EASTER WARNING - in case you're getting ideas

Easter warning: crucifixion is bad for you
By Thomas Bell

Many people in the Philippines consider crucifixion and self flagellation good for the soul, but it is bad for your health according to new government advice for penitents.

This Holy Week, the thousands of guilt stricken or pious worshippers who will flay the skin off their backs, and the handful who will crucify themselves, are encouraged to get a tetanus shot first and be sure to use a clean whip or nails.

"We are not trying to go against the Lenten tradition here because whipping has somewhat already become some form of ’atonement for sins’ for some of us,” Health Secretary Francisco Duque the 3rd said. "Getting deep cut wounds during whippings or lashings is inevitable and being so exposed during the course of the penitence, with all the heat and dust blowing in the wind, welcomes all sorts of infections and bacteria like tetanus,” he explained.

Re-enactments of the Passion of Christ are common in many parts of the mostly Roman Catholic Philippines but frowned upon by the church authorities.

In San Fernando City 23 people, including two women, have signed up to re-enact the crucifixion at three “improvised Golgothas” around town. Four of them will use real nails.

The city government’s website trumpets the preparations.“The City Health Office (CHO) autoclaved all the nails to be used and will administer anti-tetanus vaccine to all the “Cristos” to ensure their protection from possible infection,” it points out. City officials will conduct an inspection of the Golgothas on Thursday.

The festival is sponsored by Coca-cola and a company called Smart Telecommunications.
In a break from the original tradition, penitents are encouraged to “bring enough drinking water for the whole course of the pilgrimage to avoid dehydration, rather than buy bottled drinking water from unfamiliar sources.”
There is also government advice for the many tourists and spectators who attend the events.
"It is also better to bring self-prepared foods such as sandwiches, not only to save money, but also to avoid getting diseases such as diarrhea, hepatitis A, and typhoid after eating food bought from street vendors,” the health secretary suggested.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news

20/03/2008

FOREIGN ACCENT SYNDROME

Foreign accent syndrome is a rare medical condition that usually follows a severe brain injury, such as a stroke or a head injury. As of 1996, there had been fewer than 15 reported cases of the syndrome. The syndrome causes people to speak their native languageas if they had a foreign accent; for example, an American native speaker might speak with a French-sounding accent

Usually, it is very traumatic for stroke patients such as these to find that their accent has unexpectedly changed

UCF clinic diagnoses rare Foreign Accent Syndrome

University of Central Florida speech expert diagnoses disorder that caused woman to speak with British accent after a stroke

ORLANDO, Nov. 19, 2003 - A University of Central Florida speech expert has diagnosed an extremely rare disorder in a Sarasota woman that caused her to speak with a British accent after she suffered a stroke.
The case of Foreign Accent Syndrome - a disorder linked to stroke-related or other internal brain injuries that leaves affected people with a foreign-sounding accent - is one of fewer than 20 reported worldwide since 1919, according to Jack Ryalls, professor of communicative disorders at UCF.
In November 1999, 57-year-old Judi Roberts of Sarasota suffered a stroke that left the right side of her body paralyzed. She was also unable to speak. After months of physical therapy, she was no longer paralyzed and was able to speak with some difficulty. Her speech gradually improved during the next year until she was speaking with the same fluency as she had before the stroke. However, instead of the familiar New York accent she once had, she spoke with a British accent.
Roberts had never traveled to Britain. She didn't recognize her own voice. Her friends and family didn't understand it, and strangers constantly asked her where she was from. One doctor told her she was not working hard enough to get her old voice back. "At times I thought I was losing my mind," Roberts said. "Without the support of my internist and therapist, I wouldn't have been able to cope."

This year, four years after her stroke, she received an e-mail from a friend who found a New York Times article about research on language problems conducted by Jennifer Gurd, a professor at Oxford University in England. "When I read the article I realized there was a chance I had a legitimate medical problem," Roberts recalled, "and that it had a name - Foreign Accent Syndrome."

