Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
Son's plea to let his mother go. "By promoting longevity and technologically inhibiting death, we have created a new biological status held by an ever-growing part of the nation, a no-exit state nearly as remote from life as death"
The future has arrived: Two tetraplegics, paralysed and unable to speak, have regained some independence. They can control robotic arms by power of thought alone. Tiny electrodes implanted in the motor cortex work the magic
Will we ever build an artificial womb? Complications exist, but lure is clear. "Ectogenesis comes with an irresistible hook: This technology would bring us closer to the day when motherhood and fatherhood mean the same thing"
Exploring the complexities of engineering an effective, universal defence against the HIV virus. "Creating an HIV vaccine is like trying to fire a gun at millions of shielded, moving targets. Oh, and they can eat your bullets"
"Surgery is a profession defined by its authority to cure by means of bodily invasion. The brutality and risks of opening a living person's body have long been apparent, the benefits only slowly and haltingly worked out"
"Organ transplants would be peripheral to the story of death if they were what the organ trade claimed them to be: The neat extraction of body parts from totally dead, unfeeling corpses." Regrettably that is far from the case
Michael Jackson's doctor gave him Propofol, an anaesthetic drug, as a sedative. Bad move. "Propofol doesn’t cause sleep. If given enough, it will cause oblivion, but the cerebral activity necessary for sleep does not take place"
Was "serotonin hypothesis" of depression discarded too soon? Latest research suggests serotonin is indeed central to functioning of mood, but "its mechanism of action is vastly more subtle and more magnificent than we ever imagined"
A medic in Afghanistan. "I was running a forward combat aid station as a general medical officer to a Marine Corps infantry battalion. Standard protocol is to gather the casualty's disembodied limbs and tissue as best you can"
Kobe Bryant is well past the age when NBA performance usually nosedives. How does he do it? One of the keys may be a new therapy he's had, in which his own tissues were extracted, manipulated, and then reintroduced to his body
"Each year more than 26 million people in the United States go to a doctor complaining about a cough." But surprisingly little is understood about coughing. Here's what the scientists have managed to piece together so far
"If windborne spread turns out to be true, the Kawasaki disease agent will be the first viable human disease pathogen proved to cross thousands of kilometres of ocean by natural means." Unlikely to be the last. Flu may do the same
