the3rdrock.com

The world’s first mother-daughter uterus trans­plant could take place next year in Sweden, the head of an inter­na­tional research team in the west­ern Swedish city of Gothen­burg said Tuesday.

“We have reached a stage where we have star­ted to plan for a human trans­plant and we are invest­ig­at­ing 10 pairs, most of those are mother and daugh­ters,” Mats Braen­stroem told AFP, adding the first of such trans­plants could take place “hope­fully at the begin­ning of next year.”

He added that trans­plant­ing a womb from a woman to her daugh­ter would be a world first, although a uterus trans­plant between two unre­lated women took place in Saudi Ara­bia in 2002.

His inter­na­tional team of doc­tors at the Sahl­grenska Uni­ver­sity Hos­pital has been research­ing the sub­ject for a dec­ade and has tested it on anim­als, he said, explain­ing there were no par­tic­u­lar com­plic­a­tions in trans­plant­ing a womb from mother to daughter.

“There can just be an advant­age because they are more sim­ilar in their tis­sues so there could be less rejec­tion in that situ­ation,” he said.

One of the pairs under­go­ing the phys­ical and psy­cho­lo­gical tests required ahead of a pos­sible pro­ced­ure were quoted in Swedish media Tues­day as say­ing they were grate­ful to be part of the project.

“I have been given an oppor­tun­ity I did not think was pos­sible,” a 25-year old woman born without a uterus told tabloid Expressen.

“I have always loved chil­dren. Over the past five years I have felt intense sor­row over not being able to have chil­dren of my own,” she told its com­pet­itor Aftonbladet.

The woman could receive a uterus from her 56-year-old mother, who said she no longer had any use for the organ and that it felt nat­ural to do everything she could to help her daughter.

“I think all par­ents do what they can to help their chil­dren if it feels right,” she told Aftonbladet.

The daugh­ter insisted receiv­ing the womb she her­self emerged from was not a cause for concern.

“It’s an organ just like any other and it has no genetic sig­ni­fic­ance. I work as a bio­logy teacher and I don’t think its strange,” she told Expressen.

The world’s first uterus trans­plant took place in 2002 when doc­tors in Saudi Ara­bia trans­planted the womb of a 46-year-old woman to a 26-year-old.

Although blood clots forced the doc­tors to remove the trans­planted organ after 14 weeks, they claimed tech­nical suc­cess in the procedure.

Braen­stroem said such com­plic­a­tions would be less likely in the Swedish transplants.

“We have optim­ised the tech­nique in our animal mod­els for such a long time. The Saudi Ara­bia team didn’t have any exper­i­ence at all in animal mod­els before. They did it in humans right away,” he explained.

In 2007, sci­ent­ists planned the first uterus trans­plant in the United States, but the pro­ced­ure never went bey­ond the screen­ing stage.

“The research front has moved for­ward since 2007 and espe­cially our group has taken big steps for­ward in this research, so that’s why we think we are ready to do this,” Braen­stroem said.

Source : Sapa-AFP

Amaz­ing, isn’t it?

The fact that we are able to oper­ate a fleshy chop-shop, irre­spect­ive of the ori­gin­at­ing state, loc­ale and type of the donor is truly astounding.

Hearts, liv­ers and kid­neys are com­mon­place. Even the lungs today are cap­able of being stripped from a wreck and trans­planted into a future sports model.

The womb though, that raises an encyclopaedia’s worth of questions.

The abil­ity to per­form it is not in doubt — the moral and men­tal aspect of it how­ever, is — amongst others.

My first ques­tion would surely be one of longev­ity. If we take into account that this trans­plant is deemed to be between a woman in her mid-to-late fourties (the donor) and one in her early-to-mid twen­ties (the recip­i­ent), the ques­tion of men­o­pause surely must be asked? At the donor’s age, most women have a repro­duct­ive sys­tem begin­ning to shut down. What is the use of trans­plant­ing an effect­ively expir­ing organ? Is there a pro­cess in place to extend the meno’?

