Barbies knees are used to treat arthritis patients
Barbie’s knees, Ken’s biceps, soft drugs, and mummies who smoke are but a few on the medical developments to make headlines in the past few weeks.
Barbie has always been a popular girl, but lately scientists have become even more impressed with her. She’s been helping child amputees with their artificial hands.
The usual prosthetic hands look and act like a manikin’s hand – they bear a passing resemblance to the real thing, but don’t have the ability to grab on to anything. Then someone got the bright idea to put a ratcheting hinge joint in the fingers, so that patients could move the fingers to a certain position and they would stay there and hold a position.
The ideal ratchet mechanism, after much trial and error, turned out to be in Barbie’s knee joints. These joints can bend, and they hold whatever position they were last put in.
Barbie has always been a popular girl, but lately scientists have become even more impressed with her. She’s been helping child amputees with their artificial hands.
The usual prosthetic hands look and act like a manikin’s hand – they bear a passing resemblance to the real thing, but don’t have the ability to grab on to anything. Then someone got the bright idea to put a ratcheting hinge joint in the fingers, so that patients could move the fingers to a certain position and they would stay there and hold a position.
The ideal ratchet mechanism, after much trial and error, turned out to be in Barbie’s knee joints. These joints can bend, and they hold whatever position they were last put in.
Knees to hands
Where Barbies knees went
The folks who make prosthetic joints for child amputees were delirious with joy, and began buying Barbie dolls by the dozen, taking the legs apart, and using the knees to make artificial finger joints. (There is no mention in the medical journal about whether they used the traditional Barbie, or the newer Politically Correct Barbie with the somewhat larger thighs).
When the toy makers at Mattel found out that their star attraction was being dismembered in the interests of medical science they sprang into action. The company generously forwarded a huge shipment of the ratcheting knee joints, so the makers of prosthetic limbs no longer have to cannibalize Barbies bought on the open market.
When the toy makers at Mattel found out that their star attraction was being dismembered in the interests of medical science they sprang into action. The company generously forwarded a huge shipment of the ratcheting knee joints, so the makers of prosthetic limbs no longer have to cannibalize Barbies bought on the open market.
What about Ken ?
Ken - the Adonis Complex !
To date no use has ever been found for Ken! This is not to say that he has escaped medical controversy altogether. A team of scholars from Johns Hopkins University has just published a scholarly tome called “The Adonis Complex”. By careful morphological analysis of muscularity of the various Ken dolls over the years they have come to a startling conclusion -- Ken has been using steroids for at least a decade. (This does a lot to explain the buffed biceps and the decidedly atrophic testicles! )
Egyptian Mummy marijuana !
Toke like an Egyptian !
Medical marijuana is making headlines these days. It’s devotees demand to have it prescribed legally, and the government is bowing to pressure to study the dope smokers dilemma. A contract was tendered to provide the government with high grade weed for study.
Despite the legendary potency of the home grown B.C. product the contract went to the Columbians. (Whatever happened to shop local ?) In the meantime the Canadian Medical Association Journal just released a study profiling those who smoke marijuana and those who push for legalization of medical marijuana. Advocates for legalizing MJ are no different than regular dopers, with the exception that they are more likely to also be addicted to cocaine.
“Toke like an Egyptian” may become a watchword for these folks. Egyptologists have known that the lotus was a common motif used in pyramid art. Many scholars now think this was because of a fondness for opium back then.
And recent research, some if it by Vancouver researcher Helen Dimich-Ward, suggests that King Tut and his peers were equally fond of other recreational pharmaceuticals. We have known for years that mummies contained traces of wine and beer, but in 1992 researchers first discovered traces of nicotine and cocaine within the wrappings. This leads to some interesting questions, since nicotine comes from the tobacco plant, and cocaine from the coca leaf. Both of these are new world plants that should not have been available to the makers of the pyramids.
They could have possibly made it to America and brought back some seeds, but they were such bad sailors that this is unlikely. (The Egyptians did manage to circumnavigate Africa once, but only by staying in sight of land the whole time. )
A alternate explanation is environmental contamination of the mummies somewhere along the line. Second hand smoke from elderly archeologists puffing on their pipes might be one cause, but do respected researchers in ancient antiquities also have a fondness for cocaine when on their digs? Indiana Jones would be turning over in his grave !
Smoking and other lung irritants are very bad for children with asthma. This drives parents to extremes of household cleanliness in order to avoid irritants that might trigger the child’s asthma. Avoidance of lung infections is also highly recommended. But researchers in Australia now how a new view on how to prevent asthma in children – make sure the kids eat lots of dirt and get regular chest infections early on in life.
The theory behind this new treatment is that children with asthma suffer from an immature immune system. We all have immune systems that are designed to fight off infections and foreign tissues. If a child doesn’t have enough germs when it is young this fully armed immune system gets bored and restless, and starts looking for something to do. It then turns inward, and starts to attack the bodies own tissues.
This leaves us with a picture of the human race as a bunch of dirty, drug dependant wheezy wimps (with a history going back thousands of years). But we have great knees !
Dr. Patrick Nesbitt
Despite the legendary potency of the home grown B.C. product the contract went to the Columbians. (Whatever happened to shop local ?) In the meantime the Canadian Medical Association Journal just released a study profiling those who smoke marijuana and those who push for legalization of medical marijuana. Advocates for legalizing MJ are no different than regular dopers, with the exception that they are more likely to also be addicted to cocaine.
“Toke like an Egyptian” may become a watchword for these folks. Egyptologists have known that the lotus was a common motif used in pyramid art. Many scholars now think this was because of a fondness for opium back then.
And recent research, some if it by Vancouver researcher Helen Dimich-Ward, suggests that King Tut and his peers were equally fond of other recreational pharmaceuticals. We have known for years that mummies contained traces of wine and beer, but in 1992 researchers first discovered traces of nicotine and cocaine within the wrappings. This leads to some interesting questions, since nicotine comes from the tobacco plant, and cocaine from the coca leaf. Both of these are new world plants that should not have been available to the makers of the pyramids.
They could have possibly made it to America and brought back some seeds, but they were such bad sailors that this is unlikely. (The Egyptians did manage to circumnavigate Africa once, but only by staying in sight of land the whole time. )
A alternate explanation is environmental contamination of the mummies somewhere along the line. Second hand smoke from elderly archeologists puffing on their pipes might be one cause, but do respected researchers in ancient antiquities also have a fondness for cocaine when on their digs? Indiana Jones would be turning over in his grave !
Smoking and other lung irritants are very bad for children with asthma. This drives parents to extremes of household cleanliness in order to avoid irritants that might trigger the child’s asthma. Avoidance of lung infections is also highly recommended. But researchers in Australia now how a new view on how to prevent asthma in children – make sure the kids eat lots of dirt and get regular chest infections early on in life.
The theory behind this new treatment is that children with asthma suffer from an immature immune system. We all have immune systems that are designed to fight off infections and foreign tissues. If a child doesn’t have enough germs when it is young this fully armed immune system gets bored and restless, and starts looking for something to do. It then turns inward, and starts to attack the bodies own tissues.
This leaves us with a picture of the human race as a bunch of dirty, drug dependant wheezy wimps (with a history going back thousands of years). But we have great knees !
Dr. Patrick Nesbitt