Week of August 12, 2024
Like many physicians, I occasionally provide acute medical care in unexpected situations, such as on airplanes or other public, non-medical venues. The ethical and medico-legal obligations, protections, and risks of medical professionals acting as "Good Samaritans" are fascinating. While I err on the side of trying to help, I am aware of colleagues who disagree - fearing legal or other entanglements. (I note, however, that four states have "failure to act" laws, making trained providers legally obligated to try to help, though I am not sure how someone would know you are a physician in many public situations.) Either way, unexpected and uncontrolled medical events are often disproportionately adrenaline- and anxiety-provoking for both the patient and the medical professional. Of course, the mild irony is that without much equipment (or years of medical records and lab data for us nephrologists), a clinician can only address a few essential issues while waiting for EMS [or the plane to land]. (Do I need to start CPR? Do I need to stop bleeding? Is there something blocking the airway?)
Read more!
https://www.lawinfo.com/resources/personal-injury/what-are-good-samaritan-laws.html
and
https://www.aafp.org/pubs/fpm/issues/2008/0400/p37.html
and
https://thepointsguy.com/news/whats-inside-an-airplanes-emergency-medical-kit/
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As of the end of last week, COVID is now infecting 1 in 33 individuals in the U.S.
https://x.com/covid19_disease/status/1822264625175363685
The Pandemic Mitigation Collaborative (PMC) website uses wastewater levels to forecast 4-week predictions of COVID rates. They are upgrading their model and will have new data on 8/12/24.
https://pmc19.com/data/
based upon https://biobot.io/data/
Wastewater Scan offers a multi-organism wastewater dashboard with an excellent visual display of individual treatment plant-level data.
https://data.wastewaterscan.org/
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COVID articles
While not the most scintillating article, these data are a fantastic example of why I love biology. In the interconnectedness of all things, these researchers looked at how the genetics of Staph Aureus (a ubiquitous bacteria that infects humans) changed during COVID. The selective pressures of more hospitalizations, antibiotics, and intravenous lines lead to more antibiotic resistance and a higher likelihood of Staph bacteria acquiring genetic advantages for binding to some human proteins (like the proteins in the bloodstream that cling to central IV lines used during critical illness).
https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(24)01627-4
and
https://x.com/ejustin46/status/1821395775382839707
I will try to post an update on nasal spray-administered COVID-19 vaccines until I get one (or I get a COVID-sniffing dog).
https://archive.ph/2024.08.10-172811/https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/health/article/university-of-houston-covid-nasal-vaccine-19628489.php
COVID-sniffing dog from the W.A.i.R. archives
http://www.whatadamisreading.com/search?q=COVID-sniffing+Dog
Medical Trends and Technology
United Therapeutics, the company that owns Miromatrix (regenerating human livers and kidneys on pig organ matrix) and developing genetically modified pig organs (the ones used as part of the compassionate use xenotransplantation cases known to date), is opening a new xenotransplantation center in Minnesota. A friend pointed me to this article.
https://www.postbulletin.com/business/biotech-giant-to-build-multi-million-dollar-pig-to-human-organ-center-in-stewartville
(Or, if the paywall is blocking you, the internet archive sometimes works https://web.archive.org/web/20240811052346/https://www.postbulletin.com/business/biotech-giant-to-build-multi-million-dollar-pig-to-human-organ-center-in-stewartville)
U.K. Regulators have approved a CRISPR-based therapy for the blood disorder beta-thalassemia. Like the U.S. treatment for sickle cell disease, the procedure involves an allograft bone marrow transplant (with the transplanted stem cells being the patient's genetically modified cells to correct the genetic disorder).
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gzldll44lo
Infographics
It is time to revisit my favorite unexpected infographics source - Alan's Factory Outlet, an online merchant of Custom Carports, Garages, and Metal Buildings. Alan's infographics, which seem only peripherally related to the business's primary mission, perpetually amuse me. Aside from selling the "finest quality custom metal buildings," Alan seems sincerely interested in information and infographics. To that end, here is Alan's '38 Radioactive Elements and What They Are Used For.'
https://alansfactoryoutlet.com/38-radioactive-elements-and-what-they-are-used-for/
Things I learned this week
I learned about Nigel Richards, the most winning competitive Scrabble player in history. "Nigel—one name, like Serena or Michelangelo—went viral in 2015 after winning the French world championship even though he didn't speak French. He inhaled some large chunk of the 386,000 words on the Francophone list, and did it in a mind-boggling nine weeks. That same year, he won a tournament in Bangalore, India, with a 30-3 record. In one of those games, Nigel extended ZAP to ZAPATEADOS (the plural of a Latin American dance). In another, he threaded ASAFETIDA (a resin used in Indian cooking) through the F and the D. Those words likely had never been played in Scrabble before, and likely won't be again."
https://defector.com/scrabbles-best-player-knows-no-limits
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Richards_(Scrabble_player)
I don't spend a lot of time thinking about Helen Keller. Nevertheless, I was pleasantly surprised to learn she had a close and long friendship with Mark Twain, who (it turns out) was an open-minded defender of critical thinking, minorities, and disabled people in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The relationship between Keller and Twain added depth and color to what, in my mind, are unidimensional portraits based on elementary school biographies I read in the 1980s.
https://www.openculture.com/2024/08/mark-twain-and-helen-kellers-special-friendship.html
Living with A.I.
Will the 2032 (or 2028) Olympics be between people (of any genetic or hormonal variant) and machines? Google is now training AI-driven robots to play ping pong. "[R]esearchers compiled a dataset of table tennis ball states, including data on position, spin, and speed. The system drew from this library in a simulated environment designed to accurately reflect the physics of table tennis matches to learn skills such as returning a serve, hitting a forehand topspin, or backhand shot. As the robot's limitations meant it could not serve the ball, the real-world games were modified to accommodate this."
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/08/09/1096102/google-deepmind-trained-a-robot-to-beat-humans-at-table-tennis/
A.I. art of the week (A visual mashup of topics from the newsletter).
An accidentally dystopian image from DALL-E this week. Apologies in advance for any nightmares.
"A 4-arm headless robot - one arm is playing ping pong, one arm is playing scrabble, one arm is operating on a pig, and one arm is painting a metal shed."
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1R3hmy9GBZ0fzIpeQQV06BoEgHuR-OdcJ/view?usp=sharing
Clean hands and sharp minds,
Adam
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