Dr Rajiv Desai
An Educational Blog
HUMAN EVOLUTION
HUMAN EVOLUTION: _ Figure below shows conservator Effie Verveniotou and human origins researcher Dr Louise Humphrey examine the oldest nearly complete modern human skeleton ever found in Britain before it goes on display in the gallery. Cheddar Man is a human male fossil found in Gough’s Cave in Cheddar Gorge, Somerset, England. Excavated in 1903, Cheddar Man is Britain’s oldest complete human skeleton. Cheddar Man lived around 10,000 years ago. Analysis of his nuclear DNA indicates that he was a typical member of the western European population at the time, with lactose intolerance, dark skin, blue eyes, and dark curly or wavy hair. ________ Prologue: Recently, minister of state for human resource development of India said that the Darwinian theory of evolution was scientifically wrong and should not be taught in Indian institutions. Many scientists and students signed a petition calling upon him to withdraw his remarks. Three science academies […]
OXYGEN THERAPY
Oxygen (O2) Therapy: _____ While we inhale 21% of oxygen and 0.04% of carbon dioxide, we exhale 17% of oxygen and 4% of carbon dioxide. _____ Prologue: Oxygen (O2) is a vital element in human survival and plays a major role in a diverse range of biological and physiological processes. Oxygen therapy means using an oxygen cylinder or a machine to breathe in air that contains more oxygen than normal. Oxygen is widely available and commonly prescribed by medical and paramedical staff. In medical practice, it is among the most universally used agents for the treatment of critical illness and part of the routine treatment in acute shock and emergency medicine. Proper application of oxygen therapy and airway management is lifesaving. In the absence of O2 (hypoxia), cellular respiration ceases and irreversible cellular injury and death occur within minutes. Administered correctly it may be lifesaving. However, renaissance physician Paracelsus noted: […]
ANTIMICROBIAL RESISTANCE (AMR)
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR): ______ ______ Prologue: Within a few days of scraping his leg in a scooter accident in 2009, nine-year-old Brock Wade was in hospital fighting for his life with a methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection. Once the infection – caused by one of the bacteria most often resistant to antibiotics – has been diagnosed, doctors put him on five different antibiotics. After a month in the hospital, and against all odds, Brock recovered and was well enough to come home. Scenarios such as this case are increasingly being played out all over the world. But not all the thousands of patients that contract drug-resistant bacterial infections every year are as lucky as Brock. And the problem looks set to get worse. While infectious agents are becoming more and more resistant to the medicines that are currently in use, not enough drugs are being developed to combat them. WHO […]
HEARING AID
HEARING AID: _______ _______ Prologue: I was working in Saudi Arabia as a doctor from 2001 to 2006. I was designated female medical specialist. All female medical patients used to come to me for treatment. I noticed that I cannot hear properly what they say. The language barrier and lack of lip reading (Muslim women wear burka covering their face) compounded hearing disability. I got myself checked and found that I was suffering from otosclerosis. I started wearing hearing aid which improved my hearing significantly. Although one should remove hearing aids while sleeping at night, I used to wear hearing aid in one ear and sleep on side with ear having hearing aid on the top to attend night calls for emergency. In 2007/2008, I got operated in both ears, and after surgery my hearing improved so much that I did not need hearing aid. Hearing is one of the […]
ZIKA
ZIKA: ______ _____ Prologue: On 18 April 1947, a rhesus monkey that researchers identified as 766 ran a fever of 39.7°C, about 2°C higher than normal. The monkey was part of a study hunting for yellow fever virus and was living in a cage on a platform built into the tree canopy in the 1.5-kilometer-long Zika Forest, which runs adjacent to an arm of Lake Victoria in Uganda. Three days later, the investigators took a blood sample from Rhesus 766 and injected it into the brains of Swiss albino mice. The mice “showed signs of sickness” after 10 days, and the researchers harvested their brains, from which they isolated a “new filterable transmissible agent.” Come January of the following year, the same researchers trapped mosquitoes from these canopy platforms and took them to the lab, hoping to isolate yellow fever virus. Others had shown that one of these species they […]
