There are approximately 30.3 million Americans living with diabetes – and 1.5 million new cases are being diagnosed every year. To help people with diabetes, Medtronic partnered with IBM to build an intelligent digital application, called Sugar.IQ, that uses machine learning to provide personalized, real-time insights and help predict the likelihood of hypoglycemia—a state of dangerously low blood sugar that can impact the brain’s ability to function—up to 4 hours in advance. IBM is proud to have helped Medtronic put smart technology to work to help those living with diabetes.
An inspirational infographic by the Alpha Infographicist thuc.
One not-so-inspiring comment, though: yes, more doctors are needed, yes, more spots are opening up in med schools, more jobs will be available for med school graduates, more patients are going to become insured under Obamacare — BUT since jack-squat is being done about proportionally improving reimbursement for all those doctors (new and old) and alleviating the massive debt which med students have to incur in order to become underpaid doctors, it’s still going to be tough to keep those doctors in business. Because it IS a business.
I can’t tell you where or how to activate to help solve this. There are politicians, groups, and activists pushing for this in so many ways. I can tell you when, though.
Today in American politics: Old rich white man is recovering from surgery paid for by American tax payers forcing other old rich white men to delay using government to kill American tax payers.
This letter from 1994 is interesting to look back on today because not only is this doctor correct, but something that seemed so bizarre and out of the ordinary to him is so common we don’t even think about it anymore:
As I turned the page of my local newspaper, I was stunned to s a large advertisement in the health section the bold headline: CANCER PAIN? Under this was a statement that if you had uncontrolled cancer pain you could call a l-800 phone number to receive a list of “cancer pain specialists” in your area. The ad was placed by the maker of invasive pain-management devices. Upon calling for information, I was sent a packet of information including a list of local physicians who presumably are skilled at placement or refer patients for such devices. At best, one could argue that such advertisement helps to improve patient access to specialized pain-treatment techniques. At worst, I believe such an advertise-ment to be an unfair exploitation of patient fears for the benefit of a commercial endeavor. This example of American entrepreneurship is a disturbing trend in the commercialization of palliative medicine.
friendly reminder that opioids aren’t some profoundly dangerous thing. you’re literally ok to get them for surgery, procedures, etc. You won’t die if you take an extra one. Don’t deprive yourself of pain relief because of paranoid hysteria.
(the addiction rate is also very, very low)
I agree with the above post, but please exercise some caution with them. Even though the addiction rate is low, there still is a rate, so just stick with what youre prescribed and stick to recommended dose
Of course, always exercise caution when taking more than prescribed (I firmly reject the notion that that is in and of itself a key indicator of addiction, I’m a sentient human being who knows there is a tangible effect with my pain medicine and have transient pain that can’t just follow verbatim instructions) but in general people do not have to endure suffering because they’re aggressively paranoid about addiction.
The strongest risk factors for addiction are preexisting mental health conditions but especially prior substance misuse (well, abuse, but that term is less preferred because it’s stigmatizing but I think it explains the idea better — misuse to the point of acute harm) and socioeconomic determinants of health that reinforce drug use as a coping mechanism. Dose, duration, specific opioid are all much less predictive of addictive risk.
And as far as the most extreme outcome, fatal overdose, that’s just simply not likely unless you’re being ultra silly. The LD50 of morphine is estimated to be about 150-250mg. That is equal to about 30-50 standard (5mg) Vicodin (1.0x conversion factor for hydrocodone) or 10-17 highest strength (10mg) Percocet (1.5x conversion for oxycodone).
[HARM REDUCTION] And please god if you are going to enjoy a recreational dose of them (no judgement here) please avoid concomitant use of alcohol and/or benzodiazepines. Potentiation gets people killed if you underestimate it. Neither is likely to kill you by themselves without a very irresponsibly large dose, but together the risk profile grows dramtically. If using multiple CNS depressants, cut all doses. Obvious harm reduction recommendations of start low, go slow also apply.
Just wanted to share a brand new platform for Shia healthcare professionals in the U.K. if anyone is interested. It’s open to all.
“Non-profit organisation providing a networking and showcasing platform to Shia professionals across the UK with interactive healthcare related talks and conferences from professionals within the Shia community.”
