WeirdMedical™

NASA…no need to say more.

Some of the most weird and heart-warming stories of 2010…

Mother’s touch revives premature twin pronounced dead…

“Kangaroo Cuddle”

Afghani teen receives nose transplant in California…

Afghani Teen Harmed by Family

All 33 Chilean Miners Survive Ordeal…

All Chilean Minors Survive

…and seven more…

Thank you, AOL, TIME, LWA, AP, Getty Images & Youtube.com!

A marriage of science, art and remarkable skill…

Dr. Larry Over, DMD, MSD, a maxillofacial prosthodontist in Eugene, OR,  rebuilds a mother’s face.

Building a new face

See the American Medical Association’s site at amednews.com for the amazing reconstruction…read on…

Who of us in the medical industry would have the guts to give a neurosurgeon permission to have our infant’s brain glued?

According to the authors – “It was just a few months before the parents noticed Joley’s head was growing rapidly and was unusually larger than [her twin's] Jared’s . Her mother could see the tiny veins in Joley’s head bulging out from her scalp.”

…But crazy glue worked!

Image of glue in Ella-Grace Honeymans brain

Got to love N-butyl-cyanoacrylate…read more at HealthMad.com…

“Experts have discovered that an extract from the white flower commonly known as Baby’s Breath can boost the efficiency of anti-cancer drugs by a staggering million times,” stated on the British MailOnline website by its Healthcare Section editors.

Apparently this staggeringly significant discovery was made by scientists working for the charity, Leukaemia Busters, based in Southampton, Hampshire. The scientists extracted the molecular substance called saponins from the Gypsophila Paniculata plant. Saponins appears to break down the membrane of cancer cells leaving them vulnerable to antibody-based drugs, known as immunotoxins. Immunotoxins can then more easily attack and kill the cancerous cells.

Baby's Breath Flower Million Star

Leukaemia Busters name and its logo were both devised by Simon Flavell the son of the researchers, Dr David Flavell and his wife Dr Bee Flavell. Drs. Flavell run the charity that was set up in memory Simon who died from the disease aged 10. Simon was a great fan of Ghost Busters.

To learn more about this dedicated research team and their findings read on…

Now this is a good use of our federal tax dollars…

In the northwestern reaches of Washington (D.C. that is) sits a museum that is a “must see” if you like the slightly off-taste, arcane, twisted and in some cases, down-right gross medical oddities. Visit the bricks and mortar “Roadside America of American medicine,” the National Museum of Health and Medicine, America’s oldest taxpayer-funded Cabinet of Curiosities near Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

A row of little skeletons.

At the National Museum of Health and Medicine you can see precariously displayed and disturbingly barely described:

• hanging display of a complete brain and spine, suspended in liquid in an eerily lit glass cylinder
• girl’s head preserved in arsenic
• well-preserved hairball from the stomach of a 12-year old girl who compulsively ate her own hair
• skull with a huge civil war bullet buried in its frontal lobe
• and the list goes on…

To visit…virtually go to the RoadsideAmerica.com Team Field Reporters or National Museum of Health and Medicine, or in real life visit:

6900 Georgia Avenue, Washington, DC

Hours:     M-F 10 am – 5:30 pm, Sa, Su, Hol call ahead

No kidding. This is for real – so when you go to the NMHM in D.C., tell them you want your tax dollars’ worth!

Let’s talk space…outer space that is…

On Monday, April 5, a new water filter system flew to the International Space Station aboard space shuttle Discovery. It’s mission? To enable emergency intravenous (IV) operations to help sick astronauts in space.

The new IVGEN (IntraVenous Fluid Generation) filtering technology was developed under the code name, “Project Clearwater,” at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Ohio in cooperation with the team under the guidance of Philip Scarpa, medical operations manager at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

IntraVenous Fluid Generation (IVGEN) water filter

“Currently, NASA’s medical experts have identified at least 115 different scenarios in which a sick or injured astronaut could need an IV while living on the space station, mostly for rehydration of medicine delivery,” according to Remy Melina, SPACE.com Staff Writer. This not weird but neat website, Space.com, explores inventions going into outerspace for evaluation and testing including those for use in human health.

This is one of the last four of the NASA shuttle flights before the shuttle technology is retired:

Images – Life on the Space Station (courtesy of Space.com)

Twitter Discovery STS-131 mission realtime log (courtesy of SpaceFlightNow.com)

Lucky is the next medtech design engineer to follow his/her device into space!

Did you ever wonder what the first x-ray image looked like or how we are mathematically engineered?

Look no further than “Science and Technology in Medicine: An Illustrated Account Based on Ninety-Nine Landmark Publications from Five Centuries.” Author, Andras Gedeon, has researched major advanced technologies of today back to their roots. Nearly 100 technologies are captured in his book on medical therapies and diagnostic equipment dating back to the early 1500′s.

“A most fascinating read,” says Armchair Interviews who gives it five stars, “The visual effect evokes one’s curiosity at a fundamental level, making it an excellent source for inspiring further learning.”

Humane Blood

This books is fascinating in that it respectfully shows very graphic illustrations, images and in later years, pictures, of more primitive applications of science to the art of early experimental medicine. It is available in:

English & German

Any of us who have a fascination with medicine as it converges with science will cherish this book.  For Armchair Interviews’ review…read on…

Programming our bodies to heal themselves…

Researchers at the Harvard University have discovered a method to make cancerous tumors self destruct. By implanting a plastic disc with tumor-specific antigens that mimic infection into a mouse, the immune system is reprogrammed to attack the tumor.

“Our immune systems work by recognizing and attacking foreign invaders, allowing most cancer cells — which originate inside the body — to escape detection,” according to Harvard’s David J. Mooney, Gordon McKay Professor of Bioengineering in Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, as described in the current issue of the journal Nature Materials. “This technique, which redirects the immune system from inside the body, appears to be easier and more effective than other approaches to cancer vaccination.”

This weird, in vivo technique may prove very effective in human cancer survival.

Causing Cancer to Self-Destruct (Source: Phsyorg.com)

Someday it may be said…“cancer patient, heal thyself!”