Category: Medicine
Neanderthals practiced some forms of health care 1.6 mya
| October 3, 2018 | Posted by News under Human evolution, Intelligent Design, Medicine |
For one thing, they had to cope with injuries inflicted by large wild animals they were hunting: Researchers investigated the skeletal remains of more than 30 individuals where minor and serious injuries were evident, but did not lead to loss of life. The samples displayed several episodes of injury and recovery, suggesting that Neanderthals must have had a […]
Researchers: Genes cannot “be read like tea leaves”
| September 19, 2018 | Posted by News under Genetics, Human evolution, Intelligent Design, Medicine |
Which make the effects of mutations harder to predict than hoped. Of course, it’s also a blow for genetic determinism. From ScienceDaily: Ever since the decoding of the human genome in 2003, genetic research has been focused heavily on understanding genes so that they could be read like tea leaves to predict an individual’s future […]
Times a-changin’ New Scientist now hails mind over matter
| September 3, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Medicine, Mind, Neuroscience |
No, really. Here’s what they say in 2018 about the placebo effect (you start to get better when you think you are getting better): “OUR minds aren’t passive observers simply observing reality as it is; our minds actually change reality. The reality we experience tomorrow is partly the product of the mindsets we hold today.” […]
Newly discovered tiny tunnels run from skull to brain
| August 31, 2018 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Evolution, Medicine, Natural selection |
They may be a shortcut for the immune system. From ScienceDaily: “We always thought that immune cells from our arms and legs traveled via blood to damaged brain tissue. These findings suggest that immune cells may instead be taking a shortcut to rapidly arrive at areas of inflammation,” said Francesca Bosetti, Ph.D., program director at the […]
Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor: The brain is not a “meat computer”
| August 7, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Medicine, Mind, Neuroscience |
At Mind Matters Today: Early in my neurosurgical career, I was called to the emergency room to see a four-year-old boy who had had a stroke. He was playing on a sofa and fell on his head, twisting his neck. He told his mom that his head hurt—then lapsed into a coma. The CT scan […]
Different psychiatric disorders linked to the same genes?
| July 20, 2018 | Posted by News under Genetics, Intelligent Design, Medicine, Psychology |
From Mark Fischetti at Scientific American: Bipolar disorder, for example, was more similar to schizophrenia than to major depression even though clinicians may link bipolar disorder and depression, based on their symptoms. These insights could possibly reveal new treatments, says neurogeneticist Daniel Geschwind of the University of California, Los Angeles, one of the investigators. More. […]
Study: Religiously affiliated people lived “9.45 and 5.64 years longer…”
| July 1, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Intelligent Design, Medicine, Mind, Religion |
From Chuck Dinerstein at American Council for Science and Health: There is increasing evidence that a correlation exists between a person’s social support and engagement and their longevity. At a bare minimum, it makes sense because it is challenging to manage chronic disease or recovery from hospitalization on your own. A new study looks at […]
A systems architect looks at claims about the “botched” human body
| June 18, 2018 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Human evolution, Intelligent Design, Medicine |
From Steve Laufmann at ENST, on Nathan Lents’s book Human Errors: A Panorama of Our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken Genes. As a systems architect, I’ve spent decades designing and implementing large and complex systems of information systems — often involving thousands of individual systems. Such systems are normally embedded in complex processes that may […]
Does Nathan Lents, author of a “bad design” book really teach biology? A doctor looks at his claims about the human sinuses
| May 23, 2018 | Posted by News under Design inference, Human evolution, Medicine |
From Nathan H. Lents at Skeptic: From neurosurgeon Michael Egnor at ENST: Lents writes: One of the important drainage-collection pipes is installed near the top of the largest pair of cavities, the maxillary sinuses, located underneath the upper cheeks… Putting the drainage-collection point high within these sinuses is not a good idea because of this […]
We acquire trillions of new mutations every day, so why are we still alive?
| May 10, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Darwinism, Intelligent Design, Medicine |
From Sarah Zhang at the Atlantic: As you read this article, the cells in your body are dividing and the DNA in them is being copied, letter by letter. So long is the human genome—more than 3 billion letters—that even an astonishingly low error rate of one in many million letters could amount to 10 […]
Darwinian medicine: Nothing in cancer makes sense except in the light of [evolution]? Wow.
