Marijuana has long been the subject of debate, pro-legalisation campaigners argue that marijuana can cure a wide variety of diseases (as a quick google search will show) from various Psychoses to Autism, Alzheimer’s, or perhaps most worryingly Cancer. For many of these stories there is no strong evidence of any benefit, in fact, marijuana may […]
medicine
Do You Believe in Magic (Mushrooms)?
ALDOUS Huxley famously wrote “take a holiday from reality whenever you like, and come back without so much as a headache or a mythology.” Sounds like a dream come true? In Huxley’s classic Brave New World it’s possible. In fact, he wrote a lot about psychedelics and his experiences with them, and before he died, […]
A Placebo … For the Public?!?
In a recent event run by the University of Exeter’s Debating Society (DebSoc), I had the pleasure of arguing the proposition side for the debate “This house believes that complementary medicine is a threat to public health”. It was a close thing, tying up at 34 to 36: we lost by two votes. But fear […]
Could A Pill a Day Keep the Jogging at Bay?
The benefits of exercise are manifold, something we all know to be a fact. Exercise reduces the risk of major illnesses, including cancer, heart disease, and stroke. It also lowers stress levels, promotes the growth of new neurons, and extends life expectancy. Yet for some people – including the elderly, the obese, and those with […]
CRISPR, Genetic Manipulation!
GENOMIC manipulation, whether due to its connotations of ‘futuristic mad scientist’ or what appears as sheer complexity of patterns of heredity, is consistently associated with words such as ‘dangerous’ and ‘worrying’. However, since 2013, a new technique called clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats, or more simply known by the acronym CRISPR, has turned up […]
Fake News
We’ve all seen classic knock off products, perhaps you’ve been tempted to buy them? You wouldn’t be alone. 40% of people in a UK survey admitted to buying pirated films and music or purchasing counterfeit clothing and accessories. This is despite the fact that 90% of respondents in the same survey agreed that it was […]
AIDs changed the world. Now the world of AIDs is changing.
The now-infamous AIDS epidemic was first reported in June 1981. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported an astonishing 774,467 cases of AIDS within the US between 1981 and 2001, with a mortality rate of over 50%. Despite this clear global health issue, progress was slow. Funding into scientific research was limited, and it took 3 years […]
Resistance Is Futile!!!
You hear stories about it in the news weekly, but just what is antibiotic resistance, and is the future of antibiotic era of healthcare as vulnerable as we are lead to believe? Antibiotic resistance is arguably one of the biggest global problems facing humans today. Without a way to defend ourselves against diseases, we hardly […]
Give their Hearts a hug: a new heart treatment
Researchers at Harvard University have developed a novel treatment for heart failure. The new treatment is a robotic silicone sleeve that mimics heart function. Current treatments such as heart transplantations have inadequate efficacy. Donors are in short supply, meaning many patients die awaiting transplantation or die after receiving a transplant because of rejection of the […]
Memento mori: Escaping death
‘I have always been terrified of death, and no philosopher or holy man has been able to convince me otherwise.’ Such are the words of the celebrated novelist Howard Jacobson. From the moment we conceive of mortality, we are doomed to know that, whatever we think lies beyond, we will never be able to know […]