FIVE THINGS ABOUT HEALTH TODAY
1 LIVER TRANSPLANTS FOR ALCOHOL ABUSERS
Relatives of two men denied liver transplants because of their alcoholism — both now having died — can press their constitutional fight over the hospital’s refusal to perform the surgery, an Ontario superior court has ruled. Toronto-based University Health Network argued the charter does not apply to it as a private rather than governmental entity, but the judge found it may apply in cases where actions of a private
entity are related to a governmental program or policy. Under Ontario legislation, the Trillium Gift of Life Network, responsible for fairly rationing
scarce organs from dead donors, does not offer transplants to people with livers damaged by alcohol unless they
have been dry for six months.
2 BRAIN SCANS FOR RESEARCH
Participants in research studies assume their privacy is protected because researchers remove their names and other identifying information from records. But could a company mining medical records to sell targeted ads find you? Yes, the Mayo Clinic says. An MRI brain scan includes the entire head, including the face. Imaging technology can now reconstruct the face from the scan, and that face could be ID’D using facial recognition software. One fix would be to remove faces from MRI scans stored in databases, but doing so blurs the image of the brain.
3 TWO OF THREE POLIO VIRUSES ERADICATED: WHO
The World Health Organization
welcomed an “historic step” toward a polio-free world as an expert panel certified that only wild polio virus Type 1 is still circulating, after Type 2 was declared eradicated in 2015,
and Type 3 this week.
4 MEASLES AT DISNEYLAND
A person infected with measles visited Disneyland last week, potentially exposing hundreds of people to the highly contagious disease. Though no new cases have been linked to the visit, places with high visitor volumes strike fear among public health officials. The measles virus can live on surfaces for several hours and is so contagious it’s possible to catch it just by being in a room where a person with measles has been, up to two hours after
that person has left.
5 GIVE IT ALL YOU’VE GOT, BUT …
Social entrepreneurship is on the rise, with more businesses aiming to make a profit that can be used to address problems of unemployment, homelessness, mental health and even loneliness. But making money and doing good can be incompatible, as progress in one can undermine progress in the other. This is leading to mental and physical burnout, as passionate entrepreneurs rarely abandon such projects.