Category: Science
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“Can you define the word ‘woman’?”
Jayant RadhakrishnanDarien, Illinois, United States “The more you know the more you realize you don’t know.”— Aristotle (384 BCE-322 BCE) On March 22, 2022, a US senator asked the nominee for Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court: “Can you define the word woman?” The nominee replied, “I can’t.” The senator followed up with,…
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Dr. Fritz Kahn and medical infographics
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “If I were…an intern just getting ready to begin, I would be apprehensive that my real job, caring for sick people, might soon be taken away, leaving me with the quite different occupation of looking after machines.”—Lewis Thomas, MD, 1983 Dr. Fritz Kahn (1888–1968), a Berlin gynecologist, realized that society’s fascination with…
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Xenotransplantation—giving animal organs to humans
In the early 1990s a distinguished scientist predicted that within twenty years thousands of lives would be saved by xenotransplantation. His optimism was unfortunately premature and in America today more than 100,000 people are waiting to receive human hearts, livers, or kidneys. Yet despite false starts and disappointments, the dream of using animal organs in…
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Rabbit starvation (protein poisoning)
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Jack Sprat could eat no fat,his wife could eat no lean…”—Sixteenth-century nursery rhyme Rabbit starvation (fat starvation, mal de caribou, protein poisoning) is an acute type of malnutrition that develops from a diet deficient in fat and where nearly all calories come from lean meat. Rabbit meat is very lean, as can…
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John Hunter, his wolf dogs, and the inherited smiles of Pomeranians
Stephen MartinUnited Kingdom John Hunter, 1728-1793, was a polymathic doctor. Besides being an anatomist and clinician, he was also interested in early genetics, exemplified by his “Observations tending to shew that the Wolf, Jackal, and Dog, are all of the Same Species.”1 Hunter presented this paper to the Royal Society in 1787. (Fig 1) His…
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“Am not I a fly like thee?” Drosophila melanogaster and the human genome
Marshall A. LichtmanRochester, New York, United States Animal models have been essential to medical research for millennia. Ethical concerns about their use has led to a decrease in use of large animals (e.g., dogs, cats). Perhaps the smallest of research animals is Drosophila melanogaster, a fruit fly, one tenth inch in length, which has contributed…
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Was Moses an alchemist?
S.E.S. MedinaBenbrook, Texas, United States “And he took the (golden) calf which they had made, and burnt it in the fire, and ground it to powder, and scattered it upon the water, and made the children of Israel drink of it.” -Exodus 32:20. In the event depicted above, Moses had just returned with the Ten…
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Origin of the mind
Bhargavi BhattacharyyaKolkata, India How are the mind and brain related? The brain is a ball of nerve cells, or neurons. The mind, the functional unit of the brain, includes imagination, perception, thinking, intelligence, judgment, language, memory, and emotions. How do these basic units, neurons, translate to mental faculty? Scientists wanted to look at the function…