Author Archives: Vanessa King

About Vanessa King

Vanessa is a co-founder and the in-house artist of ThingsAreGood.com. She is a fundraising administrator working on behalf of various charities and dreams of being the sole person who, through synchronistic and somewhat accidental circumstance, ends up saving the World. After her 13 year stint as a professional actress in film and television, Vanessa is now pursuing her musical ambitions as a singer as she also hopes to save the World through music.

HIV Vaccine in Human Trials


The Washington Post is reporting on a group of 12 volunteers has just started on the first human trial of an HIV vaccine. The trial is being conducted at four American universities.

The vaccine is administered in stages over the course of about 2 months. The recipient is exposed to fragments of HIV DNA, followed by a modified poxvirus which is meant to boost the immune system.

In this first stage trial, researchers will be checking to see if the vaccine is safe to be administered at low doses. If the trial is successful, it will move onto a larger trial, and eventually the researchers will test to see if the vaccine actually prevents AIDS from developing.

In animal trials involving rhesus macaques, the vaccine protected 22 of 23 animals.

Cervical Cancer a Thing Of the Past??

A new vaccine has been developed which is proven to destroy the main virus which causes cervical cancer. The vaccine will likely be given to boys and girls at puberty, and is shown to be 100% effective in killing the four papillomavirus types responsible for the vast majority of cervical cancers! The disease kills roughly around 500,000 women a year worldwide. Within the next two generations it is likely to be as rare as smallpox.

Giving Sight to the Blind with Technology

A Carolina woman has become one of the first of a group of blind people to have had their sight restored through cybernetics.

Electrodes implanted in Cheri Robertson’s brain receive a video signal from a small camera worn on her eyeglasses and processed through a wearable computer, a la Geordi LaForge.

Patients with the implants see flashes of light and outlines of objects, but there’s a good chance that the technology will improve with time.

Feathers Fly In Vancouver!


Yesturday a giant pillowfight broke out in Vancouver at Robson Square. Over a hundred people gathered as feathers flew and folks beat the living daylights out of each other with pillows. People were laughing hysterically, pummeling strangers and pillows were exploding all over the place causing white fluff to fly absolutely everywhere. By the end of about a 30 minute fiasco there were nearly 2 inches of feathers covering the sidewalk. I heard a bystander ask “Who’s gunna clean up this mess?” to which someone shouted back “thats what we pay taxes for!!” Obviously no-one was taking themselves too seriously at this event.

The details were posted days earlier on a site called flashmob.com which has events like these posted for various locations in North America and beyond. As a spectator of the giant pillowfight I have to declare that random acts of FUN such as these are really quite spectacular. A great way for a city to lighten up a little and just have some ridiculous good times.

Knowledge Is Power

An organization called the Environmental Working Group and its group of scientists, engineers, policy experts, lawyers and computer programmers are raising awareness and helping protect the public from hazards in our daily lives. Since 1993 the group has exposed health concerns faced by millions of people through leading investigations and involving the mainstream media. Their site is an amazing database of information and a great way to find out more about the daily products, foods and environmental elements that may be harmful to our health.

For shopping tips, news on recent issues and access to the database you can visit their site.