Nobel prizes do not begin to recognize all the scientific advances overcoming human frailties. Actually, scientists and others have a lot to work with: the capabilities of the human body, including its immune system, and brains.
From a wheelchair-accessible igloo built by a Dad to robotic legs that enabled a veteran to walk for the first time in 30 years, people are not giving up on those with infirmities. A performer with no feet can be "Dancing with the Stars" on TV, a young lady with Downs Syndrome has modeled a gown on a designer's catwalk, a sightless artist's paintings hang in a gallery, a former spy recovered from being poisoned by foreign agents. Google's 2019 Super Bowl commercial showed how video game controllers can be adapted for those with disabilities. Users can open packaging for games with their teeth, if necessary.
Around the world, people are figuring out how to provide the little boost some need to keep connected with society. That's always been done. Ben Franklin realized older people needed bifocals when their eyes' focus changed. Someone came up with white canes to help sighted people look out for the blind. FDR could become President with the help of leg braces, a wheelchair, and a car's driver. And Dr. Salk created a cure for polio so victims of the disease no longer needed these assists.
At abledata.com, check out "assistive technology information" about the wide range of products available to overcome walking, sitting, personal care, communication, hearing, and other limitations.Also see usicd.org (the U.S. International Council on Disabilities), the authors at disabilityinkidlit.com, and read The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl 2 Fuzzy, 2 Furious by Shannon and Dean Hale. A teen character wears a hearing aid.
Several special projects deserve mention. In Washington, D.C., deaf, hard-of-hearing, and hearing employees run a Starbucks using American Sign Language. In Brazil, trendwatching.com tells how a foundation for the blind and a beer institute teamed up to teach blind students to employ their enhanced smell and taste in service to the sensory analysis of beer. The first of "The 50 Best Inventions of 2018" featured by TIME magazine this year (Nov.28/Dec.3, 2018 issue) is a robotic arm that updated the artificial arm, shown on PBS's "Antique Roadshow," that was invented for injured soldiers in the American Civil War.
While helping an 80-year-old friend navigate a luncheon outing, I saw how easily she converted her walker to a wheelchair, locked a brake, and hung her purse on the handle. If she wanted to take any of what she didn't eat home, she had a bag hanging ready on the other handle. To fit in my car, the unlocked walker/chair easily collapsed. In his final years, a therapy dog helped former President George H. W. Bush the way animals, including a horse, assist and comfort ill, blind, and other disabled people.
According to TIME magazine's section on 2018's innovations (Nov. 26/Dec. 3, 2018), three million Americans need to get around in wheelchairs. Whill's new $4,000 electric Model C1 wheelchair, available in different colors, can travel 10 miles indoors and out, climb 2-inch obstacles, maneuver in cramped spaces, and disassemble for transport in minutes.
Elsewhere, scientists work to discover what can help us and what can hurt us. Glyphosate was hailed as a way to rid fields of weeds but it also was discovered to be a possible cancer-causing agent for humans. The same gene editing that promises to rid the world of malaria-carrying mosquitoes can inject dangerous mutations into generations of humans. Controversy continues to fuel debate over how cellphone radiation might contribute to memory loss, brain cancer and sperm damage. The manufacturer of Truvada tries to warn those who use the pill that reduces the risk of contracting HIV through sex that additional safe sex practices are still needed to prevent pregnancy, syphilis and other sexually transmitted infections. Besides, for Truvada or its generic equivalents to work, those who need it have to come forward.
The good news is: young people always will have an opportunity to create ways to overcome human limitations, and all of us humans know there are folks thinking up ways to make our lives better.
Showing posts with label Down's syndrome. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Down's syndrome. Show all posts
Friday, October 26, 2018
Tuesday, June 13, 2017
Babies Helped with Unused Vojta Therapy
Using the Vojta (YOY-tuh) method, developed by the Czech neurologist, Vaclav Vojta, in the early 1950s, pressure applied to nine zones of a baby's body can activate muscles, mental activity, and proper breathing in those born with the motor disabilities associated with cerebral palsy and Down's syndrome.
One medical book describes Down's syndrome as a birth defect of Mongoloid children who have "stubby fingers and hands, a flat face, slanted eyes and a sweet disposition." The book goes on to say, "Mongolism can usually be detected by sampling the amniotic fluid so that an abortion can be performed if the fetus is affected."
Why would doctors skip to an abortion, when the development of a baby with a sweet disposition could be helped by the Vojta method, used, not only in the Czech Republic, but also in Germany, Italy, Norway, Poland, Romania, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, India, Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Peru, and Syria?
A Vojta therapist at the Jubilee Mission Medical College and Research Institute in Thrissur, India,
suggests the therapy is not widely used, because there is no profit payoff. Once parents are trained, they perform the pressure therapy regularly at home with no equipment or drugs. Perhaps, there also is another answer. As in the case of blue light phototherapy found to destroy the superbugs that resist the antibiotics used to kill staph infections, Western doctors discounted research on the Vojta method conducted in a country behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War (See the earlier post, "Medical Profession Suffers from International Conflict.")
Since the successful reduction of motor problems depends on how early the Vojta treatment begins and how efficiently it is applied, there should be no delay in trying this therapy in every country. After undergoing treatment before a baby turns 1 year old, although there is no cure for the underlying medical defects, speech problems and a delay in crawling and walking can be overcome. Most Vojta-treated children can learn to speak and walk.
