PHOTO: SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY


WHAT ARE WE LOOKING AT? Activated platelet, SEM


www.mddus.com OUT THERE


MAGIC CURE The fi rst known use of “abracadabra” was by a 2nd century doctor who was trying to treat malaria. Serenus Sammonicus, doctor to the Roman emperor, had the word written on an amulet that was to be worn by the affl icted. Source: omg-facts.com


BRAIN BOOST Making a fi st could help you remember those thoughts that are on the tip of your tongue. Clenching one hand increases activity in the brain on the opposite side of your body about 90 seconds later. Montclair State University researchers found those who clenched a fi st were better able to recall a list of words.


FAT FOOD Fast food diners underestimate the calorie content of their meals by an average of 200 calories, with underestimates getting worse as portions increase. Diners at Subway were more likely to underestimate calories than at other outlets. Harvard University researchers have called for clearer calorie labelling on menus.


BOTCHED BEAUTY Early 20th century surgeons have tried making breast implants out of honey, glass, ivory, wool and paraffi n, often with disastrous results. The fi rst successful enlargement using a silicone breast prosthesis was carried out in the US in 1962. Source: @qikipedia


Pick: DVD - Critical Care


Directed by Sidney Lumet, starring James Spader, Kyra Sedgwick, Helen Mirren, Albert Brooks; 1997


END-OF-LIFE care is one of the many issues at the heart of this satire on the US healthcare system. Based on the novel by Richard Dooling, it follows resident Dr Werner Ernst (Spader) and his fi ght with two half sisters over the care of their terminally ill and comatose father. At a time when cost cuts and profi t are increasingly prominent factors in NHS patient care, this biting comedy remains relevant. Smug, whisky-swilling Dr Butz (Brooks) is the personifi cation of modern medical greed, incompetence and amorality.


He takes great pains to ensure Ernst’s patient is adequately insured before allowing him to be treated. Butz then explains he himself has no insurance, reasoning that should he be taken ill the hospital would likely agonisingly extend his life in order to squeeze every last cent out of his policy.


The womanising Ernst initially appears as cynical and unlikeable as the rest but eventually learns to defend his helpless patient against a litany of money-motivated attacks.


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WHAT ARE WE LOOKING AT? Stumped? The answer is at the bottom of the page


Book Review: Extremes – Life, Death and


the Limits of the Human Body Hodder & Stoughton: £20 hardback; £8.99 paperback (due out 24 October 2013)


Review by Jim Killgore, publications editor, MDDUS


KEVIN Fong is best known from TV as the presenter of Extreme A&E and occasional one-off documentaries and Horizon episodes. But he is also a doctor, lecturer in physiology and expert in space medicine, being co-director of the Centre for Aviation Space and Extreme Environment Medicine at University College London.


And it this core interest that is the subject


of Extremes, his short but engaging new book which falls unashamedly into the category of popular science. In the text he expands on the notion that human life persists only within a


narrow envelope of environmental conditions – temperature, pressure, atmospheric composition, gravity. Stray outside that envelope and our physiology rapidly loses the ability to cope. It is life at these boundaries that excites Fong’s interest. In Extremes he develops the


subject by fi rst tracing his own career – astrophysics then medical school and later as a researcher in space medicine at NASA, in addition to his training as an anaesthetist. He then explores how the human body responds at extremes of heat and cold and pressure, in low gravity and in catastrophic trauma and serious illness. No doubt Fong is a talented


lecturer as physiological concepts are explained with elegant simplicity but what brings the text to life are the numerous tales of survival (or not) at


extremes – a pilot in the Battle of Britain who escapes a fi ery crash burnt beyond recognition, the Norwegian skier submerged in an icy river whose heart stopped for three hours, and Fong’s own experiences working as a doctor in A&E and in intensive care, fl ying in the notorious vomit comet or strapped in a high-G centrifuge at NASA. These stories provide the


context for an exploration of life, “its fragility, its fractal beauty and its resilience,” says Fong. The book is also about technology – “the theme of rapid advance, using technology and science to surround our physiology like a cocoon”.


Most of all though Extremes is a cracking read, a


well-written science book rich with curiosity and wonder.


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