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© 2011, 2012 Health Futures Digest
Here’s our weekly summary of tweets from @hfdigest, and their significance. The Practice of Medicine A study has claimed to show that an MRI brain scan can detect pedophiles. Well, that study may have a lot of problems; however, it is part of an inexorable trend in which medicine is turning from an art to […]
Here’s our weekly summary of tweets from @hfdigest, and their significance. Aging We have known for some time that adult stem cells age, as do all our cells. But until recently we did not know we can rejuvenate them—in the petri dish, anyway. This extraordinary breakthrough could make us younger, and not merely stop growing […]
Molecular Imaging is the Next Gen Single-slice CT scanners for routine clinical use were around for nine years before being replaced by the next generation—4-slice CT. They lasted 5 years, before 16 and 32-slice machines appeared. Eighteen months later, the 64-slice made its debut, and within nine months a 256-slicer was up and running in Japan. Where do […]
Last December, a consumer watchdog group questioned the legality of advertising medical devices on YouTube, and called on regulators to crack down on such promotions. The videos tout the benefits of the devices but do not mention the risks, according to the group, in contravention of US Food and Drug Administration rules requiring a balanced […]
The number of Americans traveling abroad for care is disputed, but “hardly anyone disputes that medical care, once a highly local business, is going global like never before,” writes Marla Dickerson in the LA Times. It deprived domestic medical providers of about $16 billion in 2007, according to consulting firm Deloitte, which predicts the number […]
Designer Babies Early this year a Los Angeles clinic began offering couples the chance to design their own babies, choosing gender, eye, hair, and skin color, via pre-implantation genetic diagnosis
Given the acceleration of innovation in robotics, South Korean and European scientists think it is not too soon to start considering the risks, responsibilities, and ethicsrelating to increasingly intelligent and autonomous robots.Already, on the premise that robots will intrude much deeper into our lives, European researchers are working to make them sensitive to human emotions. […]
It has been a while since we brought to your attention any breakthroughs in robotics. In part, that is because we decided to focus more pragmatically (but not exclusively) on breakthroughs that are relatively imminent, compared to scientific and technological breakthroughs in the lab that may be years away from a patient near you. We’re […]
There is no common robotics theme in this issue, but that’s not for want of advances: The nanotechnologists’ dream of a Universal Assembler that can turn itself into any desired object — a patient, for example — is off to a “big” start, with components measuring hundredths rather than billionths of a meter. The line […]