Category Archives: medicine

braingate

I’m up to Buffy season 5 (and rewatching Angel season 2 so that it all makes sense) and now I understand the whole “spike with a chip in his head thing.” That, in addition to the usual ethical digressions I would go on, dulls my enthusiasm for the latest developments in brain implants a bit.

Cyberkinetics, the company developing the neural prosthetics, has set up a brief informational site about their BrainGate system, but the good scientific articles are all in proprietary databases and I really don’t have the energy, strength, or coordination to type up any excerpts today so there will be no discussion of bioethics here today.

I have a feeling it’s going to be a while before they develop the technology to enable me to shoot laser beams out of my eyes. Keep trying, boys.

April 1st is Lupus Alert Day

Alas, it’s not a joke.

WebMD’s lupus awareness campaign
Lupus Foundation of America (US specific, but useful to anyone who can read English)

The Hospital for Special Surgery’s Rheumatology Division (particularly good for looking for infomation about related conditions or mixed connective tissue disease)

The National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Diseases at the National Institutes of Health (and a link to the White House’s National Bone and Joint Decade Proclamation)

The National Library of Medicine’s lupus page on MedlinePlus

The Lupus UK site is also very good and has links to other European organizations.

In keeping with our canine-related them of late, here’s a site about dogs with lupus.

Here’s eMedicine’s lupus page and here’s the one maintained by the Mayo Clinic

And last, but not least, in keeping with the April Fool’s theme, here’s the Centers for Disease Control’s Health related hoaxes page. The Urban Legends Reference Pages has, of course, lots of hoax info as well.