Roger Kusch, a former top-level German politician, has invented what he calls a “suicide machine.” The machine is aimed at patients who are terminally ill and want to die. Unfortunately it seems that the medical community, German politicians and churches are having a cow about Kusch’s presentation of the killing machine.

From my point of view the machine sounds good, those who know they are going to die are able to suicide painlessly? I know, it sounds morbid, but think about it. What is worse than dying? Suffering as your health fades, your mind fades and then you’re a vegetable that depends on the care of others to sustain life for those last days.

I have had people close to me pass after a long illness, and I loved every minute I got with them, but for the pain involved, physical as well as emotion, it might not be worth it to some. True, not everyone who is dying has the same experience, but from what I have seen… It isn’t a walk in the park.

Some jerk named Wolfgang Huber, the head of Germany’s Lutheran Church, says that, “society must help terminally ill patients deal with their pain rather then accepting suicide as an option.” Well my question is, does he have a disease that is only giving him 6 months to live? If not, he needs to sit down and shut up. The only people who should get to vote for or against the use of a suicide booth should be the terminally ill community. Huber says, “it is against the spirit of our ethics, the spirit of our ethical tradition, the spirit of the Christian image of a human person and against the spirit of our law.” Well screw that, spirits and Christian’s can suck it and believe in God when they are the ones on the chopping block of life.

Kudos to Kusch:

“To those who criticize me, I say: it is none of your business,” Kusch said angrily when confronted with the criticism. He says churches and politicians are using phony and cynical arguments and that he believes a majority of Germans have already accepted assisted suicide as an option.

“There are people who are suffering, and who can’t deal with the pain anymore, and I want to help those people.”

Link

No more pesky breathing into a strangers mouth to save their life, now with the new hands-only CPR you don’t have to worry about kissing their Donna Blue face.

In a major change, the American Heart Association said Monday that hands-only CPR — rapid, deep presses on the victim’s chest until help arrives — works just as well as standard CPR for sudden cardiac arrest in adults.

Hopefully people will be more willing to help strangers and loved ones who collapse with no EMS within the vicinity. The new method is way simpler, “You only have to do two things. Call 911 and push hard and fast on the middle of the person’s chest,”said Dr. Michael Sayre, a professor at Ohio State University for emergency medicine.

Hands-only CPR calls for uninterrupted chest presses — 100 a minute — until paramedics take over or an automated external defibrillator is available to restore a normal heart rhythm?

Why is pressing the chest important? Well, if the heart stops, the blood stops pumping and then you get organ failure. So keep that heart a pumpin’ and you’ll keep the brain a workin’… Save lives, press a chest.

Link

Thanks to DS, I had the pleasure of seeing such a futuristic way of life, even if it is Microsoft it is pretty cool.  Now all of you get to watch this 4 minute long video, it’s long but worth the time.  Digital wallets are the way of the future!

A new, less invasive, technique to detecting diseases quickly and more efficiently. The new technology involves a laser and a tube for you to breathe in. That’s right, you breathe into a tube and the laser detects your ailments.

To use the device, a person breathes into a tube into which a laser is shining. Mirrors positioned around the tube reflect the laser signal to enhance detection of compounds. The laser signal bounces off the different chemicals in the breath sample, and the device is able to detect the unique light signals of specific compounds.

But the new laser technique provides a way to assess the levels of many different compounds in the breath at once, offering a more accurate picture of whether a person has a particular disease.

The advantages of the laser technique — known as optical frequency comb spectroscopy — is that it would provide a painless and non-invasive way of detecting certain diseases. In addition, it could enable physicians to detect some conditions earlier when they may be more easily treated, Ye said.

Totally awesome, it is said that they hope to do this with routine check ups as well. Basically the laser allows you to find out what is wrong with you faster, without the need of waiting for those pesky, and often hard to determine if they are doctor worthy, symptoms. No one likes a hypochondriac.

