Tough Economy? Don't Waste Money on Health Insurance
It was a Thursday in the Fall of 2010. I was returning from work. The traffic was dreadful. I was not in any rush to get home but I did not want to spend another hour stuck in the traffic. It started to rain. I was getting drenched wet and there was no way I would be able to hold up any longer. So I decided that I would just jump into the traffic. I jumped in without any thought of this being a bad idea.
To my surprise traffic did not slow down. I suddenly started to slide across the wet asphalt like a heavy piece of metal. My spine was crushed like a paper bag. My head hit the ground. I was unable to move my body, which was twisted in a position I had never seen my body being in. I felt my ribs cracking with every breath I took. The pain was excruciating. There was a lot of bleeding and my muscles started to feel weaker by the second.
I was taken to the hospital. While there I sustained a broken neck, fractured vertebrae, internal bleeding and a concussion. To my surprise the doctors wanted to leave me in that twisted, crushed body of mine for another six hours. They just wanted to observe me for a bit longer.
For the next six hours I stayed trapped in a position that would eventually lead to my death. The position that I was at, a position I had never been in my lifetime, had made my body paralyzed.
I waited for my body to slowly die. And it slowly did.
My family gathered in a hospital room. They knew that I was only alive now due to the medical technology that was keeping me alive. I did not understand how they could be okay with me being in this state. I did not feel like I had any right to feel that way but I did. I had not deserved anything good in my life so why should I not be stuck in this position even after my death. I was not the only one who suffered like this.
About half of all US babies are born in this condition.
Media:
Sources:
Wall Street Journal, "New Law Would Block Lawsuits Against Insurers Who Won't Pay for Birth-Control Methods": http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1000142405274870411354195872246554039082?mod=searchresults
Washington Post, "Nearly half of all babies in the U.S. are born this way": http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/14/AR2009041401393.html
The brain is a completely different muscle — it’s more like a wheel. So that brain is still perfectly capable of learning language, but it’s missing the neural circuitry to actually move muscles. And that’s where the whole problem comes in.
(...)
The same thing happens when we injure the spinal cord. We get locked up. But it’s never enough injury to kill the cell; to kill the brain. The brain has this wonderful ability to heal itself as the injury progresses. It’s hugely effective at this. The problem is, it can’t get enough of the brain back into a position in the brain stem to be able to tell our muscles what to do without getting crushed.
(...)
In my lab, we do a lot of work in rats and we’re very interested in spinal cord regeneration. So, we have spinal cord injuries in rats that are very, very similar to SCI [spinal cord injury], except that our animals have no movement whatsoever. They’re totally paralyzed. And we’ve been able to show that, if you get in early in the injury process, and you scrape away some of the scar tissue, the brain stem can regenerate back into the cord.
I love that metaphor because it is so powerful. The brainstem is like Polado, the spinning guy that can’t stop spinning. And he gets his arms chopped off and still keeps on spinning. And, when he gets cut in half, still he keeps on spinning. So here’s this guy, this guy is spinning at a rate of 10 revolutions per second. The brainstem is about 1500 revolutions per second. And to get back into sync, Polado would have to be cut in half. But it works because the brainstem is still so close to the cord.
Conclusion:
Source:
The Ethics of Root of all Evil – Part 1 [http://futurism.com/the-ethics-of-root-of-all-evil-part-1/]
In the 1700s, the baby was considered the root of all evil. In other words, the baby was thought to be the cause of all of the misfortunes and problems faced by the parents and the society.