Ted Talks: Viral Pandemics Nathan Wolfe

The show Ted talks has many interesting subjects that they talk about for people to have a better understanding of, one of being the Viral Pandemics on mostly HIV.

When people go hunting in the woods or the jungle and are trying to hunt anything that will feed their family it is often called bush meat. The most often killed animal is the primate. Now it was said that how HIV transferred to humans was when people went out to hunt bush meat they may of had an open cut that might of gotten a primates blood in it that had HIV. HIV was transferred from primate to human but not all viruses that animals have can be transferred from animal to human, some your immune system just kills it off and it doesn't affect you. Some that have been transferred are Rabies, Yellow Fever, Ebola and Influenza.
Nathan Wolfe has created a program that lets locals take the blood of all animals that they kills so it can be tested to see what kind of viruses it has. he hopes that this program will someday hope to prevent many other diseases from transferring to humans

I think that this was a good show to watch and it helped to get rid of some myths about how HIV came to humans. I like the man's idea to help prevent future diseases. I feel that one of the ways to stop there being more viruses from animals would to be to stop bush hunting but one would have to stop poverty in the world to do that, so it may take decades for this to happen.

Cimpanzee testing

Chimpanzees have been studied on for years and have had several tests done on them for human discovery. I recently read an article in biology class about retired chimpanzees that were going to be brought back into labs to be treated one again. The article stated different peoples opines on the subject and how they think it should be taken care of. One stated that the chimpanzees should be be left in retirement for they have already given their services once. Though after many years of debate and arguing they were finally put back into retirement.
I found this a horrible thing to do to these creatures. They had already been tested on once and they were retired. I find animal testing cruel anyways yet its hard to not do that to make discoveries on human health. I also think that if one does do this they shouldn't keep them in small cages and not let them outside. It seems cruel to me.

Guest Speaker in Class

On Wednesday 15,10 we had a guest speaker come in and tell us about what it was like to get a kidney transplant. She had actually had three because the first transplant had scared from being out of body to long and the second one the doctors messed up the prescription she was taking. It was sad to hear her story on how she had lost her friends kidney because of the mess up. She told us she had been on dialysis several times through out the whole thing. She said it was tiring process and would take up to 6 hours a day twice a week. I felt bad for her to have to of had three transplants. Its bad enough to just have one.

Organ Transplant Article/ Project

In class we read an article on a man who had received a heart transplant who had been convicted of two robberies. In the article the author was stating that people who have been convicted felons should not get major organ transplants when others are in need who have not done crimes.

Now when I read this article I found some of her statements a little harsh. The article was titled " Should Violent Felons Receive Organ Transplants" and I found this ill stated. In the article it did not state what kind of robbery it was and if the man had been violent or not and without evidence the article seemed bias to me.

Hi Everybody!

Hi! I am a student within a biology class that I am taking. So far it seems to be an interesting class and I am learning a lot.
I have been asked to blog my assignments I have done here and tell you what I thought about them. Throughout the year I will be posting and telling what I learn recently.