Disabilities Need Not Define Anyone

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.

   



     

Holes in Russia's Attempt to Project a Powerful Image

If you've seen the current movie, "The Death of Stalin," you've seen the chaos that existed when his successors struggled to replace him. What will happen after Putin's death?

     It is April 10, 2018 and the three people intentionally exposed to Russia's "deadly" novichok nerve agent in Salisbury, England, on March 4, 2018 are not dead. In fact, the detective who was poisoned when he began an investigation at the home where the nerve agent is thought to have been placed on the door handle was released from the hospital on March 22. Yulia Skripal, the daughter of the former Russian military spy, Sergei V. Skripal, who was the intended target of the nerve agent, was released from the hospital today. Her father who continued a slower recovery in the hospital, according to Dr. Christine Blanshard, was released in late May.

     Dr. Blanshard described how nerve agents work by attaching themselves to a body's particular enzymes to disrupt their functions. Drugs enable patients to create healthy replacement enzymes.

     Although the earlier post, "Hearing Voices from Mexico and Russia," reports some of Russia's successful attempts to kill the country's perceived enemies, it also reports how Vladimir Kara-Murza, like the Skripals, survived a poisoning, in fact he survived two Kremlin-backed poisonings.