A Proposal for Finite But Unbounded Human Lifetimes

Close analysis of an extensive data set combined with independent evidence prompts our proposal to view human lifetimes as individually finite but collectively unbounded. We formulate a model incorporating this idea whose predictions agree very well with the observed data. In the model, human lifetimes are theoretically unbounded, but the probability of an individual living to an extreme age is negligible, so lifetimes are effectively limited. Our model incorporates a mortality hazard rate plateau and a late-life mortality deceleration effect in conjunction with a newly observed advanced age mortality acceleration. This reconciles many previously observed effects. The model is temporally stable: consistent with observation, parameters do not change over time. As an application, assuming no major medical advances, we predict the emergence of many individuals living past 120, but due to accelerating mortality find it unlikely that any will subsequently survive to an age of 125.

Teaching Medical Advances in a Time of Crisis: A Human Microbiome Data Interpretation E-Learning Elective for Medical Students

Medical schools were upended by the COVID-19 pandemic resulting in suspension of all in-person educational activities, and leaving clinical clerkships on hold. Emerging medical advances need to be integrated in undergraduate medical curriculum as evidence continues to evolve regarding their clinical application. Here, we describe an innovative distance- learning elective course developed to keep fourth year medical students abreast of important scientific advances. Within each module, each successive entry introduced concepts with increasing complexity and included up-to-date literature material to help in the learning progression. Students’ overall satisfaction was high, as the elective helped them gain personal confidence, improved their medical and intellectual skills, increased their curiosity in medical science, and allowed them to analyze scientific literature they did not understand before.

Hermeneutic Dissection in the Lyric

This chapter charts developments in anatomy in the wake of the French Revolution, and shows how Romantic lyrics model a reading practice informed by anatomical medicine. Surgical tropes from the advances in morbid anatomy, for example, inform William Wordsworth’s most important poems. Referring to medical advances in battlefield dissection and autopsy that occurred during the French Revolution, Wordsworth turns from social analysis to self-critique as he performs his retrospective analyses of the “growth of the poet’s mind” and the “spots of time.” Responding to Wordsworth’s model of interpretation, the critic Francis Jeffrey and the poet John Keats developed a practice of dissective reading, an influential protocol that crossed between literature and medicine in the Romantic period. Dissective reading anticipates symptomatic close reading through a segmentation of surface and underlying structures, and invokes dismemberment as a tool for converting critical reading into authorial auto-exegesis. Examples drawn from Wordsworth and Keats reveal how Romantic lyrics offer up the poet’s own body as the subject of surgical (and critical) analysis, treating critical readings as diagnoses of the poets themselves.

Health in the Name of Justice: Does Justice Require a Right to Health

<p>Upholding and seeking justice in society has been important for philosophers and religious thinkers throughout the ages. Debates of different conceptions of justice have ranged from Plato’s conception of the just individual, to Aristotle’s just community where individuals receive what is owed to them according to their merit, to Kant’s claim that justice concerns the “… exercise of will among people; and it is concerned with the possibility and freedom of the exercise of will …” (Hudson, 2003, p. 11). Interpretations of justice and the value of justice in society vary. Fundamentally, however, theories of justice are concerned with answering the question, what do we as a society owe each other by determining the set of rights that are inalienable and vital for a just society to protect. Theories of justice hope to inform us of the rights that are essential for society to defend and uphold. The ever increasing amount of medical knowledge and sophisticated medical treatments now available raise questions of social justice in health and has prompted many to argue whether or not there is a right to health. As Charles Fried (1976) explained over thirty years ago, extending certain medical treatments to the poor seemed possible and inevitable during a period when certain medical advances in treating illness and disease, such as the introduction of antibiotics and vaccines, made a huge difference to the health of the population. He claims that in this “ ‘Golden Age’ we could unambiguously afford a notion of a general right to medical care because there were a number of clear successes available to medicine, and these successes were not unduly costly” (p. 29-30). However, as Fried recognised in the 1970s, and is even truer today with the costs associated with chronic illnesses, extending universal medical care to all in society in cases where treatment is expensive and marginally beneficial is problematic at best.</p>