Link

Investigators are finally getting to the bottom of the kidney-transplanting organization over in India.  Dr. Amit Kumar is the alleged mastermind of the kidney-theft ring.  He has admitted to his involvement in about 300 transplants in the last 12-13 years.  Several other doctors have been accused of taking part in the scheme.

Kumar was quoted saying, “I have not duped anyone.  I have not done anything wrong.  You know that.”

Right now he is only being charged with violating the country’s Foreign Exchange Regulation Act, “which regulates the flow of international currency in the Asian nation.  Kumar was carrying approximately $256,000 in mixed currencies, including U.S. Dollars, Euros and a bank draft made out for Rupees at the time of his arrest.  Police are still trying to some how charge him for the kidney-theft, since he will only get up to four years of prison for the currency violation.

This is by far the most interesting technology I have seen in a while. Although, this Bluetooth technology is not new, this started out for single amputees. The Bluetooth technology is there to mimic the other leg, Marine Lance Cpl. Joshua Bleill’s double Bluetoothed legs mimic each other.

On October 15th, 2006 a bomb exploded under Bleill’s Humvee while on patrol in Iraq. The explosion caused him to lose both of his legs above his knee, now he has 32 pins in his hip and a 6-inch screw holding his pelvis together.

This new generation of prosthetic technology was originally conceived to help amputees who had lost only one leg. But it’s working for Bleill and Army Lt.Col. Gregory Gadson, who is also using the Bluetooth devices in his legs.

“They’re the latest and greatest,” Bleill said, referring to his groundbreaking artificial legs.

Bleill is one of the two Iraq war veterans, both double leg amputees, to be able to use the Bluetooth prosthetics. To keep the prosthetic legs moving in a coordinated fashion, computer chips were installed in each leg to send signals to motors in the artificial joints.

Bleill’s set of prosthetics have Bluetooth receivers strapped to the ankle area. The Bluetooth device on each leg tells the other leg what it’s doing, how it’s moving, whether walking, standing or climbing steps, for example.

With him having this technology he also spends less time in a wheelchair. Since it has built-in motors, Bleill’s legs allow him to walk longer before he tires. He uses canes to walk with them for now, but he is hoping that one day he will be able to ween off the canes and walk without them. He said, “I can walk without canes, but it’s not real pretty”

“It’s only going to react to how I move,” Bleill said. “Unfortunately, sometimes I don’t know those reactions, I don’t know what I’m doing to make it react. So sometimes the leg kicks harder than I want it to, or farther, and then I start perpetuating, and I start moving faster than I really want to.”

Aside from the Bluetooth technology, Bleill’s legs have one other thing in common with a cell phone. They need to be charged overnight. Currently, there are no spare batteries available.

Surgeons in China are working to remove a 22-pound tumor from this man’s face.  Huang Chuncia’s facial tumor started becoming noticeable at the age of 4.   Just last July he was in the hospital for same thing, which made headlines back then too.

With his disease, Huang is left to deal with things like his left ear being at shoulder level, his entire left eye being blocked, his teeth being knocked out and a deformed backbone.  All of those cause issues for him when he is eating, speaking or just trying to hear.

At 31 years-old he has had to endure public ridicule, so he spends most of his time in isolation.   He even quit school at the age of 10 just to be free of the bullies in school.  I read somewhere that someone had asked him to be in a circus freak show.  How sad for someone to have to deal with something like this on a daily basis, but he has high spirits in hopes that his surgery to remove the remaining 22-lbs.  He says, “I hope that when my illness is cured, I can go back home and have a nice spring festival with my family.”

The disease he has is neurofibromatosis, at first I had no idea what this meant, so I read up on it.

The neurofibromatoses are genetic disorders of the nervous system that primarily affect the development and growth of neural (nerve) cell tissues. These disorders cause tumors to grow on nerves and produce other abnormalities such as skin changes and bone deformities.