“I realized that I am super annoyed, and have been for a long time, with this idea that Bill Gates is some kind of ‘decent human being’ for so-called, ‘giving away’ his fortune. Because that is not what this man does, and a good human being is not what this man is. Bill Gates is a fucking monster. And so I just want to kind of explain why I have so many negative feelings towards Bill Gates.
With everything that’s going on right now with the vaccines, and the fact that most of the world can’t get them, can be traced directly back to that one man. Because back in 2020 when this all started, the world was cooperating. And I think we all remember this. The world was cooperating to study the virus. And scientists all over the world were sharing their findings to discover how the virus works, and they were developing methods for treatment and they were also developing these vaccines at an incredible speed. And they were doing this together in the spring of 2020.
And so by the end of the spring of 2020, the World Health Organization had created a global knowledge base, so that the vaccination effort could be a team effort instead of a competitive race. And their global knowledge base was called C-TAP (COVID-19 Technology Access Pool). And that’s when Bill Gates stepped in, through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. What they did is, they created a separate process for managing the world’s COVID response. They called it the ACT-Accelerator (Access to COVID-19 Tools), which is a public-private partnership that included patent protections, so that the companies that figured out the tasks, treatments and vaccines, would be able to keep their discoveries to themselves, prevent other companies from copying them, and profit on vaccines as they sell them around the world. That was the goal of the ACT-Accelerator. It was a competition to the team building approach. So instead of cooperation, Gates sets up this separate thing for corporate competition, with the winners being rewarded with monopoly powers over our vaccines.
And so instead of the technology being figured out and distributed around the world, Gates’ brainchild organization instead created something called COVAX, which buys vaccines from the companies with the monopoly powers over the vaccines. And then they pass out some vaccines to poor countries around the world like a fucking cherry. But even the stated goal of COVAX has always been a weak one. They never intended to distribute more than enough vaccines to vaccinate any more than 20 percent of the populations of low and middle income countries. And they have totally failed to do even that. The vast majority of the vaccines would have to be fought for in the private market by the governments. And at the beginning of April 2021, 130 countries, home to over 2.5 billion people, hadn’t given out a single dose of a vaccine to anyone in their countries.
So, as a human race, I know that here in the United States all of us are able to get the vaccine. Like, great for us, right? But we are not the only humans here that are dealing with the virus. And as humans, we don’t have enough supply because only a handful of companies can [afford to] make the damn things. And Bill Gates is personally responsible for stopping other companies from having access to vaccine instruction manuals. Because that’s what they need. In fact, when the director at Oxford—which is where the science behind the AstraZeneca vaccine was figured out—when Oxford wanted to publish the instruction manual for their vaccine to the public domain for the world to use, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation used their power to pressure Oxford to instead sign an exclusive contract with AstraZeneca, which now has monopoly rights to that vaccine.
Bill Gates and those who are like him are designing global policy on vaccines, so that the private market decides who gets them. And that’s even when the institutions like the World Health Organization, that are generally on board as the administrators of the global economic system based on privatization of everything—even when those institutions are saying, “This is a global pandemic, and this is a time when we as humans should be making an exception to these rules, we should be sharing the technology to end this pandemic instead of putting patents and profits first.”—even when those institutions are saying that, Bill Gates has enough power as one man, to stop the world from doing it. This economic system has created oligarchs that are so rich and so powerful they can shape the fate of the entire world. And the way that that’s possible? Well, Bill Gates, as the founder of Microsoft, he fought politically to protect monopoly patents. This is something he has been a zealot about for the entire time he’s been in the public eye. He used his own patent protections over computer knowledge to become super rich when Microsoft had monopoly powers over their technologies. And then Bill Gates used his wealth to legally bribe politicians with campaign contributions, who then passed laws that created and continually expanded an economic system that funnels the world’s wealth to the richest people on earth. An economic system that funnels the world’s wealth TO HIM. He had so much damn money, thanks to this system, he got to like $150 billion dollars or so. He started a foundation that would spend his money on the things that HE wanted to spend it on. Billions of dollars. And people think that the sun shines out of his ass for this. Like, he’s some kind of noble human being, giving away his savings. But that’s not what this is. When you’re giving out money by the tens of billions, that’s government—just privatized. That’s society altering money. And the way Gates does it? He’s not funding food banks around the world. He’s chosen to use his billions to shape global health policy in a way that protects PATENTS. This insane economic system lets one dude control $150 billion dollars, and has created a situation where so much of our global health research is funded through him, that any organization or individual in the field that dares to challenge the Gates Foundation on drug monopolies will find themselves iced out of funding. And so everybody’s falling in line.
