CategoryMedicine and Health
Assisted Suicide and the Dangers of “Word Engineering”
When radical policies are proposed, the first step is to change the lexicon to make it seem less extreme, even mundane.
Researchers: Conscious Experience May Occur Near Time of Birth
Researchers generally stress that the unborn child’s brain is in a rapid, ongoing, and little understood state of development
Are Near-Death Experiences Becoming Science Now?
The laughter has died down? Good. It was modern medicine — not religion — that created the hard evidence for credible near-death experiences
Will Studio’s New “After Death” Be a Hit Like “Sound of Freedom”?
The new 90-minute film interviews researchers and survivors of near-death experiencesAfter Death (Angel Studios 2023), a look at the many recent accounts of near-death experiences, will premiere October 27. Angel is the studio that produced the recent smash hit Sound of Freedom (2023). There’s a story in that: While SoF was trashed by fashionable media, it outgrossed some of the biggest films at the box office. Will After Death, directed by Stephen Gray and Chris Radtke, meet the same fate? Its basic message is that NDEs are becoming an intersection of science/medicine and faith. It will be interesting to see how the same fashionable media react. The principle reason for exploding interest in near-death experiences in recent decades is that high-tech medicine has been bringing back thousands of people from Read More ›
COVID Helped China Get Ahead on Genetic Therapies
Why is China trying to lead the world in genetic technology?
Affirmative Action and Health Care
It is high time that our medical journals stick to medicine.
Near-Death Experience Study: Brain Is Active After Death
Science media are making surprisingly few efforts to attack or explain away the team’s findings
We Need to Keep Medicine “Evidence-Based”
A new approach seems to be arriving — so-called science-based medicine. What is the difference?
CDC Neglects to Include Assisted Deaths in Official Suicide Report
Assisted dying is a form of suicide, regardless of the ways our culture has euphemized the term
Our Essential “I”ness … the Search for Its Address in the Brain
Does “I” — the first person singular — have or need a fixed address in the brain?
Is Dementia Research Missing the Forest for the Trees?
Sudden bouts of lucidity in people with dementia are understudied, researchers admitResearchers have begun to ask about the curious fact that persons with obvious dementia sometimes have lucid episodes: “In the last week, Sarah has occasionally said things that were recognizable, startling her family. Most notably, on two occasions, she clearly and unexpectedly told her spouse, “I’m scared. I want you to come with me.” These episodes unsettled him. He reported them to Sarah’s physician, asking for advice. (This case is adapted from one of the author’s [JK] clinical experiences.)” – Peterson A, Clapp J, Largent EA, Harkins K, Stites SD, Karlawish J. What is paradoxical lucidity? The answer begins with its definition. Alzheimers Dement. 2022 Mar;18(3):513-521. doi: 10.1002/alz.12424. Epub 2021 Aug 2. PMID: 34338400; PMCID: PMC8807788. The paper is open Read More ›
How Can a Woman Missing Her Olfactory Bulbs Still Smell?
The brain’s plasticity intrigues and puzzles researcher, and it also raises a larger issueEven since neuroscientists started imaging the brain, they’ve been turning up cases where people are missing brain parts we would expect them to need in order to do something — but they are doing that very thing anyway. One example, written up in LiveScience in 2019, concerns women who are missing their olfactory bulbs (illustrated) but can still smell: Researchers have discovered a small group of people that seem to defy medical science: They can smell despite lacking “olfactory bulbs,” the region in the front of the brain that processes information about smells from the nose. It’s not clear how they are able to do this, but the findings suggest that the human brain may have a greater ability to Read More ›
Patients Opting for Euthanasia in the Face of Painful Circumstances
Receiving assistance takes a long time. But to be made dead? Not so much.So much compassion! A disabled woman with quadriplegia named Rose Finlay in Canada has asked to be euthanized because she is destitute, and the disability benefits she applied for would not arrive in time for her to be properly housed and cared for. From the CBC story: A quadriplegic woman in Bowmanville, Ont., has applied for medical assistance in dying (MAID), saying it’s easier to access than the support services she needs to live her life comfortably. Receiving assistance takes a long time. But to be made dead? Not so much: The single mother of three boys previously supported her family with earnings from disability advocacy work through her company, Inclusive Solutions. That’s also how she could afford to hire her own support Read More ›
This Country Just Legalized Euthanasia
The law isn't even limited to those who are terminally illAlas. The president of Portugal just signed into law a bill legalizing euthanasia by lethal injection. It is not limited to the terminally ill — which is at least honest, since that is not what euthanasia/assisted suicide is really all about. From the Reuters story: The law specifies that people would be allowed to request assistance in dying in cases when they are “in a situation of intense suffering, with definitive injury of extreme gravity or serious and incurable disease.” It establishes a two-month gap between accepting a request and the actual procedure and makes psychological support mandatory. Strict guidelines and all that jazz. Not only are they unlikely to be strictly enforced but will soon be redefined from protections to barriers, Read More ›
Synthetic Biology: What New Therapies Are in Store?
