Open Questions: Health and Medicine
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Introduction
Some day, progress in medical science, based on discoveries made so recently
about the content of the human genome, will enable extension of the normal
human life span to 150 years or more, right?
No, not necessarily. In fact, the bad news (perhaps) is that such an
extension is probably not likely any time soon.
However, the good news is that medical science may have something better
to offer in the next 20 to 40 years.
"Aging" is not a disease, at least one not like any other. It is not at all
clear we will be able to extend the normal human life span much beyond the
currently known outer limits of, say, 110 years or so. At least not
in the small portion of the future we can reasonably predict.
What may be possible in the relatively near future that is better is that
the quality of life in older age may be much improved.
Would you really want to live to be 110 if for the last 20 or 30 years of
life you suffered from arthritis, deafness, dementia, diabetes, macular
degeneration, osteoporosis,
Parkinson's disease, prostate cancer, strokes, or any of the other common
degenerative diseases of old age?
Probably not.
It is conditions like these which medical science may become increasingly
good at dealing with in the next 10-20 years. Yes, being able to prevent
or cure cancer and heart disease will be a most welcome accomplishment,
but only if it's possible to deal with all these other afflictions as well.
Site indexes
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WWW Virtual Library: Medicine and Health
- Categorized and annotated links. Part of the
WWW Virtual Library.
-
Martindale's Reference Desk: Bioscience & Biotechnology
- Extensive, annotated list of links, unfortunately all on one
large page.
-
Galaxy: Health
- Categorized site directory. Entries usually include
descriptive annotations.
-
Galaxy: Medicine
- Categorized site directory. Entries usually include
descriptive annotations.
-
Galaxy: Human Biology
- Categorized site directory. Entries usually include
descriptive annotations.
-
InfoMine
- A "scholarly internet resource collection" for biological,
agricultural, and medical sciences.
Sites with general resources
-
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
- Home page of the U. S. government agency in the
Department of Health and Human
Services that has responsibility for public health.
The site contains a vast amount of information on most scientific
topics related to human health and medicine, as well as information
on specific diseases and health problems.
-
United States National Library of Medicine
- Operated by the U. S.
National Institutes of Health, the NLM is billed as "the
world's largest medical library". Resources it provides include
PubMed (an
index of biomedical journal literature),
MedlinePlus (health
and drug information for the general public), and
ClinicalTrials.gov
(a directory of ongoing clinical trials of drug and treatment
studies).
-
MedlinePlus
- A service of the U. S.
National Library of Medicine that provides health and medical
information for the general public. Resources at the site include
overviews of over 700 health and medical topics, information on
drugs and dietary supplements, a
medical encyclopedia, a
medical dictionary, and
current health news.
-
PubMed
- A service of the U. S.
National Library of Medicine, provides
access to over 11 million citations from MEDLINE and additional
life science journals. PubMed includes links to many sites providing
full text articles and other related resources.
-
Bio Online
- Commercial site with emphasis on biotechnology,
pharmaceutical research, and health sciences.
-
The Scientist
- "The News Journal for the Life Scientist". Free access allowed
with registration.
-
THE Medical Biochemistry Page
- An outstanding site in general, by Michael W. King.
Contains detailed information on many subjects, such as
metabolism, proteins, amino acids, cytokines, neurotransmitters,
sugars, enzymes, and hormones.
-
BioTech
- The site is really about biology and biochemistry in general,
not just biotechnology. Principal resources include a searchable
life science dictionary, information on
bioinformatics, and external links to
life science and chemistry resources.
-
SciWeb
- "The Life Science Home Page". Contains a variety of resources,
such as
external links, patent information, meeting announcements,
career aids, and discussion forums.
-
Yahoo News Full Coverage: Health
- Links to recent news stories from various sources. Also includes
links to sites dealing with health and medicine.
-
Medical research@nature.com
- A portal to relevant Nature Publishing Group resouces in the
field of medical research.
Surveys, overviews, tutorials
-
Category: Medicine
- Topic category from
Wikipedia.
-
Medicine
- Article from
Wikipedia.
See also
Health science,
Disease.
-
Genes and Disease
- Extensive online reference -- "a collection of articles
that discuss genes and the diseases that they cause."
Index.
Part of the
NCBI Bookshelf.
Ask an expert
-
Howard Hughes Medical Institute: Ask a Scientist
- Great resource that allows you to ask scientists questions
about biology by email. The site has an archive of questions
already answered, in area such as developmental biology,
immunology, molecular biology, genetics, and neuroscience.
Operated by the
Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
-
ScienceNet: Biology and Medical Science
- This is the archive of answered questions in biology from the
excellent
ScienceNet site. It's organized by subfield and many of the
questions/answers are quite sophisticated.
-
Scientific American Ask The Experts: Medicine
- Questions and answers on many different topics in medicine.
Most of the articles also have useful external links.
Online books and lecture notes
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MIT OpenCourseWare: Health Sciences and Technology
- Course materials provided by the
MIT OpenCourseWare project. New courses are continually added.
Detailed lecture notes and additional materials such as problem
sets are provided for some, but not all, courses.
-
In Silico Medicine
Damaris Christensen
Science Week, December 14, 2002, pp. 378-380
- Computer simulations of medical and biological systems
from interacting molecules to cells, organ systems, and
health care systems is playing an increasingly important
role in medical research.
- Evolution and the Origins of Disease
Randolph M. Nesse; George C. Williams
Scientific American, November 1998, pp. 86-93
- As Theodosius Dobzhansky said, "Nothing in biology makes
sense except in the light of evolution." Accordingly, evolutionary
considerations can help us understand the seemingly disparate
types and causes of disease.
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Copyright © 2002 by Charles Daney, All Rights Reserved