Corpus - conversations about medicine and life

A book that changed my life: “Our bodies, Ourselves”

13 August 2018 1 Comment

Laurence Fearnley

As a child and younger teenager I had never taken much interest in my body. I remember my first period because I told my mother about it. Her response was very matter-of-fact. Sanitary pads, she said, were a waste of time. Only fussy, immature girls who couldn’t cope with tampons used them. There was no reason for me to try them because I could go straight to the adult solution: tampons. However, tampons were a gross waste of money and there was no need to buy them. Instead, she took me to the bathroom, ripped off 8 sheets of toilet paper, and placed one sheet on top of the other to make a pad. Next she rolled the wad of paper into a tube, and then folded it in half. This is all you need, she said passing me the roll-your-own tampon. And that was pretty much it. Over the years I perfected her version by making the fold first, then rolling — it was much neater.

What’s cooking in kidney research?

13 August 2018 1 Comment

Lorissa McDougall

Imagine what would happen if our kidneys stopped working, if our bodies were no longer able to filter toxins. Unfortunately, this is reality for people living with polycystic kidney disease (PKD).

In PKD, cysts appear on the kidneys. The cysts interfere with normal kidney function, causing (among other symptoms) increased blood pressure and a build-up of toxins. The abnormal cyst formation is due to a mutation in the polycystin producing genes (PKD1 and PKD2). In some forms of the disease, the mutations are passed through each generation, making PKD the most prevalent hereditary disease in the world.

There is no long term cure for PKD. Current therapies can only ease the symptoms. Over the last year and a half, however, I have been trialing the use of new drugs which might delay cystic growth and be a potential treatment for PKD.

Breastfeeding: “a collective societal responsibility”

6 August 2018 1 Comment

Tricia Thompson

The 194 member states of the World Health Organisation (WHO) met recently in Geneva for the annual United Nations-affiliated World Health Assembly. The delegation from Ecuador proposed a global public health resolution to encourage breastfeeding. The resolution stated that research evidence convincingly shows that mothers’ milk is healthiest for children, and called on governments to “protect, promote and support breastfeeding” and to strive to limit inaccurate or misleading marketing of breastmilk substitutes (infant formula).

The resolution was unsurprising. It was in keeping with many others made over the past decades supporting breastfeeding and was expected to be approved quickly and easily. What did surprise was that the delegation from the United States of America demanded the resolution be watered down. When Ecuador declined to do this, the USA threatened to unleash a punishing trade war and withdraw military assistance. Under such pressure, the Ecuadorean delegation capitulated. When another sponsor for the resolution was sought, at least a dozen poor countries from Africa and Latin America also backed away, fearing similar retaliation from the USA. In negotiations, some American delegates even suggested that the USA might cut its financial contribution to WHO.

Dear Doctor…

6 August 2018 1 Comment

Peter Matheson

In my historical work about early modern women and men I’ve frequently come across references to doctors: some famous like Paracelsus, some prominent in civic politics, like Gereon Sailer of Augsburg, others much less well-known. Apart from general references to humours and blood-letting we seldom, though, get more than a glimpse of their relations to their patients, of their beliefs and their clinical practices. Some issues, such as measures to combat the plague, are better researched, but we know little about individual doctors, individuals such as William Harvey being very much the exception.

All this is about to change, thanks to an ambitious project launched in 2009 by the Institute for Medicine at Würzburg University. Researchers have succeeded in tracing more than 50,000 letters, written between 1500 and 1700, to and from German doctors. The majority of this (unbelievably large) number of letters has already been digitalised, and most have been at least briefly annotated, their near illegible signatures identified, and dating and place of origin established. Quite an achievement, given that the letters were scattered in countless archives and libraries in and beyond Germany!

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“Bad Blood”

6 August 2018 1 Comment

Cushla McKinney

In 2014-15, one of the most highly fêted names in biomedical circles was Elizabeth Holmes. 31 year-old Holmes had founded a company called Theranos, to manufacture a small, easy-to-use device – the Edison– that was capable of running multiple analyses on a single drop of blood. Although the Edison was not yet commercially available, the company was testing blood samples from Palo Alto patients on their in-house machines, and had signed agreements with the Cleveland Clinic, Capital BlueCross and AmeriHealth Caritas.

Holmes predicted that Thaneros technology would slash the cost of blood tests, spare patients the stress and pain of repeated blood draws and allow everyday people to monitor their own health on a daily basis, just as a diabetic checks their blood sugar levels. What investors and consumers did not know, however, was that beneath its elegant housing the Edison consisted of little more than a pipette robotic arm, only able to carry out one of the three types of tests Theranos offered, and that with very poor reproducibility. Other tests were carried out on standard equipment but on such dilute samples that their results were also unreliable, and doctors using the company’s services were frequently having to reorder tests from other providers.

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“The Language of Kindness”: on being a nurse

30 July 2018 2 Comments

Cushla McKinney

After twenty years as a nurse in the British National Health Service (NHS), Christie Watson is leaving medicine to pursue a literary career. But with the generosity that characterises the job to which she has devoted much of her life, she has taken the time to share what it has taught her.

In The Language of Kindness: A Nurse’s Story of Life, Death and Hope, which falls somewhere between memoir and manifesto, she offers readers insights into an essential but undervalued profession and provides a blunt assessment of the way in which decades of political decision-making have compromised the heath system in general, and nursing in particular.