Tagged With "disease"

The book Survival of the sickest is written by Sharon Moalem, an award-winning scientist and physician, in 2007. The book demonstrates three different themes--- "how illnesses can sometimes be advantageous", "why certain conditions developed and what they were fighting against", and "understand how to better treat those conditions without offsetting the advantages that the diseases offered". Moalem indicates that being able to survive deadly diseases in the short term is a necessary tradeoff...

Hi Rong Ying. Your analysis of this book gives me much insight into the mesmerizing connection between human health and the environment. It also shows me the vulnerability of human beings. I used to think that humans have free will, that is we can control our actions/decisions. However, not that I've become a pessimist but, the knowledge I gained from reading scientific articles and watching documents lead me to think that we are very much being deprived of free will. What we act or think is...

Summary of Current Coronary Artery Disease Procedures Coronary artery disease (CAD), the leading cause of death in the US, is caused by cholesterol deposits accumulating in the arterial wall and limiting blood flow (Brown et al.). Currently, there are two types of procedures for CAD: angioplasty and bypass graft surgery. In angioplasty, the surgeon uses a reticular metal stent to support the arterial walls at the area of blockage. As a result, the stent can only protect the area of blockage;...

Environmental injustice arises when minority or low-income communities are disproportionately exposed to environmental hazards. The United States perpetuates a negative cycle between environmental injustice and health disparities, as represented in the South Bronx, a neighborhood of New York City. The neighborhood is known as the “asthma valley” due to high local asthma rates: residents face detrimental air pollutants, which significantly debilitate their respiratory tract (Kilani). Asthma...

Ms. Stacy Pike-Langenfeld, cofounder of the Krabbe disease advocacy KrabbeConnect, gave birth to her daughter Makayla in 2001. Makayla “was perfect until she wasn’t”—Krabbe disease visited her at 3.5 months of age and took her away at the age of 2. “There are no words that capture the vileness of infantile Krabbe disease. Absolutely none,” said Ms. Pike-Langenfeld. 20 years after the tragedy, hope has finally emerged for Ms. Pike-Langenfeld: her home state, Minnesota, has started universal...

Earlier this month, the New York Times reported on a boy, Kendric Cromer, 12, who was making the most progress in treating his Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) with gene therapy. The article discusses his 9-month-long journey to curing his SCD. However, I was disappointed the article did not discuss the gene-editing techniques involved in SCD gene therapeutics, or really the biological mechanism behind SCD–both fascinating topics in biology. SCD is caused by a point mutation in the gene that codes...