Secondly, I do note the exper­i­mental phase this pro­cess is engaged in, but will the pref­er­ence always be to use the mother’s womb? What of the mind­set needed by both donor and recip­i­ent? Soci­ety has, in gen­eral, main­tained very strong views against incest. This is backed up many reli­gions and, of course, plenty of legis­la­tion across the globe. Indeed, there is no familial cop­u­la­tion occur­ing, but the fact remains that it shall be pos­sible to con­ceive a grand­child in the grandmother’s womb.

Leg­ally, where does this sit? It is not inces­tu­ous on the one hand because no familial cop­u­la­tion occurred (which, for clarity’s sake pre­cludes typ­ic­ally incest-derived defects with the child, before you assume/ask), but the child is born of the grandmother’s womb, which, argu­ably, is incestuous.

Has coun­selling been provided to both donor and recip­i­ent for this?

Is med­ic­a­tion provided to the recip­i­ent to con­trol organ rejec­tion issues, and if so, what test­ing has been done to ascer­tain the effects of this on pregnancy?

I’m neither for nor against this pro­ced­ure, but it does leave a lot ques­tions hanging in the balance.

What are your views on it? Would you try it? Do you dis­agree with it? Is it right­eous in respect of your beliefs?

Source: mybroadband.co.za

Ana Catar­ina Bezerra, a 36-year-old Brazilian woman, suf­fers from an imbal­ance that trig­gers severe anxi­ety and hypersexuality.Ana found that the only way to relieve her anxi­ety was to masturbate.

This seems all within the realms of reason, except that she real­ised it might be prob­lem when her self-love hit the 47-times-a-day mark.

In April last year, Ana took her employer to court to be allowed to play with her­self at work and now that she’s won, she’s leg­ally entitled to watch porn with her hand up her skirt for 15 minutes every two hours dur­ing office hours.

If it’s just with her­self, does the usual title still apply?

Source: News24

Septem­ber 10th, 1945 finds a strap­ping (but tender) five and a half month old Wyan­dotte rooster peck­ing through the dust of Fruita, Col­or­ado. The unsus­pect­ing bird had never looked so deli­cious as he did that, now fam­ous, day. Clara Olsen was plan­ning on fea­tur­ing the plump chicken in the even­ing meal. Hus­band Lloyd Olsen was sent out, on a very routine mis­sion, to pre­pare the des­ig­nated fryer for the pan. Noth­ing about this task turned out to be routine. Lloyd knew his Mother in Law would be din­ing with them and would savor the neck. He posi­tioned his ax pre­cisely, estim­at­ing just the right tol­er­ances, to leave a gen­er­ous neck bone. “It was as import­ant to Suck-Up to your Mother in Law in the 40’s as it is today.” A skill­ful blow was executed and the chicken staggered around like most freshly ter­min­ated poultry.

Then the determ­ined bird shook off the trau­matic event and never looked back. Mike (it is unclear when the fam­ous rooster took on the name) returned to his job of being a chicken. He pecked for food and preened his feath­ers just like the rest of his barn­yard buddies.

When Olsen found Mike the next morn­ing, sleep­ing with his “head” under his wing, he decided that if Mike had that much will to live, he would fig­ure out a way to feed and water him. With an eye­d­rop­per Mike was given grain and water. It was becom­ing obvi­ous that Mike was spe­cial. A week into Mike’s new life Olsen packed him up and took him 250 miles to the Uni­ver­sity of Utah in Salt Lake City . The skep­tical sci­ent­ists were eager to answer all the ques­tions regard­ing Mike’s amaz­ing abil­ity to sur­vive with no head. It was determ­ined that ax blade had missed the jug­u­lar vein and a clot had pre­ven­ted Mike from bleed­ing to death. Although most of his head was in a jar, most of his brain stem and one ear was left on his body. Since most of a chicken’s reflex actions are con­trolled by the brain stem Mike was able to remain quite healthy.