Roberts contacted Gurd, who referred her to UCF's Ryalls, an expert on neurologically based speech and language disorders who had previously studied the syndrome. Ryalls invited Roberts to UCF and conducted several language tests designed especially for her. He checked her ability to change word stress patterns and accentuation by having her pronounce sentences like, "I wanted to record the record onto a cassette tape." He also had her repeat words stressing the wrong syllable in sentences like, "Put the emPHAsis on the wrong sylLABle." The tests enabled Ryalls to analyze Roberts's speech prosody, or the ability to use the appropriate syllable emphasis, and accentuation, which differs in British and American English. He wanted to determine if she was applying the wrong syllable stress as part of her accent.
After Ryalls' initial exams, Janet Whiteside, an adult neurological disorder specialist at UCF, conducted other standardized tests for language and cognitive functions in the university's Communicative Disorders Clinic. Based on the test results, Ryalls diagnosed Roberts's mysterious acquisition of a British accent as Foreign Accent Syndrome. He has submitted a report of her case for publication in a professional journal.

The first widely known case of Foreign Accent Syndrome reported in English was in 1941, when a Norwegian woman suffered a brain injury after shrapnel hit her head during World War II. She experienced severe language problems but eventually recovered, speaking with a perceived German accent. Her community later ostracized her.

Ryalls said his research on this and other cases, including Roberts's, suggests the syndrome is associated with damage to the left hemisphere of the brain, where language processing occurs.
Ryalls said Roberts developed unique ways to cope with her new voice. "She began to respond to people's constant questions about where in England she was from by asking, 'Where do you think I'm from?'" Regardless of the city named, Roberts would say the person was right.
"In some ways, her response showed she was beginning to accept the accent," Ryalls said. "It was an ingenious coping mechanism, but it also reveals that she had begun to resign herself to the change in her speech."

Although she started to cope with her accent, she avoided most social contact and eventually developed agoraphobia, a fear of open spaces. Roberts even started using a pseudonym, Tiffany Noell, because she was concerned about embarrassing her family. "She suffered greatly from some particularly unsympathetic people who did not understand her changed voice," Ryalls said.
Roberts said she wants people to know about this strange syndrome that can result from a stroke and hopes she can spare others the same alienation and misunderstanding she suffered.
"If I can bring notice to this condition, especially within the medical community, doctors may be able to help others who find themselves in my situation," Roberts said.


http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-11/uocf-ucd111803.php

TWO EXAMPLES OF FOREIGN ACCENT SYNDROME

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hometruths/20050411_italian_accent.shtml
foreign accent syndrome victim interviewed (audio)
(Class exercise)


http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=U6y0voUoeGE
foreign accent syndrome victim: American into British (video)

Some radio programmes on health-related issues

http://www.abc.net.au/newsradio/programs/HEALTHMINUTES.htm
HEALTH MINUTES - video/audio short clips with next to literal script

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/casenotes_20080226.shtml
CASE NOTES – long programs + transcript

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/checkup.shtml
CHECKUP – radio phone-in programme +transcript

A) WHAT SCIENTISTS ARE DISCUSSING…

Menstruation as a Source of Stem Cells? Maybe Not

By ANDREW POLLACK
New York Times Published: January 29, 2008

In the past, menstruation was often viewed as a sign of uncleanliness or shame. In some cultures, women have been banished to huts or forbidden to cook during their periods.
So the prospect that “the curse” might be a source of stem cells to sustain life was a surprise to some experts.

“All the years I’ve been working in cell therapy, nobody ever thought of looking there,” said Dr. Stephen J. Noga, director of medical oncology and hematology at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore. Dr. Noga is also chairman of the scientific advisory board of Cryo-Cell International, the company marketing a menstrual blood collection and storage service.

Still, perhaps it should not be totally surprising. The endometrium, the lining of the uterus, regenerates each month, suggesting the presence of stem cells. Indeed, scientists have found such endometrial stem cells. It is possible that the stem cells claimed to be in menstrual fluid are endometrial stem cells that slough off each month during menstruation.

But Caroline Gargett, a scientist at Monash University in Australia who has characterized endometrial stem cells, said it would be strange if lots of these valuable stem cells were shed in menstruation. “If you lose them permanently, you won’t be able to grow the tissue,” she said.
Dr. Hugh Taylor, chief of reproductive endocrinology at Yale, said the healthiest stem cells would come from the part of the menstrual cycle when the uterine lining regenerates. “The menstrual fluid — those cells are dying,” he said.

Dr. Taylor also said a woman could always have cells taken directly from the endometrium by a uterine biopsy, which is routinely performed for fertility examinations. Even after menopause, he said, the uterine lining can be stimulated to grow by giving a woman estrogen.
“I think it’s premature to start telling anyone to go in and save their menses,” he said. “A woman can come in and have endometrial biopsy all the time and get those cells in a fresh, pure form.”