Health in the Name of Justice: Does Justice Require a Right to Health

<p>Upholding and seeking justice in society has been important for philosophers and religious thinkers throughout the ages. Debates of different conceptions of justice have ranged from Plato’s conception of the just individual, to Aristotle’s just community where individuals receive what is owed to them according to their merit, to Kant’s claim that justice concerns the “… exercise of will among people; and it is concerned with the possibility and freedom of the exercise of will …” (Hudson, 2003, p. 11). Interpretations of justice and the value of justice in society vary. Fundamentally, however, theories of justice are concerned with answering the question, what do we as a society owe each other by determining the set of rights that are inalienable and vital for a just society to protect. Theories of justice hope to inform us of the rights that are essential for society to defend and uphold. The ever increasing amount of medical knowledge and sophisticated medical treatments now available raise questions of social justice in health and has prompted many to argue whether or not there is a right to health. As Charles Fried (1976) explained over thirty years ago, extending certain medical treatments to the poor seemed possible and inevitable during a period when certain medical advances in treating illness and disease, such as the introduction of antibiotics and vaccines, made a huge difference to the health of the population. He claims that in this “ ‘Golden Age’ we could unambiguously afford a notion of a general right to medical care because there were a number of clear successes available to medicine, and these successes were not unduly costly” (p. 29-30). However, as Fried recognised in the 1970s, and is even truer today with the costs associated with chronic illnesses, extending universal medical care to all in society in cases where treatment is expensive and marginally beneficial is problematic at best.</p>

Management of Rheumatoid Arthritis: An Overview

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a multifactorial autoimmune disease of unknown etiology, primarily affecting the joints, then extra-articular manifestations can occur. Due to its complexity, which is based on an incompletely elucidated pathophysiological mechanism, good RA management requires a multidisciplinary approach. The clinical status of RA patients has improved in recent years due to medical advances in diagnosis and treatment, that have made it possible to reduce disease activity and prevent systemic complications. The most promising results were obtained by developing disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs), the class to which conventional synthetic, biologic, and targeted synthetic drugs belong. Furthermore, ongoing drug development has led to obtaining molecules with improved efficacy and safety profiles, but further research is needed until RA turns into a curable pathology. In the present work, we offer a comprehensive perspective on the management of RA, by centralizing the existing data provided by significant literature, emphasizing the importance of an early and accurate diagnosis associated with optimal personalized treatment in order to achieve better outcomes for RA patients. In addition, this study suggests future research perspectives in the treatment of RA that could lead to higher efficacy and safety profiles and lower financial costs.

Bibliometric analysis on infective endocarditis

Introduction: Although infective endocarditis (IE) is rare disease, this disease has importance due to its high morbidity and mortality rates. The exact incidence is not known as it is not a reportable disease. Unlike developed countries, the disease affects the young more than the elderly in developing countries. Most of the time, the diagnosis cannot be made at the first examination and the disease is often overlooked. In order to reduce the mortality and morbidity of this disease, it is important to quickly recognize the disease by following current diagnosis and treatment methods, to identify the causative agent and to treat accordingly. Both the epidemiology and the management of IE are changing due to medical advances. This situation may also be reflected in scientific publications. We aimed to analyze the global researches on IE. Material and methods: The Scopus database was searched for bibliometric analysis without selecting document type. Data were retrieved for the time period January 1, 1940 and Semptember 26, 2021, containing the keywords " Infective’’ and’’endocarditis " in their title. Results: 7911 publications were included in the study. The first publication was made in the year 1891. Most of the publications were research articles [n=5784 (73.11%)] and were from the United States of America (USA) [n =1622 (20.50%)]. Japan, France, United Kingdom and Spain were also in the top 5 publishing countries on IE. Conclusions: Infective endocarditis is still an important reason of mortality, and there are many unanswered questions about the managament and preventation of this disease. This situation reflected the scientific publications. Since this is a global problem, not just some developed countries involved in the IE research, also more countries should be encouraged to participate the studies on IE.