| March 14, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Darwinism, Intelligent Design, Medicine |
From Mel Greaves et al. at BNC Biology: Paraphrasing Dobzhansky’s famous dictum, I discuss how interrogating cancer through the lens of evolution has transformed our understanding of its development, causality and treatment resistance. The emerging picture of cancer captures its extensive diversity and therapeutic resilience, highlighting the need for more innovative approaches to control. Abstract: […]
“Core principles of evolutionary medicine” still clinically useless
| March 2, 2018 | Posted by News under Human evolution, Intelligent Design, Medicine |
New paper: Abstract Background and objectives Evolutionary medicine is a rapidly growing field that uses the principles of evolutionary biology to better understand, prevent and treat disease, and that uses studies of disease to advance basic knowledge in evolutionary biology. Over-arching principles of evolutionary medicine have been described in publications, but our study is the […]
Robo-Doctor? In China, it seems Robot Xiao-Yi has passed the written medical licensing exams
| February 10, 2018 | Posted by kairosfocus under brains and computation vs contemplation, Computing, AI, Cybernetics and Mechatronics, Humor, knowledge, language, Medicine, Science, worldview issues/foundations and society, UD's Sci-Tech watch |
Robo-Doc will see you? Maybe, but not just now. This item popped up from the usual suspect tabloid paper sites while searching on AI and memristors. I have tracked down a couple of more reputable sources so, here goes from China Daily (which is also on the spot): >>A robot has passed the written test […]
New Scientist also embraces the love drug
| February 7, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Intelligent Design, Media, Medicine, Philosophy, Religion, Science |
Further to “New Scientist embraces politics,” we also learn, from Alice Klein at New Scientist, The love drug that could draw people away from any addiction: The “cuddle chemical” oxytocin boosts social bonds. Soon a version of it will be tested in pill form to see if it can reset the brain wiring that gets […]
Among the real reasons many people “hate science”: Prozac as cause, not cure, of mental illness
| December 23, 2017 | Posted by News under Medicine, Peer review, Philosophy, Science |
From Jeanne Lenzer at Undark: In another case of cure as cause, a landmark study of Prozac to treat adolescent depression found that it increased overall suicidality — the very outcome it is intended to prevent. In the study, 15 percent of depressed adolescents treated with Prozac became suicidal, versus 6 percent treated with psychotherapy, […]
Austin Ruse: Post-modern science hits the streets
| December 12, 2017 | Posted by News under Culture, Ethics, Medicine, Science |
Running and throwing projectiles. From O’Leary for News at Salvo: Family values activist Austin Ruse’s new book, Fake Science: Exposing the Left’s Skewed Statistics, Fuzzy Facts, and Dodgy Data (Regnery, 2017), offers a look at a world growing increasingly hostile to evidence-based reasoning. We have not discovered better reasoning methods; rather, many people seem to […]
Epigenetic researchers: Touching infants frequently affects their genetic expression
| November 29, 2017 | Posted by News under Culture, Darwinism, Epigenetics, Intelligent Design, Medicine |
This sort of finding, assuming it holds up, is killing Darwinism. From ScienceDaily: The amount of close and comforting contact between infants and their caregivers can affect children at the molecular level, an effect detectable four years later, according to new research from the University of British Columbia and BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute. The […]
From LiveScience: Consciousness after death
| October 5, 2017 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Medicine, Mind, Naturalism |
From Mindy Weisberger at LiveScience: Driven by ambition and curiosity to learn what lies on the other side of death, five medical students deliberately stop their hearts in order to experience “the afterlife” in the new thriller “Flatliners” (Sony Pictures), which opened in U.S. theaters on Sept. 29. They quickly discover that there are unexpected […]
Darwinism vs science: Even flu bugs are complex
| September 23, 2017 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Intelligent Design, Medicine |
Further to why flu vaccines so often fail, from Jon Cohen at Science, on efforts to find out wy the flu vaccine is so “lackluster”(10% to 60& protection): They’re questioning what was once received wisdom: that the vaccine fails when manufacturers, working months ahead of flu season, incorrectly guess which strains will end up spreading. […]
At last: Amount of “spin” in biomedical papers calculated
| September 13, 2017 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Medicine, Peer review, Science |
And the type catalogued. From ScienceDaily: More than a quarter of biomedical scientific papers may utilize practices that distort the interpretation of results or mislead readers so that results are viewed more favorably, a new study suggests. Their findings, published in PLOS Biology, found more than 26 percent of papers identified as systematic reviews or […]