In the 18 MONTHS that Mike lived as “The Head­less Won­der Chicken” he grew from a mere 2 1/2 lbs. to nearly 8 lbs. In a Gayle Meyer inter­view Olsen said Mike was a “robust chicken — a fine spe­ci­men of a chicken except for not hav­ing a head.” Some long­time Fruita res­id­ents, gathered at the Monu­ment Cafe for cof­fee, also remem­ber Mike — “he was a big fat chicken who didn’t know he didn’t have a head” — “he seemed as happy as any other chicken.” Mike’s excel­lent state of health made it dif­fi­cult for animal-rights act­iv­ists to garner much of a fol­low­ing. Even now the town of Fruita cel­eb­rates Mike’s impress­ive will to live, not the nature of his han­di­cap. Mir­acle Mike took on a man­ager, and with the Olsens in tow, set out on a national tour. Curi­ous sideshow pat­rons in New York , Atlantic City , Los Angeles , and San Diego lined up to pay 25 cents to see Mike. The “Won­der Chicken” was val­ued at $10,000.00 and insured for the same. His fame and for­tune would earn him recog­ni­tion in Life and Time Magazines. It goes without say­ing there was a Guin­ness World Record in all this. While return­ing from one of these road trips the Olsens stopped at a motel in the Ari­zona desert. In the middle of the night Mike began to choke. Unable to find the eye­d­rop­per used to clear Mike’s open eso­phagus Mir­acle Mike passed on.

Now, Mike’s spirit is cel­eb­rated the third week­end in May.

www.miketheheadlesschicken.org

An obese Ohio man had to be cut from a chair he had been sit­ting in for two years after his body became fused to it, local media reported.

Faecal Fatty

Police said that the man’s skin had become fused to the seat of the chair, which was covered in urine, fae­ces and maggots.

The man’s girl­friend brought him food for two years as he sat in his own waste in the filthy apart­ment they shared with another man, police said.

They called for help on when he was unre­spons­ive and had to cut a hole in the house to get him out of the build­ing so they could get him to the hospital.

The smell was unbear­able and one officer told the sta­tion that he threw away his uni­form after it was sul­lied while cut­ting the man out of the chair. The man was taken to the hos­pital for treatment.

“The liv­ing room where the man lived in his chair was very filthy, very deplor­able. It’s unbe­liev­able that some­body lives in con­di­tions like that,” said Jim Chase, a city code enfor­cer in Bel­laire, Ohio.

“I instruc­ted the land­lord this morn­ing and the two people, the ten­ants at the house, they had to get it cleaned, there’s no way they can live in some­thing like that, and so they are work­ing on it,” he said.

(Sapa, March 2011)

In amongst all the oddit­ies of this story, I’ve yet to see any­one ask…HOW THE @$%^ DID A PUTRID DRONE LIKE THAT GET A GIRLFRIEND!?

What made her stay!?

Unless that guy is a tril­lion­aire and on the verge of death, hav­ing signed over his belong­ings to her…what pos­sible reason could there be?

…and his house­mate? Truly there are some wier­dos we’re forced to share our lim­ited oxy­gen sup­ply with.

Source: www.health24.com

This is a med­ical post.

Asperger’s — not asparagus.

Edited slightly to add rel­ev­ant content.

Asperger’s Syn­drome

Asperger’s Syn­drome, by way of Wiki­Pe­dia, is described as “an aut­ism spec­trum dis­order that is char­ac­ter­ized by sig­ni­fic­ant dif­fi­culties in social inter­ac­tion, along with restric­ted and repet­it­ive pat­terns of beha­vior and interests. It dif­fers from other aut­ism spec­trum dis­orders by its rel­at­ive pre­ser­va­tion of lin­guistic and cog­nit­ive development.”

Dis­covered in 1944 by Aus­trian pae­di­at­ri­cian Hans Asper­ger, who lent the con­di­tion his sur­name as a title. Asper­ger con­duc­ted stud­ies on and described chil­dren in his prac­tice who “lacked non­verbal com­mu­nic­a­tion skills, demon­strated lim­ited empathy with their peers, and were phys­ic­ally clumsy.”

Half a cen­tury later it was stand­ard­ized as an accep­ted dia­gnosis, but still left — and leaves — many ques­tions about aspects of the disorder.

“For example, there is doubt about whether it is dis­tinct from high-functioning aut­ism (HFA); partly because of this, its pre­val­ence is not firmly estab­lished. It has been pro­posed that the dia­gnosis of Asperger’s be elim­in­ated, to be replaced by a dia­gnosis of aut­ism spec­trum dis­order on a sever­ity scale.”

