Questões de Inglês

What´s the Retina Made Of?

The retina is a special type of light-sensitive tissue located in the interior of the eye that's so analogous to brain tissue it's considered a part of the central nervous system. If you consider our eyes to be cameras, then the retina is the film. However, the retina does much more than just send a 'picture' to the brain – it actually has to compress the image so that it can be conveyed via the optic nerve, because the photorecep-tors in the retina can take in more information than the optic nerve can convey.

Although it looks like a single layer, the retina is actually very complex and comprises ten layers of nerve cells, all of which are connected by synapses. Within each of these layers are several different types of cells: the photoreceptors called rods and cones, pho-tosensitive ganglion cells, bipolar cells and other cells that assist with regulating light input as well as processing and transmitting images. Rods and cones each have their own function. Rods are more sensitive to light and are responsible for night vision and peripheral vision; each one can respond to a single photon, or particle, of light. Cones, on the other hand, work in bright light and are responsible for seeing colour, fine detail and rapid movements.

Until the Nineties, it was thought that only rods and cones were involved in sight. Then researchers discovered a much rarer type of cell called photosensitive ganglion cells. These cells help regulate pupil size and the light/dark cycle, or circadian rhythms, that we func-tion by.

Light reaches the rods and cones by first passing through transparent layers of nerve cells. When it reaches these photoreceptors, the light causes chemical changes in both the rods and cones. The raw data is then sent back through the layers of nerve cells, which process and encode the image before sending it via the optic nerve to the brain.

Fonte: How It Works Book of Amazing Answers to Curious Questions Volume 2 © 2012 Imagine Publishing Ltd (with adaptations).

Five doctors at a Brazilian hospital have been suspended after they were accused of covering for absentee colleagues by using fake silicone fingers with their prints to fool biometric machines. Globo television showed footage of a doctor touching her finger to the device, then using two fake digits to do the same for colleagues, and taking delivery of slips of paper indicat-ing they had in fact clocked in to work. That way it looked like there were doctors on duty when there was just one.

It had happened at Ferraz de Vasconcelos, in Greater Sao Paulo.

The woman told police six other doctors were in on the scam. "She says she was innocent because it is a condition they imposed on her to keep her job," said her lawyer, Celestino Gomes Antunes. Another television network said it was the head of the emergency room that ran the scam and that his daughter had not worked a day in three years but got paid all the time.

So far five doctors have been suspended as part of the investigation.

The mayor of Ferraz de Vasconcelos, AcirFillo, said there might be as many as 300 hospital employees who do not exist, except for fake fingers with their prints, but who get paid anyway.

Fonte: http://www.france24.com -adapted.

Criticism of modern medicine

According to Paul Farmer, the main problem for modern medicine is lack of access in poor regions. There is a "large gap" between the rich and poor that is most noticeable with expensive-to-treat diseases like AIDS and tuberculosis. The majority of medical resources and therapies are concentrated in the rich, low-incidence regions such as the West. On the other hand, countries in the developing world have high rates of HIV but lack the resources to treat them.

Medical errors and overmedication and other forms of iatrogenesis (harms caused by medical treatment) are also the focus of complaints and negative coverage. Practitioners of human factors engineering believe that there is much that medicine may usefully gain by emulating concepts in aviation safety, where it is recognized that it is dangerous to place too much responsibility on one "superhuman" individual and expect him or her not to make errors. Reporting systems and checking mechanisms are becoming more common in identifying sources of error and improving practice. Clinical versus statistical, algorithmic diagnostic methods were famously examined in psychiatric practice in a 1954 book by Paul E. Meehl, which found statistical methods superior. A 2000 meta-analysis comparing these methods in both psychology and medicine found that statistical or "mechanical" diagnostic methods were, in general, although not always, superior.

Disparities in quality of care given among local demographics are often an additional cause of controversy. For example, elderly mentally ill patients received poorer care during hospitalization in a 2008 study. Rural poor African-American men were used in an infamous study of syphilis that denied them basic medical care.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine

Criticism of modern medicine

According to Paul Farmer, the main problem for modern medicine is lack of access in poor regions. There is a "large gap" between the rich and poor that is most noticeable with expensive-to-treat diseases like AIDS and tuberculosis. The majority of medical resources and therapies are concentrated in the rich, low-incidence regions such as the West. On the other hand, countries in the developing world have high rates of HIV but lack the resources to treat them.

Medical errors and overmedication and other forms of iatrogenesis (harms caused by medical treatment) are also the focus of complaints and negative coverage. Practitioners of human factors engineering believe that there is much that medicine may usefully gain by emulating concepts in aviation safety, where it is recognized that it is dangerous to place too much responsibility on one "superhuman" individual and expect him or her not to make errors. Reporting systems and checking mechanisms are becoming more common in identifying sources of error and improving practice. Clinical versus statistical, algorithmic diagnostic methods were famously examined in psychiatric practice in a 1954 book by Paul E. Meehl, which found statistical methods superior. A 2000 meta-analysis comparing these methods in both psychology and medicine found that statistical or "mechanical" diagnostic methods were, in general, although not always, superior.

Disparities in quality of care given among local demographics are often an additional cause of controversy. For example, elderly mentally ill patients received poorer care during hospitalization in a 2008 study. Rural poor African-American men were used in an infamous study of syphilis that denied them basic medical care.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine

Medical ethics 

Medical ethics is a system of moral principles that apply values and judgments to the practice of medicine. As a scholarly discipline, medical ethics encompasses its practical application in clinical settings as well as work on its history, philosophy, theology, and sociology. The values that commonly apply to medical ethics discussions are:

• autonomy;

• beneficence;

• justice;

• non-maleficence;

• respect for persons;

• truth fulness and honesty.

Values such as these do not give answers as to how to handle a particular situation, but provide a useful framework for understanding conflicts. When moral values are in conflict, the result may be an ethical dilemma or crisis. Sometimes, no good solution to a dilemma in medical ethics exists, and occasionally, the values of the medical community (i.e., the hospital and its staff) conflict with the values of the individual patient, family, or larger non-medical community. Conflicts can also arise between health care providers, or among family members. For example, some argue that the principles of autonomy and beneficence clash when patients refuse blood transfusions, considering them life-saving; and truth-telling was not emphasized to a large extent before the HIV era.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine (with adaptation)

Medical ethics 

Medical ethics is a system of moral principles that apply values and judgments to the practice of medicine. As a scholarly discipline, medical ethics encompasses its practical application in clinical settings as well as work on its history, philosophy, theology, and sociology. The values that commonly apply to medical ethics discussions are:

• autonomy;

• beneficence;

• justice;

• non-maleficence;

• respect for persons;

• truth fulness and honesty.

Values such as these do not give answers as to how to handle a particular situation, but provide a useful framework for understanding conflicts. When moral values are in conflict, the result may be an ethical dilemma or crisis. Sometimes, no good solution to a dilemma in medical ethics exists, and occasionally, the values of the medical community (i.e., the hospital and its staff) conflict with the values of the individual patient, family, or larger non-medical community. Conflicts can also arise between health care providers, or among family members. For example, some argue that the principles of autonomy and beneficence clash when patients refuse blood transfusions, considering them life-saving; and truth-telling was not emphasized to a large extent before the HIV era.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine (with adaptation)