You can read more of the disease here.

Here is ABC New’s China’s ‘Elephant Man’ to go under the knife

 Update 2/21/08: I was looking into this more when I ran across a video on MSNBC… MSNBC is sort of late on the story, but it is informational as well.  Click here to check it out.

Talk about volunteering, these women give up their uteruses for families to use. Although, the Indian women are making more than they would in 15 years, but, they still are devoting 9 months to a family.

These Indian women are doing a noble cause for families who have issues conceiving children on their own.

Dr. Nayna Patel, the woman behind Anand’s baby boom, defends her work as meaningful for everyone involved.

“There is this one woman who desperately needs a baby and cannot have her own child without the help of a surrogate. And at the other end there is this woman who badly wants to help her (own) family,” Patel said. “If this female wants to help the other one … why not allow that? … It’s not for any bad cause. They’re helping one another to have a new life in this world.”

Although, how long will the process continue without rich families just deciding that pregnancy is far too much work for their manicured hands?

Critics say the couples are exploiting poor women in India — a country with an alarmingly high maternal death rate — by hiring them at a cut-rate cost to undergo the hardship, pain and risks of labor.

“It raises the factor of baby farms in developing countries,” said Dr. John Lantos of the Center for Practical Bioethics in Kansas City, Mo. “It comes down to questions of voluntariness and risk.”

Patel’s surrogate mother agency is one who only accepts the people who are in serious need, or desire to have their own children. Patel only accepts those who cannot have children due to complications such as uterine cancer

Patel also makes sure that every surrogate mother is in good stable health, and as already had one child of their own.

This article was very interesting to me because I have always looked at adoption. I know that adoption is super expensive, but at the same time cost doesn’t matter when it comes to having a family of your own. I had never thought about the surrogate mother option. Thinking of the families who are desperate to have their own little children, surrogate mother sounds like a pleasant option, it’s cheap and Patel makes it sound safer with contracts. Unfortunately the market for surrogate mothers will become corrupt, just as corrupt as the adoption market.

You hear those horror stories about families being tricked into thinking they are getting a healthy baby girl from anywhere, China, Russian even the United States. They go through the process only to get conned into more fees, or the little girl could possibly get kidnapped and sold again. There are plenty of sick-minded fools out there only to make a buck. The surrogate market will be easily attacked if the Government doesn’t regulate.

Click to read more about Patel’s surrogate mother agency.

Group Health has done some surprisingly great commercials.

This one is for the coverage of acupuncture but we have posted plenty of others below:

Group Health | Monkey Bite
Group Health | Looking For A Doc
Group Health | Online Medical Records
Group Health | Get Your Balls Out Of My Face

A two year old girl was born with four legs and arms. Surgeons are working on her to remove the parasitic twin, when in the womb the twins developed but one had no head.

They started the procedure early Tuesday in souther Indian city of Bangalore and is supposed to last for 40 hours. Surgeons are taking turns with eight-hour shifts.

The parents, Shambhu and Poonam Tatma, named their daughter after the Hindu goddess of wealth who has four arms. Lakshmi, the girl undergoing the surgery, was born into a poor Indian family, and the people nearby believe that she is the goddess Lakshmi. As the news of her birth spread, the locals waited in line to be blessed by the baby. Although her parents soon learned that they must keep her in hiding after they had been approached by men offering money in exchange to put Lakshmi, their daughter, in a circus.

The couple, who earn just $1 a day as casual laborers, wanted her to have the operation but were unable to pay for the rare procedure, which has never before been performed in India.

After Patil visited the girl in her village from Narayana Health City hospital in Bangalore, the hospital’s foundation agreed to fund the $200,000 operation.

The operation is being conducted by specialists in pediatrics, neurosurgery, orthopedics and plastic surgery. Without it, doctors say, Lakshmi would be unlikely to survive beyond early adolescence.

Check out the original article on CNN.