ involvement, and it proves true, the financial exposure could end up costing the companies an arm and a leg.
LINKS
Livescience story
Washington Post story
New York magazine article
Your body has ten times more bacterial cells than human cells. Betcha you’ll never feel lonely again!
Super-cool video from Harvard. Version with narration explaining what you're seeing here. (Warning: contains language that no one short of a Ph.D. can understand.)
Seems like only yesterday the government was forking over billions of dollars to sequence the human genome. Today, anybody can have their personal DNA sequenced for about $1,000. Previously, doctors would test a patient’s DNA only for a few specific genes that might be related to their condition. Now, perfectly healthy people can have their entire DNA tested (well, about 1/3,000th of it, anyway), to look for all known genetic conditions.
He only looks short?: I don't know. He looks like a darn hobbit here. (image from Wikimedia commons)According to the BMC Public Health journal, kids these days are both taller and heavier than kids, uh… used to be.
At any rate, BMC compared the height, weight, and body-mass indexes (a sort of weight to height ratio) of teenagers during a 1966-1969 study period to those of teens from a 1995-1997 study. The mean height, weight, and body-mass indexes for almost all age and sex groups increased significantly.
While these figures might initially provoke comments on childhood obesity, BMC is quick to point out that in increase in the mean body-mass index isn’t necessarily a bad thing – rather, it suggests that childhood nutrition is improving. The exceptions to the increasing means, in this case, may be more significant.
The study indicated that while all males age 14-18, as well as 18-year-old females, showed increased body-mass indexes, females aged 14-17 were entirely exempt from the trend, and perhaps were suffering from being underweight.
This study got me thinking - if I ever have children, I hope they remain smaller than me for the duration of my life. I think it would be too frustrating to have to physically look up to my kid.
The study also reminded me of something that has come up in my conversations several times in the last week: Napoleon’s height.
Now, the height of the little emperor may not be related to this article in any significant way, but I think it’s important that everyone is aware of the debate. We all know that Napoleon was a little guy, right? Historians generally agree that Bonaparte’s height was just about 5’ 2”, which is, of course, nothing to be embarrassed about, but it’s relatively tiny, especially in this day and age of towering, lumbering teenagers (see the BMC Public Health journal). However, some have argued that this measurement was originally taken in French inches. What’s the difference? Just this: your French inch is slightly larger than your Imperial inch (which we use). If this was the case, Napoleon’s true height would have been about 5’ 6”. No Yao Ming, but 5’ 6” was slightly taller than the average Frenchman of the early 19th century. He would likely have appeared short, because Napoleon was often surrounded by members of his elite guard, who were almost always 6’ or taller.
Then again, Napoleon was reported to have been measured after his death, on British-controlled St. Helena. This would suggest that he was indeed measured in British inches. And let’s not rule out the influence of propaganda one either side.
It’s a tricky problem to solve, but it’s important that we do. How else will we figure out Bonaparte’s body-mass index? While he lost weight shortly before he died (and how that happened is another mystery), we do know that he weight approximately 200 pounds in the last year of his life. 5’ 2” and a deuce is impressive, but we can’t say for sure, can we.
So how are we to figure out Napoleon’s height? I suggested recently that someone could examine his portraits for various items that could be used as a scale (if only he were depicted holding a #2 pencil more often!). I thought this was pretty clever, but then it was suggested that, instead, someone just go and dig him up to measure his skeleton. This seems awfully rude, though, and not very much fun (unless you’re into that sort of thing).
So, in the name of science and a more accurate picture of changing body-mass indexes, does anyone have an idea on how to best determine Napoleon’s true height? An idea, that won’t result in your being haunted by a tiny Frenchman?
Rethinking CPR: New research is questioning if CPR does more harm than good. The thinking is that a sudden surge of oxygen into the body kills cells faster than a gradual return to normal conditions.The conventional wisdom has been that when someone has a heart attack or other catastrophic health problem, the quick revival of blood flow and breathing will return them to life.
Now, new research is questioning that conventional wisdom, and is even wondering if the process of CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) could actually be leading to a quicker death. Hold on to your hat and read on.
The old thinking was that cells of the body would begin to die within four or five minutes of the stoppage of oxygen and nutrients coming to them through blood. The quicker a heart can be restarted and breathing can begin, the better the chances were for a body to go on living.
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have been studying heart cells under microscopes. What they’ve found throws all that stuff up into the air. What they found was that cells cut off from their lifeline of blood died hours later, not minutes.
Now here’s the real freaky part. The researchers think that the cells die faster when their oxygen supply is quickly returned.
So the quick surge of oxygen and energy into the body may be just the wrong thing do to someone whose breathing and blood flow have stopped. These researchers are thinking that hypothermia – extreme cold temperatures bringing the body’s core temperature to 33 degrees C – might be a better option. Then medical professionals would have time to adjust the blood chemistry for a safe, gradual return of oxygen and nutrients to the cells, keeping them alive.
University of California researchers have tried a slightly different approach of treatment at four hospitals. Cardiac patients received a blood infusion that would keep their hearts in a state of suspended animation. They were on a heart-lung device to maintain blood flow to the brain until the heart could be slowly restarted. The tests were conducted in just 34 patients, but 80 percent were discharged from a hospital okay. Under the old methods, the survival rate is 15 percent.
A lot more research has to be done, but the findings do shake up what we’ve traditionally thought about how to keep people living. Share your thoughts on this topic with other Science Buzz readers here.
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