One medical book describes Down's syndrome as a birth defect of Mongoloid children who have "stubby fingers and hands, a flat face, slanted eyes and a sweet disposition." The book goes on to say, "Mongolism can usually be detected by sampling the amniotic fluid so that an abortion can be performed if the fetus is affected."
Why would doctors skip to an abortion, when the development of a baby with a sweet disposition could be helped by the Vojta method, used, not only in the Czech Republic, but also in Germany, Italy, Norway, Poland, Romania, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, India, Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Peru, and Syria?
A Vojta therapist at the Jubilee Mission Medical College and Research Institute in Thrissur, India,
suggests the therapy is not widely used, because there is no profit payoff. Once parents are trained, they perform the pressure therapy regularly at home with no equipment or drugs. Perhaps, there also is another answer. As in the case of blue light phototherapy found to destroy the superbugs that resist the antibiotics used to kill staph infections, Western doctors discounted research on the Vojta method conducted in a country behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War (See the earlier post, "Medical Profession Suffers from International Conflict.")
Since the successful reduction of motor problems depends on how early the Vojta treatment begins and how efficiently it is applied, there should be no delay in trying this therapy in every country. After undergoing treatment before a baby turns 1 year old, although there is no cure for the underlying medical defects, speech problems and a delay in crawling and walking can be overcome. Most Vojta-treated children can learn to speak and walk.
Monday, April 10, 2017
The Importance of Studying Literature in a Scientific Age
Just after I began reading Siddhartha Mukherjee's engaging and informative book, The Gene, I saw Julia, a new Muppet with autism, joined the characters on Sesame Street. Did a gene cause Julia's deviation from "normalcy" and could she be "fixed" by manipulating her genes? Quickly I realized my line of thinking was the dangerous conclusion Mukherjee warns us all to seriously consider.
Taken together, the 21,000 to 23,000 genes that live in cells on a human's 46 chromosomes carry a set of genetic instructions that cause proteins to build, repair, and maintain our bodies. Once the particular function of a gene or set of genes is identified, genetic technologies can change a function and produce copies. Voila, genetically modified seeds, food, animals, and humans.
Like a physicist working with atoms can develop a bomb or a hacker can use code to create fake news, a geneticist can manipulate genes to alter humans permanently. These masters will be able to control our bodies, to make what they consider perfect or imperfect humans. What do they do, when they find an unborn child has Down's syndrome or cystic fibrosis? Who will defend the innocent from the guilty and the guilty from the innocent? And who will define "innocent" and "guilty?"
Science marches on taking us into an age of robots, artificial intelligence (AI), clones, drones, virtual reality, driverless cars, and more. Looking at the horse's name, "Cloud Computing," of the winner of the Preakness, the second race in the Triple Crown after the Kentucky Derby, you see how technology is reaching into all fields. Could Kellyanne Conway have described the Internet of Things (IoT) in a way that didn't suggest microwave ovens spy on us? Yes, but the ridicule that greeted Rachel Carson's expose of DDT in Silent Spring and the skepticism about the miracles at Fatima did not make the messages they delivered any less real.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison described Matthew Aliota, one of its "Forward under 40" honorees, as "an expert on tropical mosquito-borne diseases" who believes "scientific communication is an important responsibility." To his way of thinking, research findings that are shared quickly with the public can improve public health. Mukherjee would add that shared research findings also would enable the public to understand and react to potential problems caused by these findings. Laughter, ridicule, and skepticism are hardly the right responses to important breakthroughs.
Throughout the world, the public depends on communicators (authors, journalists, editors, film and TV directors, advertising copywriters, playwrights, social media content developers, artists, and the like) to read about and understand the potential and problems of each new technology and to know how to provide an engaging presentation that informs us of our choices.
Taken together, the 21,000 to 23,000 genes that live in cells on a human's 46 chromosomes carry a set of genetic instructions that cause proteins to build, repair, and maintain our bodies. Once the particular function of a gene or set of genes is identified, genetic technologies can change a function and produce copies. Voila, genetically modified seeds, food, animals, and humans.
Like a physicist working with atoms can develop a bomb or a hacker can use code to create fake news, a geneticist can manipulate genes to alter humans permanently. These masters will be able to control our bodies, to make what they consider perfect or imperfect humans. What do they do, when they find an unborn child has Down's syndrome or cystic fibrosis? Who will defend the innocent from the guilty and the guilty from the innocent? And who will define "innocent" and "guilty?"
Science marches on taking us into an age of robots, artificial intelligence (AI), clones, drones, virtual reality, driverless cars, and more. Looking at the horse's name, "Cloud Computing," of the winner of the Preakness, the second race in the Triple Crown after the Kentucky Derby, you see how technology is reaching into all fields. Could Kellyanne Conway have described the Internet of Things (IoT) in a way that didn't suggest microwave ovens spy on us? Yes, but the ridicule that greeted Rachel Carson's expose of DDT in Silent Spring and the skepticism about the miracles at Fatima did not make the messages they delivered any less real.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison described Matthew Aliota, one of its "Forward under 40" honorees, as "an expert on tropical mosquito-borne diseases" who believes "scientific communication is an important responsibility." To his way of thinking, research findings that are shared quickly with the public can improve public health. Mukherjee would add that shared research findings also would enable the public to understand and react to potential problems caused by these findings. Laughter, ridicule, and skepticism are hardly the right responses to important breakthroughs.
Throughout the world, the public depends on communicators (authors, journalists, editors, film and TV directors, advertising copywriters, playwrights, social media content developers, artists, and the like) to read about and understand the potential and problems of each new technology and to know how to provide an engaging presentation that informs us of our choices.
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