Environmental Medicine News

The News Review:

- McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law
- Health & education
- Smoky Mountain News | Reading Room
- Medium is the message for stem cells in search of identities
- … fight tests roles of parents, doctors and courts in…
- A celebration of science in the UK: 10 Britons who shaped our world

McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law
Globe and Mail - Jul 5, 2006
He objects to the designation "ethicist. " But ethicists are to applied ethics as scientists are to science. The full text of this article has 253 words.

Health & education
Isanti County News - Jul 5, 2006
If a condition of prolonged excess or deficiency of either yin or yang, disease results. In an excess of yin (cold) the yang (heat) would be damaged and a disease of cold nature would develop. In a deficiency of yin, diseases of a hot nature develop, and deficiency of yang causes cold diseases. Chinese medicine includes the use of channels (meridians or pathways) that are named by the largest organ they pass through and are all over the human body, linking organs with tissues. These meridians are responsible for conducting the flow of energy (qi) and blood through the body. The flow of the qi can be disrupted by direct damage to the channels, such as trauma, or by imbalance of yin and yang. The acupuncturist will choose various acupuncture points on these channels to restore the inner climate and stop disease or heal trauma.

Smoky Mountain News | Reading Room
Waynesville Smoky Mountain News - Jul 5, 2006
In 1900 he published his best known work, The Interpretation of Dreams, and the world hasn’t been the same since. Early in his career as a psychoanalyst Freud gave a presentation of his findings to the prestigious Viennese Medical Society. Freud told these titans of medicine, in the most medically sophisticated city in the world, that he had discovered that not only could children’s adverse sexual experiences cause problems later in their lives, but that children, from the earliest of ages, have sexual desires of their own. If Freud had told the good doctors that he had recently contracted a case of crabs and was now spreading them around the room, he could not have become instantly less popular. “Children have sexual desires?! He’s a pervert! He’s out of his mind!” they said. From that day forward Freud was shunned by his medical colleagues in Vienna. So with no help from his medical peers Freud discovered the stages of psycho-sexual (emotional) development in children, the repetition compulsion, and the phenomenon of transference… Before Freud and the “Talking Cure,” people with mental problems were left to flounder or were simply locked up for life. Surprisingly, many of today’s university professors of psychology, theology and philosophy also think Freud was the devil. Some actually blame him for today’s sexual permissiveness, as though the man invented human nature, rather than merely explaining a part of it. Even more surprising than the academics discrediting Freud are the practicing psychologists, social workers, and other psychotherapists who go out of their way to denigrate him. If there was ever proof needed that we all harbor anger at our parents, here is an example. Freud is the father of their career discipline; that is, letting people talk so they can get better — the healing treatment called psychoanalysis, which spawned all legitimate psychotherapies. Yet they denigrate him.

Medium is the message for stem cells in search of identities
EurekAlert - EurekAlert (press release) - Jul 5, 2006
, executive director of the McKnight Brain Institute. “We simulated some events that occur while the brain is developing and challenged them with different environments, and the effects are profound. Ultimately both nature and nurture influence the final identity of a stem cell, but in early stages it seems nurture is very important. ”
In experiments, scientists confirmed a cell culture surface molecule called laminin activates a common developmental pathway that is crucial for the generation and survival of particular types of brain cells. The laminin-influenced stem cells are a kind that goes on to generate a brain structure called the medial ganglionic eminence, which in turn is believed to give rise to a population of early neurons in the developing cerebral cortex, a structure that helps coordinate sensory, motor and cognitive function. “This is significant because this molecule is frequently used to secure cells onto culture dishes in stem cell labs all over the world,” said Bjorn Scheffler, M… “We largely keep the brain cells we are born with for life, but we also have stem cells in our brain that can divide and make new neurons for maintenance,” said Gordon Fishell, Ph. , a professor of cell biology with the Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine at New York University Medical Center who was not involved in the research. “Stem cells continue to proliferate because they are in a specialized ‘niche’ that nurtures them and keeps them dividing. Previous studies have shown that factors in the niche are important for stem cell proliferation. Less studied are the means by which these cells are directed to become specific types of neurons useful in the adult brain. This work is the first to systematically look at how components in the extracellular matrix affect the fate of these cells.

… fight tests roles of parents, doctors and courts in…
Free with registration - America's Intelligence Wire - AccessMyLibrary.com - Jul 5, 2006
Custody fight tests roles of parents, doctors and courts in disputes over kids’ medical care. | The America’s Intelligence Wire (July, 2006).

A celebration of science in the UK: 10 Britons who shaped our world
The Independent - Independent - Jul 5, 2006
Deborah WithingtonEureka moment: Realising that “directional sound”, which can be pinpointed instantly by the listener, could have safety uses. How has it changed our lives? Withington, a professor at the University of Leeds, was sitting in a car trying to locate an emergency vehicle from the noise of its siren when it struck her how useful it would be if people could pinpoint immediately the source of such sounds. She decided to develop a system to help people evacuate buildings in an emergency and, because she was told she would not get funding from the research councils due to the potentially commercial nature of her idea, she set up a company to develop and market the technology. The company has also created a siren system for emergency vehicles that allows motorists to locate the vehicle quickly and allow it to pass. What next? Withington’s team is currently developing a new cane for blind people that emits an ultrasonic beam. Ian WilmutEureka moment: Taking the nucleus from an adult cell and transplanting it into an egg cell, which in turn was inserted into the uterus to conceive Dolly the sheep, the first clone using a method of “cell nuclear replacement”. How has it changed our lives? Almost all biologists previously believed that the cells in our bodies had fixed roles… It also opened the possibility that, in human cloning, babies could be created without debilitating conditions. Scientists have since been attempting to “wash” egg cells that are affected by motor neurone and Huntington’s disease. Cloning also promised much for the future of medicine and agriculture. Herds of cloned animals could potentially be designed to produce insulin in milk, and be made immune to diseases such as BSE and CJD. Part of the enormous impact that Dolly the sheep’s brief life had on society was that it brought to the fore once more the ethical debate on cloning and embryology. What next? Wilmut was appointed OBE in 1999 and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2000for his work in embryology. He has also won a fellowship in the Academy of Medical Sciences.