It’s thought to be a genetic transfer.

How does it show and who had it?

Asperger’s mani­fests itself in a mul­ti­tude of sever­it­ies and as such, some are able to cope bet­ter than oth­ers with it and those sur­round­ing the afflic­ted may thus struggle to identify the traits neces­sary for a dia­gnosis. AS is com­monly mis­dia­gnosed and missed by med­ical professionals.

Fam­ous suf­fer­ers of Asperger’s include Ein­stein, Beeth­oven and Da Vinci. Suc­cess and a rel­at­ively ‘nor­mal’ life are pos­sible for many ‘Aspies’, but unfor­tu­nately not all are able to over­come it.

So, what does it mean?

‘Aspies’ struggle immensely with social interaction.

Eye-to-eye con­tact for a start, is ask­ing a lot. It’s too dir­ect, too intim­id­at­ing. An intense gaze from afar though, is a def­in­ite pos­sib­il­ity and can eas­ily be con­strued as an act of pass­ive aggression.

Think of an Aspie as being 3rd-party to him­self — s/he could be sit­ting hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with your­self, express­ing them­selves in whatever fash­ion suits, and not neces­sar­ily hav­ing full con­trol of the situation.

Example: Joan utters to Mark that his shirt is atro­cious. Joan, could or could not be aware of what she’s just said. In some cir­cum­stances she might have said to Mark that his shirt was new and inter­est­ing. Altern­at­ively, Joan could have made the offens­ive remark without actu­ally being aware of it.

This ties in to the next point — Aspies are gen­er­ally extremely opin­ion­ated, both in terms of hav­ing defin­it­ive thoughts about some­thing, someone or some­where and in terms of ignor­ing oth­ers opinions.

Example: Joan remarked that she found Mark’s shirt to be very ugly. As an Aspie, she wasn’t neces­sar­ily aware that what she’d just said could have been hurt­ful to Mark. Like­wise, if the per­son at the next table had but­ted in and gone to Mark’s aid say­ing that the shirt was in fact lovely, Joan would more than likely have ignored this action without act­ively regis­ter­ing it.

The last two points are gen­er­ally the trig­ger to the end of rela­tion­ships and friend­ships — things are said and done that seem­ingly pass the Aspie as right­eous without second thought but carry heavy mean­ing for those in the surroundings.

Aspies are gen­er­ally extremely self-critical and strive for per­fec­tion. Aspies tend to chal­lenge them­selves con­stantly and need con­stant reas­sur­ance. Because of this, when things wrong, they go very wrong in an Aspie’s head. Attempt­ing a simple task and encoun­ter­ing an error or obstacle, or not com­plet­ing the task to self-set stand­ards can upset them greatly them, lead­ing to a severe drop in self-esteem — another oft-encountered trait.

Asperger’s tends to affect those with above-average intel­lect and affects more males than females.

One clearly vis­ible sign of this is the lin­guistic abil­it­ies and vocab­u­lar­ies of Aspies — gen­er­ally much higher than most and well developed from an early age — around the age of 8, accord­ing to some stud­ies. Speech is some­times a devel­op­mental prob­lem with Asperger’s and abnor­mal­it­ies can “include verb­os­ity, abrupt trans­itions, lit­eral inter­pret­a­tions and mis­com­pre­hen­sion of nuance, use of meta­phor mean­ing­ful only to the speaker, aud­it­ory per­cep­tion defi­cits, unusu­ally pedantic, formal or idio­syn­cratic speech, and oddit­ies in loud­ness, pitch, inton­a­tion, pros­ody, and rhythm.” Speech ther­apy is an option that can and does help many chil­dren.  The para­dox is that whilst an Aspie has a dis­tinct abil­ity to com­mu­nic­ate in terms of abil­ity and resource, it is extremely dif­fi­cult for them to verb­al­ise, tacitly indic­ate or adum­brat­ively allude their thoughts. Had to catch you out with that one. I’ll wait for the class to get their dic­tion­ar­ies… Hehe. See the ref­er­ence link at the bot­tom of the article.

