This had me chuckling out loud. I love it when creative people, current events, and social media crash into each other. | |
Wow. Ian Burkhart, a 23-year-old quadriplegic, is the first patient to use an electronic neural bypass for spinal cord injuries. The machine was able to help him move his arm, an arm he hasn’t moved voluntarily in 4 years. The machine reconnects the brain directly to muscles, allowing voluntary and functional control of a paralyzed limb. | |
The Amish are now reconsidering vaccination, which they had previously avoided. The largest outbreak of measles in recent U.S. history is underway. Ohio has the majority of these cases. The virus has spread quickly among the largely unvaccinated Amish communities in the center of the state. | |
A new study proves that there is no link between vaccines and autism. The myth that vaccines cause autism began in 1998, when a quack doctor published a fraudulent study that showed a link between vaccines and autism. That doctor was found guilty of falsifying the results, and the study was completely retracted by the original journal that published it. Celebrities like Jenny McCarthy, Alicia Silverstone and Kristin Cavalari have advocated against vaccinating children. Now, we have outbreaks like the one described above. This past school year, there was a whooping cough outbreak in my daughter’s elementary school because of families who have opted out of vaccinations. Why do people believe celebrities instead of scientists? But now we have a bigger problem. A study recently published in the journal Pediatrics showed that pro-vaccine information tended to strengthen the beliefs and fears of the anti-vaccine people, especially in the U.S. Our public health professionals have a task before them to develop health messages that encourage positive behavior change without scaring people into the opposite direction. |