For today's featured video from COSM 2022, watch Babak Parviz, Vice President at Amazon, lead a discussion on synthetic biologyFor today’s featured video from COSM 2022, watch Babak Parviz, Vice President at Amazon, lead a discussion on synthetic biology, the multi-disciplinary field that applies engineering principles to redesign biological systems for new purposes. The panel focuses on bio-medical technologies that hold great promise for curing diseases and even counteracting human aging. For more material on the topic, see this piece on Altos Labs and their work on bio-longevity. Part of their project also involves artificial intelligence research: Altos Labs’ vision isn’t too far removed from that of the transhumanists who want to computerize human consciousness. For them, however, longevity is a junior varsity goal — what we really need is a way to live forever. Harrison quips at the Read More ›
Mental health: Psychotherapy and Drugs Help Different Brain Areas
Camilla Nord reports that psychotherapy changed aspects of the brain’s prefrontal cortex whereas medications affected the amygdalaWhether to treat mental health issues with psychotherapy or drugs has sometimes led to pitting one against the other. For example, as Cambridge neuroscientist Camilla Nord has noted, in a report that no longer seems to be online, the British Psychological Society’s Division of Clinical Psychology stated in 2016 that “There is no firm evidence that mental distress is primarily caused by biochemical imbalances, genes, or something going wrong in the brain …” Rather, the Society cited childhood trauma, abuse, and poverty as causes, to be remedied by political and social change. Other studies (here is a systematic review) found the same thing. Nord responds that mental disorders are brain disorders. However, she does not resort to simplistic claims that Read More ›
When It’s Not Clear If a Disorder Is From the Brain or the Mind…
Neurologist Andrew Knox explains to Robert J. Marks that some psychological problems appear as if they were brain problems — yet there’s nothing wrong with the brainIn the podcast released last Thursday, Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks interviewed pediatric neurologist Dr. Andrew Knox from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health on “Ways the brain can break” (#220, January 5, 2023). What follows is Part 4 of the discussion, “When it’s not clear if a disorder is from the brain or the mind…” Here are Part 1: How our brains are — and aren’t — like computers, Part 2: What is happening when children have strokes or dementia signs?, and Part 3: How do strokes, dementia offer insight into how the brain works? https://mindmatters.ai/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/12/Mind-Matters-220-Andrew-Knox-Episode-1.mp3 This portion begins at roughly 25:15 min. A partial transcript and notes, and Additional Resources follow. Epileptic Read More ›
How Do Strokes, Dementia Offer Insight Into How the Brain Works?
Neurologist Andrew Knox thinks the brain may store memories is an associative scheme, where previous memories are used to build up new onesIn the podcast released last Thursday, Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks interviewed pediatric neurologist Dr. Andrew Knox from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health on “Ways the brain can break” (#220, January 5, 2023). What follows is from Part 3 of the discussion. Here’s Part 1: How our brains are — and aren’t — like computers and Part 2: What is happening when children have strokes or dementia signs? https://mindmatters.ai/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/12/Mind-Matters-220-Andrew-Knox-Episode-1.mp3 This portion begins at roughly 18:25 min. A partial transcript and notes, and Additional Resources follow. The discussion began with the question, “How does the brain store memories?” Andrew Knox: There are different schemes for storing memories, but patients with Alzheimer’s seem to have Read More ›
What Is Happening When Children Have Strokes or Dementia Signs?
Many children who would have died 40 years ago can live a relatively full life today but they are at risk of stroke or dementiaIn the podcast released yesterday, Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks interviewed pediatric neurologist Dr. Andrew Knox from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health on “Ways the brain can break” (#220, January 5, 2023). What follows reflects Part 2 of the discussion. Here’s Part 1: How our brains are — and aren’t — like computers. https://mindmatters.ai/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/12/Mind-Matters-220-Andrew-Knox-Episode-1.mp3 This portion begins at roughly 10:50 min. A partial transcript and notes, and Additional Resources follow. Andrew Knox: If you had a stroke in what we would call a primary motor area, an area with the connections to motor pathways through the rest of the body — all of those patients might lose the ability to move their arm Read More ›