Cortical Visual Impairments and Learning Disabilities

Medical advances in neonatology have improved the survival rate of premature infants, as well as children who are born under difficult neurological conditions. As a result, the prevalence of cerebral dysfunctions, whether minimal or more severe, is increasing in all industrialized countries and in some developing nations. Whereas in the past, ophthalmological diseases were considered principally responsible for severe visual impairment, today, all recent epidemiological studies show that the primary cause of blindness and severe visual impairment in children in industrialized countries is now neurological, with lesions acquired around the time of birth currently comprising the commonest contributor. The resulting cortical or cerebral visual impairments (CVIs) have long been ignored, or have been confused either with other ophthalmological disorders causing low vision, or with a range of learning disabilities. We present here the deleterious consequences that CVI can have upon learning and social interaction, and how these can be given behavioral labels without the underlying visual causes being considered. We discuss the need to train and inform clinicians in the identification and diagnosis of CVI, and how to distinguish the diagnosis of CVI from amongst other visual disorders, including the specific learning disorders. This is important because the range of approaches needed to enhance the development of children with CVI is specific to each child’s unique visual needs, making incorrect labeling or diagnosis potentially detrimental to affected children because these needs are not met.

PROFICIENT STRIDES AND INHERENT LIMITATIONS IN CURRENT DIAGNOSTIC STRATEGY OF BREAST MASS

Breast masses might be a mass discovered by patients incidentally during breast self-examination or else by the physician during routine physical examination. These masses have a variable etiology and nature. while, Fibroadenoma considered the most common benign breast mass, contrary, invasive ductal carcinoma is the most common malignancy [1]. Although, the vast majority of these masses are benign, still breast cancer is the furthermost frequently resulting malignancy in females worldwide having an age-standardized incidence rate (ASR) of 39.0 per 100,000 females, and the second leading cause of cancer deaths in women [2-4]. In spite of most breast cancers occur in women older than 50 years, one third of women diagnosed with breast cancer between 1996 and 2000 were younger than 50 years [5,6]. Contempt of medical advances and assuring treatment regime, morbidity and mortality due to breast cancer has seen no signicant changes in developing countries. In the US in 2020, estimations reach 276,480 new cases of invasive breast cancer in women ,and an additional 48,530 cases of ductal carcinoma in situ diagnosed in women [7]. Also, an estimated mortality of 42,170 female patients with breast cancer will occur in 2020. Invasive female breast cancer incidence rates trends increased slightly, by 0.3% per year [2,6,8]. This might probably be due to lack of systematic screening and early detection

Public awareness of tropical diseases

Introduction: Despite medical advances, the prevention and treatment of tropical diseases continue to be a current problem for communities. Purpose: To present the public awareness of tropical diseases. Material and method: The study was conducted by using an author's questionnaire. 158 questionnaires were collected and analysed. Results: The study included women (55.7%) and men (44.3%) of varying ages, nearly half of whom were studying or are studying a medical profession. The analysis showed that 92.4% of the respondents were aware of the factors causing contagious and parasitic diseases. Only 5.0% of respondents expressed opposition to prevention when travelling to tropical countries. Every fourth person planning a trip would not go to a specialist on this issue. Nearly 90% of respondents wanted to be vaccinated before travelling. On the other hand, only 15.2% of respondents knew that malaria is not currently prevented by a vaccine, but by chemoprophylaxis. One in five respondents said there was no need for hygienic food consumption, while more than half (53.8%) had not heard of the rule "cook, steam, peel or forget". Among the most important preventive measures, respondents most often selected hand washing (50.6%), taking care of hygiene (20.2%) and immunization (17.8%). Conclusions: Most of the respondents, especially those with medical education, demonstrated basic knowledge of tropical diseases. However, there is a great need for education, especially about visiting a doctor before travelling, types of prevention and methods of hygienic food consumption. The possibility of implementing programmes to supplement knowledge should be kept in mind. Keywords: tropical diseases; contagious diseases; awareness; society.