DailyDirt: Medical Curiosities

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Thu, Dec 30th 2010 5:00pm — Michael Ho

While the fundamental mysteries of the universe seem pretty far from being fully understood, one might assume a more practical science like the field of medicine should be a bit easier to grasp. But that's not really the case at all. There are a vast number of medical curiosities which are only starting to be studied. When even a fairly straightforward phenomenon like the Placebo Effect is commonly misunderstood, it doesn't quite bode well for other more complicated medical studies. Still, modern medicine has come a long way from poorly-trained barbers. Here are a few quick links to some interesting medical discoveries.

You are not only what you eat. You're also what your father ate. Epigenetics kinda messes with selfish genes a bit. [url]
A cure for HIV might involve a bone marrow transplant. There's only one case so far of this working, and about 30% of bone marrow transplant patients don't survive the procedure -- so no celebrations are planned just yet. [url]
In 2008, a girl's blood type was changed after receiving a ~~bone marrow~~ liver transplant. Her immune system was also converted to that of her donor, so if this procedure were just a bit less random and risky -- there might be some cool treatments from this process...? [url]
Big amygdalas are correlated with being social. With this in mind, social media experts everywhere might want to get their heads examined. [url]

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Filed Under: amygdala, bone marrow transplant, epigenetics

13 Comments

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Joe, 30 Dec 2010 @ 5:32pm

hmmm
ok - curious here - why use bit.ly here? what's the benefit of using that and then separating out a separate url link?
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- Mike Masnick (profile), 30 Dec 2010 @ 5:36pm
  
  Re: hmmm
  ok - curious here - why use bit.ly here? what's the benefit of using that and then separating out a separate url link?
  
  Seems this question gets asked (and answered) every other day on these posts.
  
  Mike likes to see how many people click on these stories, so he gets a sense of what people like. Bitly makes it easy to track that data (and, for anyone to see it, actually). Yet, some people hate Bitly and wanted to know what the actual URLs were so he added those at the end?
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  - Joe, 30 Dec 2010 @ 6:30pm
    
    Re: Re: hmmm
    ah - makes sense, thanks. I understand why people don't like it as i often hover to look at the url before jumping. cheers
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  - Michael Ho (profile), 31 Dec 2010 @ 11:59am
    
    Re: Re: hmmm
    Yah... we'll have to put up a persistent explanation for these links somewhere. hmm..
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    - PandaMarketer (profile), 9 Jan 2011 @ 2:29am
      
      URL vs Title
      I ALWAYS click on the [url] link.
      
      Always. Not because I don't like url shorteners or tracking, because I just like to know where I'm going first.
      
      Maybe you or Mike could put the url in a hover pop up on the Title Link?.
      Simple as adding title="#"
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      - Michael Ho (profile), 9 Jan 2011 @ 4:08pm
        
        Re: URL vs Title
        Good suggestion, PandaMarketer.... I guess we could try that.
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Lawrence D'Oliveiro, 30 Dec 2010 @ 6:22pm

Barbers Used To Be Surgeons, Not Doctors
Strange, but true. And doctors used to look down on these barber-surgeons.
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Anonymous Coward, 31 Dec 2010 @ 1:07am

This reminds me of how we keep letting others decide how we will have healthcare in the future.

Sorry I know this has nothing to do with what was shown here is just related somehow.

I was thinking of how most kitchens today are more clean than the labs that manufactured medicines in the 60's and 70's.

Opensource drug production.

http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/open-source-drug-making-process
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Red Monkey (profile), 31 Dec 2010 @ 3:48am

amygdalia - fear - social
Wait, isn't the amygdala associated with feelings of fear? Does that mean people who are more sociable are more fearful? But many unsociable people complain they are "afraid" of striking up a conversation. Very strange.
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Pixelation, 31 Dec 2010 @ 8:55am

Epigenetics
I watched a show on Epigenetics a while back. It was really interesting and a little scary. The environmental impact of chemicals on people and even their offspring through multiple generations is coming to light. The cool thing was the guy cured of lung cancer using Epigenetic therapy. Mapping the human genome is just a start. Now to study what turns those genes on and off. Very cool.
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Travis Miller (profile), 31 Dec 2010 @ 11:10am

Misleading link title
The line about "blood type was changed after receiving a bone marrow transplant" is very misleading. It actually makes the article sound stupid, because it is no big deal for this to occur. The big deal is that it happened with a LIVER transplant.
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- Michael Ho (profile), 2 Jan 2011 @ 11:48am
  
  Re: Misleading link title
  Oops. good catch. I pulled this story from memory and forgot that it was a liver transplant. whoops.
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Wesha (profile), 1 Jan 2011 @ 9:32pm

Mike, you'd be surprised, but I'm an example of blood type change. In my infancy, they did blood transfusion from my father, and after that, I ended up with his blood type rather than mother's.
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