INTERESTING TIMES

Just ran across a nice southern article about eating the leaves as salad, and painting the skin with the toxic berry juice. I have been taught to use an alcohol extract of the root as a "lymphogogue" meaning it is supposed to stimulate lymph movement, or at least a strong immune response. Far as I know there is no science to support this use. The juices of the root are very strong and caustic, and it should not be handled with bare hands.

Newly Emerging and Resistant Infections--Can Plan Antimicrobials and Probiotics Help?
greatest threat to human health: acquisition of resistance by micro-organisms
now there's a strain of Neisseria gonorrhea which is resistance to all antibiotics

less than 100 years ago we didn't have abx
average RX of Abx in US: 1/person/year
( notes )

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Breaking News Alert: Studies show AIDS drugs can prevent infection
July 13, 2011 5:45:56 AM
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Two new studies done in three African countries have shown for the first time that AIDS drugs taken daily can cut by more than half a person’s chance of becoming infected with HIV through heterosexual intercourse.

http://link.email.washingtonpost.com/r/WUOQBH/QFHR1Y/Z8G8SN/WYSZHH/PW5T2/1G/h

For more information, visit washingtonpost.com

I've been hearing a lot about circumcision lately. This morning I hear that the CDC has determined that circumcision reduces a man's chance of contracting HIV by 60%! This is news to me. I even have it in me to doubt it, having not heard it until just now after so much previous noise about the question. I suspect the mechanism of resistance to the virus has to do with the thickening of the skin on the glans when it is exposed all the time, as versus the thin-ness of such skin, more like a mucous membrane, when it is permanently covered. One kind in Africa has issued an edict that all men must be circumcised, and young Zulu men are getting cut as a rite of manhood. Cultural change is in progress in Africa.

Anyway, other mentions include a pack of people in San Francisco who tried to get a law passed BANNING circumcision as male genital mutilation. They didn't get very far, but they did get a lot of attention. And also, in pediatrics class I heard that here on the West Coast 60% of new baby boys are NOT being circumcised, and that number is increasing. The pediatrician's perspective is that we will have a generation of men for whom either circ or non-circ is accepttable, and then the next generation will probably be almost entirely noncircumcised. Cultural change is in progress in America, but in the opposite direction from Africa...

Test will be case based multiple choice and matching.
The test will be for 30% of your grade. Lecture will start at 9:10 on GI health.
( original from KP, revision in process, goldmine here, dig for conditions )

I can't tell you how many times I've been taught the Heimlich maneuver in CPR and first aid classes. Plenty. Well over 20 years worth of certifications and re-certifications. So I've been trained. In my last recert (2009) we were taught back slaps for infants, and they called the uncorking procedure used on adults "abdominal thrusts". It seems that pretty much everybody knows about the Heimlich maneuver. ( But maybe there are better emergency treatments for choking. At the very least, there are options. )

Sounds like young South Africans have finally gotten the news that condom use is the way to avoid infection. The report I have here (from The Week) says that people are still having multiple sex partners, but new infection rates have declined significantly. South Africa has the worlds largest HIV positive population, some 5.2 million people. Of South African women age 20-34, one third are HIV positive. One third. It's not hard to imagine the disaster in the future.

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/multimedia/2008/12/gallery_microscope_phone
detects HIV, malaria, etc

Africans are more susceptible to HIV because of an adaptation to malaria. It happened by evolution: the Africans who didn't have a certain surface protein on their red blood cells didn't get malaria, because the parasite couldn't get into the RBC's. The particular kind of malaria died out, after everyone that was left was no longer susceptible to it.

That same adaptation that allowed the Africans to survive that strain of malaria also resulted in a change in the genetic makeup of the entire population... and now that change is causing them to be more susceptible to HIV. And estimated 90% of Africans and 60% of African Americans are up to 40% more vulnerable to infection by HIV.

There "has always been this myth that people in sub-Saharan Africa were more likely to get HIV because of differences in their sexual behavior, or that they are more promiscuous" (Dr. Ade Fakoya of the International HIV/AIDS Alliance on BBCnews.com)... but now we have a good reason, aside from promiscuity, for the high infection rates in Africa.

In immunology we were taught that the European populations who are descended from survivors of bubonic plague are less likely to get HIV. So it turns out that your genetic makeup makes a big difference in your susceptibility to HIV, and that probably HIV/AIDS will cause a new layer of evolution in our species. Natural Selection is still operating in humans.