ashorey's blog

Biotechnology has come extremely far in the last 10 years, with stem cell use in modern medicine and genome editing with CRISPR only being published seven ears ago, but has yet even further to go. Stem cell research was one of the hottest topics in the last decade, and the understanding of the implications has caught up to its discovery, the uses are breaking boundaries every day. Now we have 3-D printers that can use stem cells to produce complex tissues and we can grow in vitro organs from dishes from the exact same genetic coding in your body. One of the most widely benefitial research projects has been on prosthetics that are able to connect to live nerve tissue in amputations to allow the electrical signals recorded from prosthetics to equate to nerve impulses that the brain can read. Many of us live privilidged lives with all four of our original limbs, but hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. alone are living with upper arm amputations or are born without complete limbs. This project was started to create a prosthetic hand that enabled that feeling of having a hand. The mechanism has sensors that collect data like the sensory receptors in our own hands: pressure, texture, temperature. The sensed data is then translated to electrical signals and interpretted into neural signals that travel through electrodes deposited into the nerve bundles in the limb. The nerves pick up the signals and send them to the brain for recognition and response in the body, as if all the feelings were real and the hand was human. 

Free resources in the scientific field are often hard to come by. There are free online publication websites, sometimes free editing software like Inkscape, and few other options. Usually free versions of things are a reduced sample of what you are looking for, and the total access is only provided with charge. I understand that the requirement of money is in order to sustain the platform, journal, whatever the source may be. There is also the notion that many of the presidents, editors, CEOs, and owners are extremely weathly people that have little to gain from an increased income when their pockets are already as deep as the ocean. The fundemental way of knowledge and research being shared for profit needs to change.

Of course the research requires money sought from grants and proposals and scholarships. But when those funds culminate in a conclusive publication with earth-shattering discoveries and proof of novel findings, why should only those who can afford the luxury have access to new knowledge of the very world they are living in? Scholastic articles should be nonprofit in order for the world to profit from its writing. 

There is a non-profit organization in Western Mass that few know muc about called Tapestry Health run out of Holyoke Massachusetts. They provide services from sexual health to family nutrition to community educations and trainings. One of their most controversial services provided is the "Needle Exchange". This involves an open drop-box for used needles and a free and public source for sterile ones. These needles are most often used for the administration of drugs, and not for medical purposes. Western Massachusetts has a drug epademic, and the use of and addiction to opioids has become a much more common disease. Many people find the idea of a needle exchange to be more hurtful than helpful to the community. It is thought that it supports drug abuse and rewards drug users. This opinion is very short sighted and a privilaged way of looking at those with addictions. What a needle exchange trul achieves is a safe, free, public way to reduce contamination and infection of bloodborne diseases in a population. Without options to anonymously opbtain free clean needles, drug users will not think twice about sharing or borrowing which opens up the door for dozens of deadly diseases to populate more people. The idea that providing needles somehow rewards drug addiction behaviors is also a very limited view. Without the option of clean needles, those with an addiction will not stop using, they will simply continue to use with extremely less safe methods and practices. The people addicted to drugs are in no way at fault for their battle with the disease and are due no consequences for what major medical corperations and pharmacies are doing to them. This is not about people wanting to do something, it is a beyond-biological need created by the dependence of their body systems. Needle exchanges are one of the most valuable provided cares that addicts have before they get serious help. Without them and without the ability for it to be free, people would be at great risks of deadly infections. 

I am extremely against unnecessary screening for illness and disease in medicine. In OBGYN offices, it is common practice to begin screening for cervical cancer at the age of 21 once every three years. That means that if a woman reaches the average age of death in America, 81, that is 20 pap smears. Twenty internal investigations into her body and twenty horribly awkward experiences. I recently dived into research regarding the new debate that is arguing pap tests are over performed for their aid in medical treatment. It was found that although in general cervical cancer deaths dropped when pap smears became regularly checked, when case studies of pap smear discovered cervical cancer was looked into, their benefits seemed much less evident. One case in particular involved a woman being diagnosed with stage three cervical cancer after every previous pap result had been cleared negative and she died shortly later. When the family investigated the fault of her death, it was shown that the two or three pap tests prior to the first diagnosis of cancer were both identified as positive for cervical cancer. It wasn't that the results were not properly reported to the patient, it was that the analyst had cleared the images with little attention or care. If this cancer is so dangerous and probable in occurring that it is screened for your whole life after the age of 20, why were the outcomes not treated with that same importance and weight? The answer is allusive, but the problem remains that these tests are rendered useless when the results are quantified appropriately, and it begs the question if the invasiveness is worth the time. A similar yet different argument exists for me and x-rays. I understand that x-rays are extremely usefull in identifying issues in bone structure and teeth that can help solve and treat unknown problems for many patients. I however found myself in the dentist chair and the assistant requested x-rays with the reasoning for performing the x-ray being "Your insurance allows us to every year". I made clear I had no pain in my jaw and did not experience any discomfort that might lead to the suggestion of a cavity, and yet it was requested to be done. Here. the basis of treatment relied on what the insurance was willing to pay for, and the dentist wanted to reach the maximum amount of profit from my dental plan. This was completely besides that fact that x-rays can cause DNA damage and radiation leading to cancer and death. I might sound dramatic for saying a dentist looking at my molars could kill me, but the possibility exists. And yet the safety and wishes of the patient were thrown out the window for profit. I of course refused and the assistant handed me a brochure about x-rays to "help educate" me. No, you are not getting my money to spam the oral cavity next to my brain with DNA damaging rays. 

