Category: Health and Medicine

The British government is to ban schools from offering sugary and fatty snacks, such as potato chips and candy (sorry I mean crisps and chocolate), to students through vending machines and to improve the lunchtime menu, partly thanks to public pressure and media campaigning over the last year. The BBC interviewed several studens who said it was unfair and that should be given the same choices as adults. One student said he’d just head to the local shops to buy his snacks, implying that the initiative would have little effect on student health…

But, at least he’s going to have to walk or cycle to the shop to get his snack fix rather than grabbing it on site from a vending machine. It’s only a generation since children were not allowed to eat anything in school never mind choosing between apples or chocolate.

Here’s one to really get the animal rights activists up in arms (as if they aren’t already). The BBC reports that scientists have been able to “introduce most of a human chromosome into mice – and create the most successful recreation of Down’s syndrome so far.” I’m not sure whether the activists will find this better or worse than the ear grown on a mouse’s back in 1999 by Joseph Vacanti. Regardless, a mouse model of the disease will inevitably lead to controversy, but more importantly, it will lead to a better understanding of the syndrome itself.

An unusual keyword to say the least, but someone surfing the net found sciencebase with it. So, here’s a quick definition:

Progressive multifocal leukencephalopathy (PML) is rare but debilitating. It is an inflammatory response to viral infection observed in immunocompromised patients, such as AIDS sufferers. The inflammation leads to loss of the myelin that insulates nerves within the white matter of the brain. Visual defects, headaches, and speech/language problems result.

There is no dedicated treatment but AIDS patients undergoing therapy with highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) often improve significantly.

Researchers have completed a survey of the invasive sea squirt colony on the Georges Bank. A wider area was searched for the sea squirt in 2005, and it was mapped over about twice the area observed in 2004. Results show that the species is present in two adjacent areas totaling 88 square miles in US waters near the US-Canada boundary. The very large mat-like colonies observed in 2004 have been replaced by fewer smaller ones. The Georges Bank occurrence is the largest known infestation of colonial sea squirts in a major offshore fishing ground.

And, doesn’t it lend itself to an oddly apt sounding GWB headline?

Is it squeamishness or superstition that makes the announcement from Newcastle University of plans to create a “three-parent” embryo controversial? I cannot see a profound difference between this kind of “non-natural” method of conception and any of the plethora of IVF and related treatments. They’re all non-natural when compared to the conventional approach to conception, after all.

However, the potential benefits of this new approach could be immense, when considered from the perspective of mitochondrial disease, which it seeks to prevent. So, what’s it to be non-natural and healthy or natural and not?

A neighbour approached a stranger who knocked on our front door three days in a row while we were on vacation. Apparently, my ferret had been sighted in the grounds of the local school! I was so relieved…except that I don’t own a ferret. I can only asusme that there was some transient overlap with the parallel universe in which I do own a ferret…either that or the world’s gone mad (more likely).

It’s not something I can claim as my own really, but my name was an answer on the US TV show Final Jeopardy some time ago. Apparently, the associated question was “Who invented the computer reset ‘Control-Alt-Delete’?” Well, it wasn’t me, but it was my namesake at IBM during the early 1980s. And, where would we all be without him? Stuck in an endless blue screen of death state I reckon.