Shit doesn’t just happen. Stock market crashes, multi-vehicle pileups, the collapse of tall buildings, wildfires, viral pandemics … None of these phenomena have a single, simple explanation. Rather, they all result from a multitude of events, factors and situations — proximal, distal and invariably complex. Thomas Homer-Dixon is a complexity theorist. Listen to our conversation.
As Covid-19 sweeps around the planet, news has focused on places where death tolls have been high: Italy, Mexico, Brazil, the US and — of course — China, where the pandemic began. Early predictions about the potential for outbreaks in Africa have yet to materialize. Whether swift lock downs or non-reporting is the reason is unclear. I spoke with GPM correspondent Josephat Mwanzi, in the Tanzanian capital, Dar es Salaam.
No newsroom is too small to evade the vigilant and exacting gaze of staunchly pro-Israel “Honest” Reporting Canada. The PEI Guardian, based in Charlottetown, received a furious, hateful blast after publishing a letter about Covid-19 in occupied Palestine. Listen to what Israeli human rights NGO B’Tselem has to say on the matter.
As Covid-19 sweeps across the planet, few scenarios are as frightening as an outbreak of the virus in Israeli-occupied Gaza. Four Israelis are refusing to let this happen, and are helping Gazans fend it off. They’ve launched a solidarity campaign to help Gazans out in this most grave crisis — and are calling for an end to Israel’s siege.
Hungry for news on the state of the Covid-19 pandemic in Israeli-occupied/colonized Palestine, I reached out by Skype to Rania Muhareb, a researcher with Ramallah-based Al-Haq, one of Palestine’s most prominent and respected human rights organizations. Rania spoke with me from her home in East Jerusalem.
As the Covid-19 pandemic sweeps around the planet, attention has been focused on the fate of the most vulnerable communities: those consigned to crowded urban slums, refugee camps and conflict zones across the Global South. No one more vulnerable to the highly infectious virus than the people of Gaza, under comprehensive Israeli blockade and siege for thirteen years.
Drug-resistant bacteria are one of humanity’s great emerging threats. Microbes resistant to most or all antibiotics – superbugs, they’re called – just laugh at whatever we throw at them. In the search for new antibiotics, a group of researchers at McMaster University have turned over an interesting stone — cannabis.
It’s a perfect storm: horrific bone and tissue-pulverizing wounds from high velocity sniper rounds, a health care system crushed by twelve years of military siege, and traumatic wound infections resistant to all but the most powerful and costly antibiotics. Such is the tempest sweeping tiny Gaza, fifteen months after the launch of protests along the militarized perimeter of what gets called, alternatively, an open-air prison or ghetto.
It’s a perfect storm: horrific, bone and tissue-pulverizing wounds from high velocity sniper rounds, a health care system crippled by over a decade-long military siege, and multi-drug resistant infections.
Tell a friend you’re traveling to the Marshall Islands, in the central Pacific. Paradise in mind, they may beg to come along. The Marshalls are certainly remarkable. Not just because they’re so beautiful, but because of what happened here.
Donald Trump cited a frightful list of anti-American threats in his 4300-word nomination acceptance speech: terrorism, immigrants, crime, violence, gangs, drugs, lawlessness, government regulation, media elites. He had nothing to say about multidrug-resistant superbugs.
How it is that brains shed memory, while sparing lyrics and music, is one of neuroscience’s great mysteries. Can hardy music circuits jog cognition and speech? Hopes are high.
A first-of-its kind web portal helps clinicians and geneticists around the world to match symptoms they’ve never seen before with known mutant genes — and to provide firm counseling to patients in search of answers.
Rob Kendrick — aka Shakydad — is a highly successful guy with Parkinson’s Disease. Listen to him reflect on the challenges and changes Parkinson’s has offered up, for worse and for better.
Up to twenty percent of working musicians get struck by focal dystonia at some point. So do writers, athletes, craftspeople … an estimated 300,000 North Americans. The underlying problem? Normal brain plasticity gone rogue.
You are what you eat — so the saying goes. In fact, the trillions of bacteria inhabiting your gut also eat what you eat, and turn meals into molecules that affect your brain.
An estimated ten percent of Canadians struggle with depression, flashbacks and panic attacks associated with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). So do 14,000 Canadian veterans. Locked brain circuits may be to blame.
Of all the medical afflictions a person or family can suffer from, none is as burdensome as a rare genetic condition that hasn’t even been named. Winnipeg physician-geneticist Cheryl Greenberg advocates for patients.
There’s hardly a facet of drug action that isn’t determined in some way by our DNA — by our genome. On a recent trip to Vancouver, I visited the offices and labs of the Canadian Pharmacogenomics Network for Drug Safety.
Have you ever popped the recommended dose of an over-the-counter analgesic, and it did absolutely nothing? Or perhaps you suffered a life-threatening adverse reaction. If so, you’re in large company.
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