Antibiotic drugs save lives. But we simply use them too much — and often for non-lifesaving purposes, like treating the flu and even raising cheaper chickens. The result, says researcher Ramanan Laxminarayan, is that the drugs will stop working for everyone, as the bacteria they target grow more and more resistant. He calls on all of us (patients and doctors alike) to think of antibiotics — and their ongoing effectiveness — as a finite resource, and to think twice before we tap into it. It’s a sobering look at how global medical trends can strike home. TED |
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Hundreds of thousands of African children die each year from heart failure. One hospital in Sudan offers a live-saving operation free of charge.
60 Minutes Duration 12.51 Blood Brother is the story of a group of children infected with HIV and Rocky Braat, a disenchanted young American that met them while drifting through India. They were left on the doorstep of a slum orphanage by their families: he had bounced between parents and jobs his whole life. He wanted to adopt them all, but in reality, he couldn't cure even one of them. He had to stay. Today, he lives in a concrete hut a few hundred yards from the orphanage. Every day he encounters the bitter reality of HIV infection. People in the nearby village have tried to force the orphans out because they think the disease is communicable through touch. But the truth is-Rocky needs the kids as much as they need him. Every day they teach him what some of us will never really learn: love is the only thing that makes life worth living. -- (C) Official Site
One hundred sixty years after the invention of the needle and syringe, we’re still using them to deliver vaccines; it’s time to evolve. Biomedical engineer Mark Kendall demos the Nanopatch, a one-centimeter-by-one-centimeter square vaccine that can be applied painlessly to the skin. He shows how this tiny piece of silicon can overcome four major shortcomings of the modern needle and syringe, at a fraction of the cost.
TED Duration 13:51 On January 28, 1925, newspapers and radio stations broke a terrifying story - diphtheria had broken out in Nome, Alaska, separated from the rest of the world for seven months by a frozen ocean. With aviation still in its infancy and one of the harshest winters on record, only ancient means - dogsled - could save the town. In minus 60 degrees, over 20 men and at least 150 dogs, among them the famous Balto, set out to relay the antitoxin across 674 miles of Alaskan wilderness to save the town.
An ageless adventure that has captured the imagination of children and adults throughout the world for almost a century, the story has become known as the greatest dog story ever told. Duration 01:00 - Written by Anonymous TOXIC HOT SEAT follows a courageous group of firefighters and mothers, journalists and scientists, politicians and activists as they fight to expose a shadowy campaign of deception that left a toxic legacy in our homes and bodies - a campaign so cunning, it's taken nearly 40 years to unravel.
HBO Dr. Azor Betts was a physician in New York city at the beginning of the American Revolution in 1776. At the time there was a smallpox epidemic in the city and other parts of the colonies. George Washington had issued an order that no soldier of the Continental Army should be inoculated. In spite of this order Dr. Betts inoculated several officers at their urging.
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