Wednesday, March 28, 2007

TED Blog

TED Blog: "Google has acquired Hans Rosling's Trendalyzer software, which the Swedish demographer and his team at Gapminder have developed since 2005 to generate more useful visualizations of facts and figures.Google has acquired Hans Rosling's Trendalyzer software, which the Swedish demographer and his team at Gapminder have developed since 2005 to generate more useful visualizations of facts and figures."

Statistics and public health will be much easier to document with tools like the one referenced here. Trendalyzer is a tool to watch.

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Tragic Mistakes of heTwinning Process

A two-headed toddler died just before her second birthday. The Egyptian girl was born with a parasitic twin head attached to her own, the result of incomplete twinning. The parasitic head "was capable of smiling and blinking but not independent life." The girl survived the head's surgical removal a year ago, plus five additional operations to resolve complications. A brain infection finally killed her. Tragic view: Why couldn't doctors save her? Grateful view: Are you kidding? Head-separation surgery had never been done in the Middle East before, and she's the first kid to survive such surgery anywhere, not to mention five more surgeries and a full additional year. Hats off to her doctors. (For Human Nature's previous takes on twinning and "aberrant products of fertilization," click here and here.)

My question is about whether removing the second head would be murder in this country. What could a doctor legally do in the United States?