Western Approaches to AIDS
I think that the Western approach to AIDS has bought a lot of people a lot of time. The drugs available to treat HIV and AIDS are costly, both financially and to the general health of the patient. But they do seem to be working when they are available and that is an amazing thing. I think it's a tribute to social activism that the medical community mobilized and addressed the AIDS crisis in the relatively short time that it did.
Sadly, it's not perfect. It is extrememly expensive and too often unavailable. And, it makes people sick, degrading quality of life. The danger is that AIDS and HIV are dismissed as a thing of the past, and that better drugs and therapies aren't fast-tracked through the process of development and distribution. Too many people think that AIDS has been cured and the resultant lack of attention is scary.
Can TCM Strengthen the Immune System
I think it can. Qi gong and acupuncture can stimulate our immune response and ramp up our bodies' ability to fight disease. It should be made a part of cancer and HIV therapies. In one study involving cancer patients, the phagocytic rate, which is a measure of the immune function, increased in the the group practicing qi gong but decreased in the control group. So, there you have it...
The Deal that Saved the Whale
I think that the Deal that Saved the Whale is a wonderful accomplishment. Any conservation effort that can meet the financial needs of indigenous populations while also conserving the environment is ideal. But, the scary part of the article is how much development on the Baja peninsula is taking place, and what the effects of that are almost certainly going to be.
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2 comments:
Can the phagocytic rate really indicate an accurate measure of immune function? does a certain number of phagocytes equal a certain level of health?
how is this determined? continued observation and correlation?
very interesting way of determining something in a quantitative way. what do you think about this?
oh. also, is 'immune function' limited to the parts of the body we call the lymphatic and blood systems? what is the immune system and how do we measure it?
I think it is interesting that in TCM we ask the patient how they feel and look to the overt signs of health or illness in order to measure 'immune function' or 'health' or 'illness'.
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