Lifeboat Foundation

At the start of this decade, the federal government called out consumer DNA testing as a burgeoning scam industry. Little did we know how it would explode in popularity.

In 2010, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) published an investigative report that bashed consumer DNA test companies for misleading the public. It accused them of deceptively claiming their products could predict the odds of developing more than a dozen medical conditions; some even went as far to offer equally dubious dietary supplements. The report had followed a similar lambasting of the industry by the GAO in 2006.

New Scientist.

The technique, officially called emergency preservation and resuscitation (EPR), is being carried out on people who arrive at the University of Maryland Medical Centre in Baltimore with an acute trauma – such as a gunshot or stab wound – and have had a cardiac arrest. Their heart will have stopped beating and they will have lost more than half their blood. There are only minutes to operate, with a less than 5 per cent chance that they would normally survive.

Blood is replaced with ice-cold saline.

Lawyers and doctors are typically paid more than manual laborers because of the relative shorter supply of lawyers and doctors, which is in part due to the number of years of training required to enter those professions and the corresponding value society attributes to those skills. But what will happen to their wages once the market is faced with an abundance of skilled labor? If anyone is able to upload legal or medical know-how to their brain and know just as much as the professionals in those fields, why pay a professional a higher wage?

Of course, certain skills, such as strategic judgment and contextual understanding, may be difficult, if not impossible, to digitize. But even the games of chess and Go, both complex games that require strategic decision-making and foresight, have now been conquered by AIs that taught themselves how to play—and beat—some of the best human players.

The technology’s potential for emancipation and human advancement is immense. But we—entrepreneurs, researchers, professionals, policymakers, and industry—must not lose sight of the social risks.

Regrowing bones is no easy task, but the world’s lightest solid might make it easier to achieve. Researchers have figured out a way to use hybrid aerogels, strong but ultralight materials, to prompt new bone tissue to grow and replace lost or damaged tissue.

Although bone cancer is a relatively rare disease (it accounts for less than 1% of all cancers), people who suffer from it often end up losing a lot of bone tissue and, in extreme cases, undergo amputation. The cancerous tissue has to be cut out, taking with it a large chunk of nearby healthy tissue to make sure that the cancer does not spread. This effectively removes the cancer, but also leaves the patient with a lot less bone than they started out with.

Continue reading “Say goodbye to casts: ‘magic’ material can heal your bones in mere days” »

View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/can-we-eat-to-starve-cancer-william-li

William Li presents a new way to think about treating cancer and other diseases: anti-angiogenesis, preventing the growth of blood vessels that feed a tumor. The crucial first (and best) step: Eating cancer-fighting foods that cut off the supply lines and beat cancer at its own game.

Talk by WIlliam Li.

CRISPR For Sickle Cell Disease Shows Promise In Early Test : Shots — Health News Researchers edited the DNA in bone marrow cells taken from a Mississippi woman with sickle cell disease to produce a treatment that could alleviate the excruciating effects of her inherited illness.

Education and bravery are the key to our survival. In this article we dig into the correlation between health and longevity.

With so many supplement salesman and scientists talking about longevity it can get confusing as to exactly what that might mean. Of course we all want to live as long as we can but most would agree to it only if they were able to be healthy and active. After all how would life be worth it if you were confined to a bed or wheelchair in constant pain?

As we improve health we also extend life. One drawback to extending life is that we face health problems we might have avoided by simply not being alive. However as we extend life we will also extend health and find ways to cure all diseases. For most of humanity throughout the ages Cancer or Alzheimer’s was rarely a cause for concern. Cancer and Alzheimer’s was not as prevalent because most people did not live long enough to be stricken with them. Many humans died from infections, starvation, and injury and thus the expected life span was much lower than today. Every time a new advancement is made in healthcare we improve the odds of living longer. Hospitals, handwashing, and vaccines all improved a human beings chance of survival and also their chance of contracting a new or otherwise unusual disease.

The city of the future might produce the humans of it, too.