Posts for the Topic medicine

Medical breakthrough: Cure for obesity or license to overeat?

Wednesday, December 5, 2018 by Cameron Shelley

I was interested to see different takes on the 'net concerning a bit of recent medical research. The research involves inhibiting expression of a gene called RCAN1, which seems to regulate body fat. Long story short, research suggests that inhibiting this gene in mice allows them to remain "thin" in spite of eating a diet in excess of their normal requirements.

The question naturally arises: What does this mean for humans?

food

medicine

genetics

Progress in treatment with antibiotics

Wednesday, August 9, 2017 by Cameron Shelley

In our class on Design & Society, we discuss the so-called dilemma of progress. With any design whose introduction poses potential risk, there is a decision to make on how to regulate it. In simplest terms, there are two possibilities:

Permissive: introduce the new design until such time as it proves to be overly harmful, or
Precautionary: restrict the new design until such time as it proves to be acceptably safe.

Under conditions of uncertainty, it can be difficult to know which strategy is best.

medicine

progress

stv 202

Uberizing medicine?

Wednesday, June 14, 2017 by Cameron Shelley

Dr. Rahul Parikh has written an interesting piece on the "Uberization" of medicine. By this expression, Dr. Parikh refers to app services that some start-ups have created to allow doctors to perform freelance medical consultations over the Internet.

medicine

just-a-tool

stv 100

Is that baby monitor fair?

Thursday, February 23, 2017 by Cameron Shelley

A brief article in the Journal of the American Medical Association raises a significant issue related to app-enabled baby monitors. Bonafide et al. draw attention to the increasing popularity of wearables for infants that supposedly monitor their health status and report it to parents via their smartphones.

When innovation precedes knowledge

Wednesday, November 16, 2016 by Cameron Shelley

One theme raised in our STV 202 class is that acquisition of information may precede practical knowledge of what to do with that information. This issue is especially noticeable in health, where it has become very easy to track people's vital statistics but not so easy to know how to use the results to benefit them.

Think of any commercial fitness tracker you can name.