From the New Scientist online from the 28th July 2022 - 'Ultrasound stickers could continuously image internal organs for days'. A team of scientists working across several institutions have made a significant advance in wearable ultrasound devices by developing a way to keep the scanning device attached to the human body. So good on so [...]
Category: medicine
Great article on the ABC news website about the changing profile of blood group types in Australia
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2022-03-21/blood-group-type-australia-donation-ethnicity-diversity-genetics/100916578?utm_campaign=abc_news_web&utm_content=link&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_source=abc_news_web Follow this link to details of the study and the results and a brief outline of the possible implications of these changes and the relatively unchanging profile of the pool of blood donors in Australia. Fiona Davies Twenty- three Units of Blood,(detail) 2006, metal and found objects size variable
So many interesting things happening in the biomedical world of silk at the moment.
In the SilkLab at Tufts University bioactive inks have been developed that can function as a sensor either of the body wearing a garment printed with the ink or the environmental conditions surrounding the object printed with the ink. Amazing stuff. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=47&v=DM8JzVIN5Vo&feature=emb_logo 'The technology builds upon earlier work by the same researchers developing bioactive silk [...]
Online Sale of Blood from Recovered Caronavirus Patients
Great segment on Radio National this morning reporting on a whole range of anti-Caronavirus products for sale on the dark web. This includes blood from recovered Caronavirus patients presumably with antibodies to the virus being advertised as a preventative. Link below https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/am/dark-web-covid/12199816
Blood on Silk: The Violence of Medicine Part VII Being the chosen one or not.
The factors driving the allocation of resources within the medical system is often not obvious or transparent to the outsider, the patient or their family. One area where it is openly acknowledged is in the media coverage of transplant medicine. There it is repeatedly stated that the number of organs donated or supplied is significantly [...]
Blood on Silk: The Violence of Medicine: Part VI Going under the Knife
The World Health Organization[1] defines violence as ‘the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation. Choosing to go under the knife, a slang [...]
Violence in Medicine: Part IV Working under Those Conditions.
Being deprived of sleep is not only experienced by the patient as discussed in the last post but also by those working within the hospital. This fourth of a series of short essays or reflections on aspects of what could be understood as forms of violence within the practice of medicine turns to the experience [...]
Blood on Silk: The Violence of Medicine, Part III Being Deprived of Sleep
Patients often report serious difficulties with sleeping while in hospital and this experience of deprivation is even more profound when the patient is in ICU. While there is evidence for the impact of sleep deprivation on cognitive functioning in ICU patients it is only ‘associated’ with the onset of ICU delirium or intrusive hallucinatory experiences. [...]
Violence in medicine Part II – Using the language of war
The American medical humanities scholar Kathleen Powers questions the notion that the violence within hospitals or within medicine is tempered by metaphor and discretion. Rather, she considers the metaphoric language used in hospitals to be a language of violence, or a language of war. In a 2017 paper she outlined the militaristic and violent frameworks [...]
Blood on Silk: the Violence of Medicine
Fiona Davies, Blood on Silk: The Violence of Medicine I (detail) 2020. Conceptual Background: The American academic Johanna Shapiro in a 2018 essay establishes a framework of types of violence in medicine that ranges from the systemic bureaucratic “organisational violence”, originating from the hospital’s architecture and design, noise levels, access to public transport, and the [...]