Tag Archives: health

A setback and a milestone for xenotransplantation

Ideas, , , ,

I just learned that the record holder for longest use of a pig kidney transplant had to have it removed in early April due to an unrelated infection and had to go back on dialysis.

Hate this for her, glad she’s alive, hope it goes better for the most recent recipient.

it started to fail when Towana Looney had to reduce her antirejection medicine due to the unrelated infection. But she can at least claim to be the first of the trial patients to have it removed and live. And 130 days with a functioning pig kidney remains the record for now.

xenotransplantation continues to show an incredible amount of promise. Hoping that Looney gets a new kidney, and also hoping the best for Tim Andrews, who received his pig kidney on 25 January.

Links of interest 2/26/24

Lists, , , , , , , ,

So Mexico has had universal healthcare since 2012.

How was this “corrupt”, “poor” country able to muster the ideological, philosophical strength to do what we can’t? How is it that Americans go into Mexico regularly to receive healthcare at a fraction of the U.S. cost?

Is it Mexico’s Catholic values? Is it the lack of severe racial stratification, the comparative lack of self-identifying Afro-Mexicans in most of the country, and the refusal to include Black people in the Mexican census since the 1910s?

How?

“Mental Illness” as Insult

Politics, Uncategorized,

I’ve stopped using the word “mentally ill” or “needs help” as an insult, perhaps for months.

Because really, if you’re “mentally ill” or you “need help”, is that really an insult or is it an acknowledgement of your condition?

If you have gender dysphoria, autism, Tourette’s, or extreme stuttering, those aren’t things which can be “fixed”. Their most debilitating aspects can be moderated and accommodated in order to allow optimal function within larger society.

The neurodiversity movement hit upon language which claims these conditions away from being “diseases”, “illnesses” and “disorders” toward “states of being” within a spectrum of “neurological pluralism”.

But accommodation within the larger society for those states of neurological being is still few and far between, because it challenges what we have been taught about how the brain intersects with our senses, speech patterns, knowledge, education, sex, gender and health. And a lot of people would rather see the “degenerates” removed from sight and mind rather than become “woke” to neurological diversity.

They’re states of neurological diversity, and they need to be accommodated with respect and inclusion.

Health Security

Uncategorized, , ,

Idea: market “single-payer healthcare” as “health security” or “health defense”.

For some reason, things sound more tantalizing to American ears when “-security” is appended to the end of a word. I’ve heard “energy security” (or energy independence) used, I’ve heard “environmental security” used, so why not “health security”? All it would communicate is the fact that the health of our citizens is not only the priority of any civil society, but also a priority of national security, stability and sovereignty.

It would also communicate that without federal intervention through the efficiency of a single-payer system, we will continue to see the chaos and irregular conduct of healthcare and health insurance by various brackets or classifications of humanity.

So I hope that this term – “health security” or “health defense” -comes into use in the future on the part of advocates for healthcare reform in this country.