B) WHAT COMPANIES ARE DOING

Questioning the Allure of Putting Cells in the Bank

By ANDREW POLLACK
New York Times: Published: January 29, 2008

Can a woman’s period save her life years later?

A company called Cryo-Cell International says that it can — that menstrual fluid contains stem cells that might one day be used for medical treatments. The company has not published research verifying the claim. But using the slogan “Your monthly miracle,” it has begun offering, for a fee, to collect and store cells from the fluid for a woman’s future use.

Cryo-Cell, in Oldsmar, Fla., is one of several companies trying to make a business out of banking stem cells. Although businesses that store umbilical cord blood have operated for years, the new services have a potentially broader appeal, to people who are not having babies at the moment.
There are companies that offer to extract and store stem cells from adult blood, from fat removed by liposuction, from children’s baby teeth after they fall out and from leftover embryos at fertility clinics.

But some experts say consumers should think twice before spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on such services, because it is not clear how useful such cells will be. “In the stem cell area, we have a problem with truth in advertising,” said Christopher Scott, director of the Program on Stem Cells in Society at Stanford. “Some of these companies are skirting right on the edge of what’s truthful and what’s vaporware.”

The companies, some of them small and financially shaky, are capitalizing on the excitement surrounding stem cells. The ventures portray themselves as a form of biological insurance. Cells collected from a person could one day be used to treat that person without immune system rejection. “There are potentially scores of applications that could emerge over time,” said Mercedes Walton, chief executive of Cryo-Cell.

The fee for collection and processing the cells ranges from $499 to $7,500, depending on the company. There is also a yearly fee of $89 to $699 for storing the cells in liquid nitrogen.
The services urge people not to wait. Cryo-Cell says that even if a woman will be menstruating for years to come, cells from younger women will be more robust.

Some people buying the services say there is little to lose from doing so except money, even if the chance that the cells will be needed or useful is slim. “The idea is just to have them,” said Stephanie Seidman, a patent lawyer in San Diego with a doctorate in molecular biology. “Once you get sick, it’s too late.” Ms. Seidman had cells collected from her blood at an anti-aging clinic, using a service sold by NeoStem Inc. of New York.

Scientists say it is quite unlikely a person will ever need such cells. And the technology could change so much that cells stored now may not be needed if a person falls ill in 10 or 20 years. Recently, scientists found a way to turn skin cells into cells that behave like embryonic stem cells. That might allow a person of any age to have customized tissue created on the spot.
The companies’ Web sites often talk about all the diseases that may one day be treated with stem cells. But experts say it could be years, if ever, for such treatments to become available.
The main use of stem cells now is to reconstitute the immune system after strong chemotherapy or radiation treatment for certain cancers of the blood. The cells are generally blood-forming stem cells from the bone marrow or bloodstream. Transplants of such cells, often called bone marrow transplants, are used for other metabolic and immune system diseases, as well.
But much of the excitement about stem cells is their possible use to create other tissues like nerve cells to treat Parkinson’s disease or insulin-producing cells for diabetes. The main focus there has been on human embryonic stem cells, which are created from embryos and can potentially turn into all types of tissue in the body.

One cell bank, StemLifeLine, offers to make such embryonic stem cells from the embryos couples have left over after undergoing in vitro fertilization. The cells, which would cost a couple at least $4,000, would not be a complete genetic match either to either parent or to any of their children, which could conceivably limit their usefulness.

Other cell banks are working with adult cells, which are present in the body throughout life. There is evidence that some of these cells can turn into a diverse range of tissues, but the question is unsettled. Stem cells in the pulp of baby teeth can clearly turn into part of the teeth. But contentions that the cells can also form other types of cells, like nerve cells, are more controversial.

“There’s never been a demonstration that these cells actually form nerve cells that can function as nerve cells,” said Pamela Gehron Robey, who headed the lab at the National Institutes of Health, where the baby-teeth stem cells were discovered.

Yet the services offering to store baby teeth talk about all the diseases that stem cells might treat one day. “One day, the Tooth Fairy could save your child’s life” is the slogan of BioEden Inc. of Austin, Tex., which says the cells might be used in the future for numerous diseases, including neurological ones like Parkinson’s and spinal cord injury.

BioEden has more than 1,000 customers, said Jeff Johnson, its president and co-founder. It charges $595 a tooth for extraction and collection and $89 for yearly storage. BioEden solicits dentists, elementary schools and PTAs to help spread its message and collection kits. It will pay dentists or schools $100 a tooth.