Category: Body & Mind

Fairness is an Emotion

Well this is neat, some researchers are arguing that fairness is a hard-wired emotion.

The belief that things should be divided fairly among members of a group isn’t just a matter of culture or reason — it’s an emotion that’s built into the human brain.

That’s the suggestion of a new study that posed the question: Is it better to give food to some hungry children while others go hungry? Or is it better that every child get a share, albeit a smaller one?

“People prefer equity, when all things are equal, to efficiency,” said study lead researcher Ming Hsu, a fellow at the University of Illinois Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology.

And different regions of the brain are involved when making decisions involving fairness or efficiency, he said.

“In terms of the brain, we find areas of the insular cortex are activated when people were choosing the equitable allocation of food,” Hsu said. “Given the involvement of the insular cortex in emotions and fairness judgments, we conclude that emotions are underlying equity judgments.”

Other areas of the brain are activated when people are making judgments about efficiency, he said.

Grow a Heart

A team of international scientists have successfully grown heart tissue from embryonic stem cells. This is great news for people who have had all sorts of heart problems. Except perhaps a broken heart, for them perhaps a hug would work best.

More on the stem cell derived heart:

The researchers created the cells by supplying embryonic stem cell cultures with a cocktail of growth factors and other molecules involved in development.
By supplying the right growth factors at the right time, they encouraged the cells to grow into immature versions of three different types of cardiac cell.
The three cell types they created – cardiomyocytes, endothelial cells and vascular smooth muscle cells are each important constituents of heart muscle.

Canada to Label Bisphenol A dangerous

Bisphenol A is chemical that is used to make plastic containers like Nalgene water bottles. Health Canada has been looking into the chemical for some time now and will announce today that Bispehnol A is considered dangerous in Canada. Some stores have banned products that use the chemical, with San Fransico providing some legislation against the chemical.

It is believed that bisphenol A can leach out of food and beverage containers when they are exposed to high heat or highly acidic foods.

Studies show that it mimics the hormone estrogen in the bloodstream, and is linked to health problems including breast cancer and infertility.

If bisphenol A is indeed declared dangerous, it could be up to a year or more before the health minister is able to issue regulations controlling its use.

Previous reports claimed the announcement would come as early as last Wednesday. That prompted several Canadian retailers to pull products containing bisphenol A from their shelves.

Check Marks to Save Lives

An article on the CBC’s website today mentions that intensive care units in Toronto will be using a checklist to ensure the best medical care for patients. Yes, a checklist.

It’s one of three ICU checklists Dr. Damon Scales has adopted in his Toronto hospital.

“When I tell people about these things they sort of have the reaction of saying, ‘How could you ever forget that?’ said the clinical associate in the department of critical care medicine at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. “But this is a busy place with complicated patients and these are the kinds of things that can get lost in the shuffle.”

It’s such a simple solution that most people don’t think the checklist is real. In December the New Yorker ran an article on how checklists are the best thing to happen to medicine since, well, seemingly forever. The New Yorker article is a great read.

Ebola Virus Vaccine Proven to Work

A team of Canadian and American researchers have tested a vaccine for the ebola virus on primates, and it seems to be working. They hope that what they’ve learned from finding a vaccine for ebola can be applied to other viruses like HIV/AIDs.

“Ebola virus is a Biosafety Level 4 threat, along with many other haemorrhagic fever viruses”, says Dr Sanchez. “As well as the difficulty in getting the right staff and facilities, vaccines for viruses like Ebola, Marburg and Lassa fever have been difficult to produce because simple ‘killed’ viruses that just trigger an antibody response from the blood are not effective. For these viruses we need to get a cell-mediated response, which involves our bodies producing killer T-cells before immunity is strong enough to prevent or clear an infection.”

The researchers have now used several different recombinant DNA techniques, which have allowed them to trigger a cell-mediated response and produce a vaccine that is effective in non-human primates. One of the candidate vaccines is about to be tested on people for the first time, after entering Phase 1 clinical trials in autumn 2006.