Aspies tend to have a few extremely focused interests which could eas­ily be con­sidered obses­sions. There does not appear to be any spe­cific field which interests Aspies and no con­clus­ive proof that Aspies refrain from cer­tain activ­it­ies or interests.

Aspies are usu­ally affected and hyper react­ive to cer­tain stim­uli. These include but are not lim­ited to tex­tures, sounds, light, noisy/crowded spaces, smells, etc.

Due to their high intel­lect, and in con­trast with their lack of social skills, Aspies usu­ally develop an extremely acute sense of people and how their minds oper­ate — “mind read­ing” if you will. The abil­ity to read, learn and ana­lyse minds can lead to accus­a­tions of manip­u­la­tion from those around an Aspie. Aspies are best described as thinkers on a dif­fer­ent plain, or per­haps ‘lat­eral thinkers’ in the broad sense.

Aspies gen­er­ally suf­fer from poor motor skills — espe­cially in their younger years — and con­sidered “clumsy”.

Aspies are extremely reg­u­lated and thrive on a set routine. Some­thing as small as put­ting on pants before a shirt, if it usu­ally the other way around or tak­ing a dif­fer­ent route to a des­tin­a­tion can be hugely upsetting.

“Indi­vidu­als with AS often have excel­lent aud­it­ory and visual per­cep­tion.” Remem­ber­ing the place­ment of objects, pick­ing up some­thing far in advance of those in the sur­rounds or acute hear­ing are in effect.

Some Aspies exhibit a very notice­able lack of plan­ning for any­thing. This might be as minor as gro­cery shop­ping until they dis­cover the lack of deodor­ant to some­thing major, such as trav­el­ling over­seas with no plans in place what­so­ever. Risk is a rel­at­ive here — some Aspies don’t know the mean­ing of it. Driv­ing around a blind corner at vastly excess­ive speeds or walk­ing along a ledge high up are not neces­sar­ily acts of bravery. Some­times the Aspie legit­im­ately doesn’t see it as a risk. Makes you won­der about all of those aeons-old her­oes, eh?

Aspies struggle to relax, struggle to sleep and often show an encom­passing lack of emo­tional reci­pro­city. Hug­ging someone back or return­ing an “I Love you.” can be immensely dif­fi­cult, if the Aspie has a strong will to do it internally.

Because an Aspie main­tains such strong interests, lacks con­fid­ence in social situ­ations and tends to live a reclus­ive life to avoid excess­ive broken rela­tion­ships and friend­ships, they are often con­sidered “aloof” and “selfish”. It is import­ant to remem­ber that more than likely the Aspie is self-centered, true to Aut­ism, rather than “selfish”. A selfish per­son is exactly that. An Aspie can be selfish, but is self-centered for reas­ons usu­ally bey­ond his or her control.

Aspies may make a hand­ful of ‘good’ friends, but can eas­ily avoid con­tact with them for pro­longed peri­ods. This is not neces­sar­ily due to any­thing other than a feel­ing of extreme reclus­iv­ity. The time period from last con­tact to next con­tact is some­what out of the realm of ‘nor­mal’ time for most people.

Whilst an Aspie has the poten­tial for suc­cess, there is a lot to over­come and major points such as study­ing, col­league and busi­ness rela­tions and proper plan­ning are very high hurdles to overcome.

I am an Aspie.

In my exper­i­ence never under­stand an Aspie will never under­stand a ‘nor­mal’ per­son, and vice-versa. Stand­ing in a crowd observing a group of people laugh­ing, eat­ing and get­ting along is a com­pletely incom­pre­hens­ible thing for many Aspies.

There is no cure for Asperger’s Syn­drome. As it stands, it’s still not fully under­stood nearly 80 years after it was labelled.

The next time someone exhib­its traits such as these, give them the bene­fit of the doubt. They’re more than likely vastly more appre­ci­at­ive of your allow­ances than you think.

This is a med­ical post. I am NOT a doc­tor and this art­icle was com­posed using a vari­ety of online sources and from personal experience.