Today I would like to remark at the incredible burst of knowledge that occured in the scientific field with the technological revolution. I learned today that the scientist that discovered tubulin is still alive today. That put in perspective to me that so much of what we currently accept as common knowledge in almost all scientific fields are relatively recent discoveries and theories. The growth of technology and advanced methods of experimenting and researching all sprung up in a short hundred years of human history. What amazes me the most is the ability of the science community to adapt and accept the new findings as they accumulate so quickly. The fact that our classes are making common knowledge of things discovered within 20 years is remarkable to me and speaks volumes about the ability of education. I also now ponder that is this is only the beginning of the technological revolution and realization of what that means for science, how much can the future hold? Are we just on the brink on a never-before-phathomed amount of things there are to learn about life and organisms and evolution? I think the answer to the question can only be yes, and that is exciting and terrifying. 

Download inkscape to create figure. Go to the design building and walk towards to ground floor lobby entrance by the cafe near the design building UMass Amherst sign. Select a leaf from the small tree that shows phytophagy and place hand behind leaf. Take a photo using an IPhone 8 back camera. Step away from the tree about five steps to allow the sign and background to be clearly visible and distinguishable in the image, capturing the entire height of the tree. Email the photos from the phone to an email account to access them on a computer with Inkscape installed on it. Open the images in the computer and crop them to squares of a size 3022 x 3022 pixels. Open Inkscape and click and drag the cropped photo files into the inkscape page. Organize the pictures with the up close phytophagy in the top left corner at about the size of half the page width in a square shape, leaving some white space on the left and top. Label this image "A" with an A on the upper left side of the photo in black with font Calibria in size 18. To the right of this photo, place the larger phytophagy photo of the exact same size to the exact right. Label this image B on the upper left of the image in the same method as image "A". 

Today one of my classes discussed GMOs and my professor purposefully made it a point to tip-toe around the debatable aspects of the modifications and methods of use while teaching the topic. Me being an aries would have prefered the debate, so instead I'll write my thoughts here. Firstly, the FDA finding the GMOs are not inherently dangerous and do not need to be regulated proves that the federal goverment needs more education. I agree that GMOs are not inherently dangerous, but they absolutely should be regulated by genetisists because modifying the DNA of an organism to be grown in exposed fields and allowed to contaminate nature and the endogenous genome of other organisms in the proximatey is highly dangerous. It is known that some species of GMOs are able to cross breed with weeds and like organisms in their original environments. This means that another organism's DNA can be crossed into uncontrolled species in the wild. Also, GMOs can cause very legitimate problems in the diversity of a species. If all the different alleles of a farm grown species were cut down to a single allele that was controlled because it produced the most wanted product, it presents real issues. The possibility of complete wipeout from a new disease or virus that affects the plants is a reality that people need to be aware of. 

Assisted suicide. This is widely debated and I have even written a paper discussing the pros and cons and the politics and reality of assisted suicide in medicine. There are only 10 states that explicitly allow physician assisted suicide. I think that number should be 50. Picture this: you are 35 years old, have a teenage son that you raised alone and through hardship, and the bond you have with him is a life-and-purpose-defining bond. You finally just met the love of your life and got married a year ago. You've always wanted to work as a high ranking nurse in medicine, but the pay wall and lack of a degree held you back until 7 years ago when you made the move to get your PhD in nursing. This month you are going to defend your dissertation and graduate. You'll have the work and career you always wanted and the family you always wanted and life will be PERFECT. Then you have a seizure. You don't know why it happened, and it scares you. You recover. Then a month later, another one happens. You black out and wake up in an emergency room. A day in the hospital later, and you know why you have seizures: glioblastoma, or in other terms, the most deadly brain cancer. The next year of your life now looks very different from how you pictured it. Hospital visits, bills and costs, trials and placebos, etc. Eventually, you know there is just no hope, you're given a month to live and all your effort is just in elongating dying. The cancer starts to impact your speech, your motor control, your bladder control. Everything is deteriorating and you are wondering if you're even still you anymore. Why should it be in the hands of a vote in a court room hundreds of miles away to decide the you must suffer to the end as your family, your cherished son who has always loved you, watches you fade into a hospital bed unable to talk, walk, communicate, or even understand whats going on for the last week of your life? Instead, gracefully and debilberately ending the pain, suffering, and torture that bares down on you as you begin to question, am I even percieving the world as it is or is the cancer making me see that, is a more humane way to be in control of your life and experiences in living. Why should a jury decide that for you?