Right now he’s basically using his fortune to act as a volunteer lobbyist for the pharmaceutical industry, and he’s been doing this since 1999. He’s using his personal billions—wealth beyond what many governments have—to protect the profits of multinational drug companies, while being branded a hero for donating some drugs to poor countries, to charity wash the entire racket: “Oh he’s giving away all his money! He’s giving away 95 percent of his wealth” … at $150 billion dollars, if he gives away 95 percent of it, he’s still keeping over $7 billion dollars for himself. This guy is a selfish mother fucker. It’s NOT charity. It’s not charity what he’s doing. He’s shaping global policy. He’s governing on his own. His fortune, via the Gates Foundation, stopped the world from sharing information about AIDS treatments two decades ago. And now he’s pulling the same shit with the COVID technologies.
Now this dynamic is being challenged in the World Trade Organization—as it should be—where more than 100 countries, more than half the world is trying to force companies like Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson, and Moderna, to give them the instructions so that they can make their own vaccines and get this pandemic over with. And Moderna is a perfect example of the privatization of government funded science. Because the mRNA technology that is central to the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines? That’s been in development since 2016. It’s not new, even though we’re acting like this was invented in the last year. It’s not. They’ve been working on it for years. But it’s an invention of the National Institute of Health, which is otherwise known as OUR GOVERNMENT. So allowing obscene prices and profits for pharmaceutical companies, that did not lead to the research and development that created that amazing technology. It was our tax money that did it. It was our government that did it. We should all be patting ourselves on the back for that because we are the ones who funded it. It wasn’t Moderna, and it wasn’t Pfizer. It was us. The government scientists were working on a vaccine with Moderna for a different Coronavirus, MERS, when they got the information about the COVID virus. And so they were able to quickly tweak the technology they were already working on for 5 years. They gave the instructions for those tweaks to Moderna, and then Moderna did the work of cooking the recipe. But the mRNA technology? THAT’S OURS.
And on top of that, I’ve read every COVID related law, from start to finish. Every word. And starting in early March, 2020, our congress poured billions and billions of our tax money into vaccines. We paid for the raw materials, the clinical trials, we paid for all the renovations needed at the Moderna facilities to make all this happen. Moderna didn’t take on the risk. We taxpayers did. But when the Trump administration signed the contracts with Moderna to be the chefs of the vaccines, they didn’t require Moderna to share the recipes. And so they aren’t sharing. And the Biden administration so far, has sided with the Trump administration and the drug companies, and is refusing to support the effort to lift the patent protections on the vaccines that WE paid to invent. The Biden administration has all the leverage and legal authority it needs to tell these greedy companies, Moderna in particular, to share what we gave them for the good of the world. But instead, the Biden administration is dancing around the edges, choosing instead to donate doses, like a bunch of AstraZeneca ones that we just had stored in some closet somewhere. “Oh we’re donating those! Aren’t we great?” They want to funnel billions of our tax dollars to COVAX, that Gates inspired organization that buys vaccines from the monopoly drug companies, and passes them out to the poor. It’s all charity. But the problem is the monopolies. The problem is requiring the entire world to get the vaccine from these handful of chosen companies, and the ones that can’t afford it have to depend on … charity.
Health care is a human right (and that includes abortion.)
Digital illustration of a Black fem sitting in the center of a scribbled black background. They have bantu knots, purple makeup, a striped blue sweater, a plaid hot pink skirt, bright yellow socks and purple combat boots with blue shoelaces. There’s a speech bubble that says , ‘health care is a human right’ With a note that says ‘that includes abortion’
The other thing about measles is that it resets your body’s memory of other diseases. So all those times you’ve gotten sick? Your body’s memory cells no longer remember those illnesses, so even if you get the same type of illness again your body will react like it’s the first time you’ve been sick.
It’s so much worse than “just a disease”.
