The Medical Thread

China quarantines town of 30,000 people after man dies of bubonic plague.

Schizophrenia's genetic 'skyline' rising: Suspect common variants soar from 30 to 108

New Method Actually Cuts HIV Out Of Human DNA

Members of previously uncontacted tribe infected with flu

Study reveals 'unhappiest' cities in the U.S.

Human platelets successfully generated using next-generation bioreactor

Therapeutic bacteria prevent obesity in mice, study finds

Viral relics show cancer's 'footprint' on our evolution

Region, pathway found crucial for facial development in vertebrate embryos

HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis: Success of the Millennium shown in most comprehensive study to date

As someone living in Korea right now, all I can say is Oh crap.

Ask the Sexpert: The 90-year-old sex guru

Oh, dear Lord... Those answers are simply hilarious. And the best part is, I can already hear the voice of a cranky old Indian man delivering those lines in my head.

(To be fair, sex ed is probably the one specialty where you can get away with that kind of humour, mainly because the patients are usually in good health.)

edited 22nd Jul '14 8:08:36 PM by Pyrite

Age of puberty in girls influenced by which parent their genes are inherited from

Genetics of cancer: Non-coding DNA can finally be decoded

Dogs experience humanlike jealousy

d Roy: sounds like they're on top on it. Nice chance of pace from China's usual response.

edited 23rd Jul '14 5:53:53 PM by joeyjojo

GM Mosquitoes Set To Be Released In Brazil To Combat Dengue

Life expectancy gains threatened as more older Americans suffer from multiple medical conditions

3-D image of Paleolithic child's skull reveals trauma, brain damage

Strategy proposed for preventing diseases of aging

Doctors in India Remove 232 Teeth From Mouth Of Teenage Boy

That's just a nightmarish level of teeth.

@The responses: Yeah, uh, I kinda knew all that already ^^' What I can't seem to find out is anything at all to do with, like... frequency. You know, "If you give them all X ml, half of the patients will get mild symptoms, 40% will get severe symptoms, 10% will die immediately", back-of-envelope sort of estimates.

I was poking at some worldbuilding for a fantasy story, I guess, and I wondered what would happen if someone started experimenting with blood transfusions without having any sort of understanding of blood types. Are they likely to kill half their patients? A smaller percentage?

edited 24th Jul '14 2:28:30 AM by LoniJay

I'm not sure if we have figures for those, and experimenting on humans is obviously unethical. I'll see if I can dig anything up, but no guarantees.

Isn't the best source of knowledge for that specific subject all the researches done on rhesus apes?

You'll have to look at old reports. Blood transfusions are older than the knowledge of blood types, so there will be literature on untyped transfusions.

Yeah, you're probably right. I will do some more research focussing on the discovery of blood types, maybe.

DNA mostly 'junk?' Only 8.2 percent of human DNA is 'functional', study finds

Pesticide linked to three generations of disease: Methoxychlor causes epigenetic changes

A reward is valued more if you choose it yourself: New quirky byproduct of learning from reward

Four-billion-year-old chemistry in cells today

Gene inhibitor, salmon fibrin restore function lost in spinal cord injury in rodents

Newly discovered gut virus lives in half the world's population

Sep: The problem is, blood typing was discovered around the start of the 20th century. I'm not sure if there's going to be accurate surviving data from such a long time ago, although there's no harm in trying.

(EDIT: Pubmed does have Landsteiner's papers from the early 1920s, but I can't find the original write-up for blood typing. Whaddaya know.)

edited 25th Jul '14 10:22:35 PM by Pyrite

Um... you could try looking in rather nasty places. <_< Nazi medical "experiments". And, Unit 731. If I remember rightly, transfusions and transplants were among the dodgy stuff that went on. -_-

But, I don't know of any place that actually has that "data" collected into one lump.

edited 25th Jul '14 10:19:02 PM by Euodiachloris

Lady, my quest for knowledge will only go so far. *shudder*

Yeah uh... I'm not sure I need to know about transfusion reactions THAT badly.

I know — some things don't bear touching with a barge pole. Even if you can learn something from it. <gags>

Google Baseline Study aims to define what a healthy human looks like

Total darkness at night key to success of breast cancer therapy, study shows

Prototype display uses eyeglass prescription to allow for viewing devices without glasses

Google baseline sounds interesting. I'm interested to know what the 'ideal' human would look like.