Addi­tional source/s: www.autismsouthafrica.org

EDIT: Radio news reports yes­ter­day (24–02-2011) described the example below as a mar­ket­ing ploy for an upcom­ing ‘slasher’ film. Whilst this example may be a mar­ket­ing stunt, the remain­ing con­tent herein is top­ic­ally rel­ev­ant and remains my opin­ion on the subject.

• Are you pressed for time to get some cash in hand?
• In good shape?
• HIV-?

…oh, and in Africa?

You’re in luck!

Just this morn­ing I debated and philo­soph­ized with a col­league about humans’ tinker­ing with DNA in order to con­trol and manip­u­late the power of cre­ation. The sub­ject of ‘breed­ing licenses’ also came up — naturally.

I voted against DNA manip­u­la­tion but in favour of breed­ing licenses. Before the overly fan­at­ical among us slate me for all sorts of reas­ons, bear in mind, it was a long dis­cus­sion with many com­plex inter­ludes to the ori­ginal topic.

My col­league was in favour of DNA manipulation.

I, like most [“intel­li­gent”] people, am con­stantly annoyed, frus­trated by and dis­ap­poin­ted by the throngs of imbe­ciles, mor­ons and idi­ots sur­round­ing each of us.

How­ever, to keep this sub­ject simple, we must con­cen­trate on the imme­di­ate sub­ject at hand — the power to create.

All too often taken for gran­ted and widely abused for all man­ner of reasons.

If we are sur­roun­ded by the dumb, can we then hon­estly trust the powers that be (unfor­tu­nately these are usu­ally the politi­cians) to con­trol such immense power? If your roads, water sup­ply and elec­trical con­nec­tions are fal­ter­ing, how can we give these groups the power to mess with life?

We can’t. We shouldn’t. We mustn’t.

One just has to look at the own country’s man­age­ment, col­leagues, social inter­ac­tions and their mir­ror to see that such thoughts and — fright­en­ingly — actions, are insanity.

So, allow me to con­tinue with my example of why we, as a group, can not afford to tinker with the gene pool any further…

“Dr.” Uba — a South African-based [could be an import], arrived at my pres­ence via this scan…

That’s a laugh, right? Source your shock, because hordes of Black Afric­ans believe in, util­ize and fall prey to such mar­ket­ing. Fly­ers such as these are not uncom­mon around these parts.

1,000 South African Rand at the time of writ­ing this is approx­im­ately USD 130.

As with massive parts of Asia, tra­di­tional beliefs still run strong and the cul­ture that endures pushes all gen­er­a­tions to such doc­tors. This is gen­er­al­iz­ing, but the truth is that a lux­ury Ger­man auto­mobile, a man­sion in a ‘good’ sur­burb and a designer suit don’t neces­sar­ily exclude the per­son from their gen­er­a­tional past.

Formal rep­res­ent­a­tion of doc­tors such as these are clearly to be found, but still, we are littered with tra­di­tional ‘doc­tors’, known loc­ally as san­go­mas [San-go-muhs] and muti [Mue-tee] killings.

Muti being the use of such items as men­tioned in the afore­seen scan.

I’d be a liar if I said all san­go­mas held such repu­ta­tions, but like­wise, it can’t be dis­puted that there are some that do.

When does cul­ture stop and sense start?

At what point does the gov­ern­ment take action, step in and put a stop to what is clearly out­dated, ludicrous and dan­ger­ous behaviour?

The answer is per­haps not what you might think it is.

Con­tem­plate this for a moment — if the edu­ca­tion provided was of a high, cur­rent and rel­ev­ant stand­ard, we would be presen­ted with a gen­er­a­tion cap­able of informedly decid­ing for itself whether such antics were neces­sary and we would see a gen­er­a­tion cap­able of cre­at­ing a life worthy of a reli­able income which would addi­tion­ally put a stop to these extreme measures.

So, who’s at fault here? The [poorly] uneducated masses? The oppor­tun­istic cos­tume party ‘doc­tors’? …or the government?

Not a tough choice, is it?

If you’d like to take up Dr. Uba on his offer, visit his ‘site: www.ubaclinic.co.za

^ I’m not act­ively link­ing such drivvel from my blog.

Source: mybroadband.co.za