Measles does WHAT
Holy fuck
What the fuck what the fuck what the fUCK WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK
antivaxxers also, in part, helped sabotaged the human lyme disease vaccine for lyme disease caused by borrelia burgdorferi infection (until 2016 the only known species of lyme disease causing bacteria in the USA). In 1998, the first lyme disease vaccine for the strain of the bacteria prevalent in the USA licensed. It passed clinical trials and was shown to be safe and effective; it was between 76 and 92% effective at preventing lyme disease with 3 injections. Antivaxxers proceeded to abuse the adverse affect reporting system, often complaining of arthritis, and this caused media and general hysteria about the vaccine. if you remember the flu vaccine hysteria around the swine flu epidemic, it was kind of like that. despite double-blind trials conducted both before and after licensing, that was unable to support their claims and instead displaying that the vaccine was safe and effective, the damage was done, and the vaccine was shelved in the USA. you can get a lyme disease vaccine in Europe, but Europe has a different strain of the bacteria that causes lyme disease.
Lyme disease can become very serious, it can infect the nervous system and cause neurological problems especially in young children who are often bitten on the head or the neck, undiagnosed it can cause chronic health issues that mimic other diseases. Without safe prophylactic measures beyond trying to minimize contact w ticks, this has driven people who have had lyme disease, have chronic effects from mass-disseminated lyme disease infection, or people who believe they have chronic lyme disease to go to quack doctors and undergo unsafe, unapproved medical treatment in an attempt to stop suffering.
This would not be happening on the scale that it is if antivaxxers didn’t straight up execute a supervillain plot to sabotage the lyme disease vaccine. the vaccine was licensed in december 1998, which was the year andrew wakefield published his fraudulent research on the MMR vaccine
antivaxer are terrorists and should be dealt like one
H.Bomberguy’s video on the anti-vaccine movement is absolutely worth watching in its entirety. Because it lays out just how fucking twisted and wrong the entire thing is, and how this entire movement that is KILLING CHILDREN is based on a lie for money.
wait wait wait wait WAIT!
YOU GUYS HAD A VACCINE AGAINST FUCKING LYME????
AND THOSE ASSHATS HELPED TO SHELF THAT STUFF?????????
Do you people even KNOW just how much trouble lyme disease makes every fucking year? Holy shit think of the possibilities!!!
So when I say I hate anti-vaxxers, yeah. This is why.
Yeah its not a viable belief system, it doesn’t have any nugget of truth or good intentions in it, the lie and the packaged alternatives that come with it are quicker easier money than you could ever make climbing the ranks of “big pharma,” these lies kill people, they become politicized and contaminate government legislation, and believers are not just quaint fringe eccentrics who only harm themselves. They’re abusing their kids, hampering medical progress, robbing other people of medical choice in situations like the Lyme vaccine, and actively making the world around them worse and deadlier. No mercy or tolerance for anti vaccine propaganda. Make it legally terrorism.
Gonna say it on every reblog of this post I see - This began because of ableism against autistic people. Jenny McCarthy insisted that her child’s autism was caused by vaccines, and enough people hated the thought of ever having an autistic child that they wouldn’t use vaccines. They did not care that their child would die of the illnesses prevented by vaccines, they would rather have a dead child than an autistic one.
Measles is also THE most communicable disease. It has an R value of 16-18 which means that every person with measles will infect 16-18 people.
As a comparison, the most communicable Covid variant, omicron has an R value of about 3-4. And yet colonized the entire world in a few months.
Just think what a measles outbreak in an unvaccinated community could do. A measles infection in a child does to their immune system what 7 years of HIV does.
Reminder: we’re currently in the abbreviated open enrollment period for 2019 healthcare plans. It will end December 15th. Go to https://www.healthcare.gov to sign up. —— #HospitalGlam #Healthcare #ACA #Reminders [#imagedescription: I’m standing against the wall in a clinic room, on the wrong side of a pulled back privacy curtain.]
![cranquis:thuc:The Dedicated Doctor [infographic]No doubt about it, becoming a physician is har](https://64.media.tumblr.com/1c8797d5094eea77bd148fd10fe5cf38/tumblr_mlapd3sjOf1qzjvqlo1_r1_640.png "cranquis:thuc:The Dedicated Doctor [infographic]No doubt about it, becoming a physician is har")
