Monthly Archives: October 2014

Uncategorized, yhiroki

Hallucinogen in ‘magic mushrooms’

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Researchers report that a small number of longtime smokers could drop their smoking habit when taking psilocybin, so called “magic mushrooms” in trial at Hopkins University School of Medicine. According to the trial, 80 percent of study participants could quit their smoking. Before this, the success rates of quitting smoking by taking smoking cessation drug was less than 35 percent. Therefore, that success rates is unbelievable high level. But magic mushrooms have hallucinogenic effect, we must be careful when taking them. It is needed to administer after careful preparation and in a therapeutic context.

In Japan, it is banned to take or have magic mushrooms in the law. And I think it will be still banned after this report because we should focus on safety. A person who have hallucination may do violent acts or injure someone around him. And it is dangerous for himself because he may get involved in accidents, for example, traffic accidents. If the drug or method that can control that hallucination discovered, it can change situation. But now, there are no way so it should be still banned, I think.

rina

First womb-transplant baby born

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In Sweden, a woman has given to a baby using a transplanted womb. The donor was 61 years old and she had gone through menopause seven years earlier. The transplant operation was the first success.

I was surprised that the donor was the woman who had already reached menopause, but the womb still functioned like it used to. It might be reuse of womb. Until now, if women who cannot bear a child want their own child, their only option is surrogacy. However, no one can decide the real mother when surrogate mothers refuse giving up a baby.

Moreover, poor women often accept surrogate mother for money. It seems that life is made by money. And also, surrogacy isn’t admitted in Japan. So, Japanese women who have a baby through surrogacy, they cannot be a mother legally. Surrogacy remains a lot of problems.

Compared with it, I think womb transplant has fewer problems because womb transplant isn’t different from other organ transplant. By medical development, women who cannot bear a child get a new option. I hope that this technology is utilized all over the world.

nobutsugu

Dengue fever

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My group article talked about the dengue fever.

In Japan, many people have become ill with dengue fever. dengue fever haven’t been confirmed for long time in Japan. Patients who developed the disease for transmitted by a type of mosquito, usually come down with the symptom. For example, it’s fever, headache, rashes and pain behind the eyes. In this case, fortunately, there are no deaths. Most of the patients have visited Yoyogi Park which is popular park in central part of Tokyo. So, Japanese authorities closed and fumigated large part of the park. Someone who is an assistant professor said the virus can be contained because the mosquitos which have the virus can’t survive the cold weather.

I think Japanese government should takes measures to some disease like dengue fever.

Generally, the disease is found in tropical and subtropical climates. Global warming is progressing. To stop it is too difficult. So, in the future, some disease like dengue fever will come to japan. I guess that dengue fever appear again in the next year. Japanese government has to take measures the new disease which is only in tropical climate now. Otherwise, many Japanese will die. During winter when the mosquito is dead is good time for government takes measures.

azusa

“Ebola in the air? A nightmare that could happen”

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Summary

Today, the Ebola virus spreads only through direct contact, but some of the top infectious disease experts think  that  the Ebola could be infectious virus in the future. Altough they say the chances are so small, as a matter of fact, every time a new person gets Ebola, and more 7100 people got it and 3330 died according to the World Health Organization as of October 1.  In addition, thet says that the Ebola is an RNA virus. It means every time it copies itself, it makes one or two mutations.And some of them could be change the way the virus behaves in the humain body.

My opinion

Recently, we hear a lot of news on serious diseases, for example, the Ebola or the dengue fever. It isn’t so necessary to be anxious about them if we think only about our own country like Japan because we live in the medical developed nation. But  when we survey the whole world, it is one of the problems we shouldn’t disregard. As this article says, a virus is able to change its property so we had better pay attention to news about serious diseases at all times and understand what we need or need not to worry about. In any case, the first thing we have to recognize the situation correctly and not to be confused and scared more than we need.