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Last night, a member of the Buffalo Bills National Football League team collapsed on the field after a tackle. Subsequently, he collapsed and had to have CPR administered in order to restore his pulse. According to ESPN,
Buffalo safety Damar Hamlin had his heartbeat restored on the field after suffering cardiac arrest during the team's game Monday night against the Bengals, and he is currently in critical condition at a Cincinnati hospital, the Bills said in a statement early Tuesday morning. The chilling scene midway through the opening quarter led the league to postpone the game about 90 minutes after kickoff. CPR was administered to Hamlin, 24, on the field for multiple minutes after he collapsed following his tackle of Bengals wide receiver Tee Higgins. Hamlin received oxygen, according to the ESPN broadcast, as he was placed in the ambulance and taken off the field some 16 minutes after he collapsed. He then was driven to the nearby University of Cincinnati Medical Center. According to the Bills, he is currently sedated and listed in critical condition. The University of Cincinnati Medical Center did not anticipate making any statement early Tuesday morning.
Early speculation from sports doctors focused on commotio cordis, a devastating injury that results from a blow to the chest that can stop the heart and send the body into cardiac arrest. Of course, certain groups used the incident to blame the Covid-19 vaccine. https://bit.ly/3IlKNpY
A novel type of cancer treatment is being tested in the United Kingdom. According to a report in The Guardian,
Three breast cancer patients have undergone pioneering proton beam therapy for the first time on the NHS as part of a world-first trial. The hi-tech treatment targets tumours far more precisely than conventional radiotherapy, suiting patients with difficult-to-treat growths in critical areas. The NHS has previously used proton beam therapy to treat patients with tumours in and around their brain or spinal cord. The trial, the first of its kind globally, will compare proton beam therapy with standard radiotherapy for patients who are deemed at higher risk of long-term heart problems after radiotherapy treatment. “There is untapped potential in proton beam therapy, potentially reducing the risks of side-effects following cancer treatment,” said Prof David Sebag-Montefiore, former chair of the National Cancer Research Institute’s clinical and translational radiotherapy research working group.
A machine called a synchrotron or cyclotron speeds up protons. The high speed of the protons creates high energy. This energy makes the protons travel to the desired depth in the body. The protons then give the targeted radiation dose in the tumor.
With proton therapy, there is less radiation dose outside of the tumor. In regular radiation therapy, x-rays continue to give radiation doses as they leave the person’s body. This means that radiation damages nearby healthy tissues, possibly causing side effects. https://bit.ly/3jLTO1k
Speaking of unconventional treatments, the use of hallucinogenic mushrooms during therapy sessions continues being explored in Oregon. According to the New York Times,
The curriculum was set, the students were enrolled and Oregon officials had signed off on nearly every detail of training for the first class of “magic” mushroom facilitators seeking state certification. But as the four-day session got underway inside a hotel conference room in early December, an important pedagogical tool was missing: the mushrooms themselves. That’s because state officials, two years after Oregon voters narrowly approved the adult use of psilocybin, were still hammering out the regulatory framework for the production and sale of the tawny hallucinogenic fungi. Instead, the students, most of them seasoned mental health professionals, would have to role play with one another using meditation or intensive breathing practices that could lead to altered states of consciousness — the next best thing to the kind of psychedelic trip they would encounter as licensed guides.
Sign me up, pronto! https://bit.ly/3ichdIK
Sometimes, people can be so stupid and reprehensible that it makes you wonder about the future of the species. It’s a bit much but that’s how I feel about people who go out of their way to damage significant and irreplaceable relics of our past. Per Smithsonian Magazine,
In Southern Australia, vandals have broken into Koonalda Cave and destroyed 30,000 year-old sacred Indigenous rock art. The vandals forced their way past barbed wire and dug under a steel gate to get into the Koonalda Caves, where they etched graffiti into the limestone wall over the ancient Nullarbor Plain drawings. The cave is considered sacred by its owners, the Aboriginal Mirning people. “This is quite frankly shocking,” South Australia attorney general and Aboriginal affairs minister Kyam Maher told Australia’s ABC Radio. “These caves are some of the earliest evidence of Aboriginal occupation of that part of the country.” Authorities have yet to find the vandals, but the suspects could face a $10,000 fine or up to six months in prison for writing “Don’t look now, but this is a death cave,” over the ancient geometric patterns carved into the rock. “The vandals caused a huge amount of damage. The art is not recoverable,” Keryn Walshe, an archaeologist of ancient Aboriginal sites, told the Guardian’s Mostafa Rachwani. “The surface of the cave is very soft. It is not possible to remove the graffiti without destroying the art underneath. It’s a massive, tragic loss to have it defaced to this degree.
What is equally damning is the fact that the vandals were able to access the cave drawings so easily. Apparently, security measures were minimal, at best. https://bit.ly/3VGWgTY
Thanks for reading. Let’s be careful out there.
