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Category Archives: medicine and medical research

Gender, Race, Sexuality, and the Neuroscience of Healthy Relationships

The thing that ties each of the following links together is a discussion of the need to incorporate equity, affirmation, and continued learning into social, scientific, and political spheres.  And to recognize that the lines between these spaces is a social construct. This article offers an explanation of how sexism affects both the oppressed and […]

New Information about Health, Weight, and Food.

A collection of videos for discussion of ethical and social issues in developmental biology – Stem cells: II. Desperate patients and people who want to take advantage of their situation

In my last post, I provided several links to general introductions of stem cells. In this post, I will share several documentaries that show how bad people are taking advantage of desperate patients who have heard stem cells therapy may give them a last hope. II. Desperate patients and people who take advantage of their […]

A collection of videos for discussion of ethical and social issues in developmental biology – Stem cells: I. Introduction to the topic

Over the years, I have been leading a discussion about the ethical and social issues of stem cells research in my class and have used a few useful videos on various aspects. You may find them useful too. I. Introduction to the topic “A Stem Cell Story” – a great introduction of human embryonic stem […]

Promising results from the first humal trial of treating incurable eye diseases with embryonic stem cells

From Washington Post: For the first time, an experimental treatment made from human embryonic stem cells has shown evidence of helping someone, partially restoring sight to two people suffering from slowly progressing forms of blindness. In short, the authors of this study that is just published in Lancet differentiated human embryonic stem cells (hESC) into […]

How Doctors (Physicians) Die

How Doctors Die – It’s Not Like the Rest of Us, But It Should Be A deep article written by Ken Murray about how some physicians and patients would opt for less or no treatments when they encounter terminal illness.

The Mouse Trap – the issues with using animal model for medical research

I just come across with this article in Slate Magazine “The Mouse Trap – The dangers of using one lab animal to study every disease.” that talks in great details about the limitation of using animal model to look for new drugs to treat human diseases.  For example, the control healthy mouse can actually be […]

The genome of the naked mole rat!

The genome sequence of the naked mole rat is published recently (Kim et al., 2011) ! This is an amazing creature that lives almost up to 30 years in captivity, 9 times longer than mice. At the same time they do not seem to suffer from cancer or a decline in fertility (Buffenstein 2008). I […]