For Sale: One Kidney, Used But Not Abused

Does anybody out there need a kidney? Sure, it’s not a question you hear everyday, but apparently Iran has a few we could order up if you answered “yes” . What do you say?

Iran is not usually a country we look to in order to draw ideas from, especially fiscally driven ones. But it seems that they have an incredibly successful organ vendor program.

Transplant nephrologist Benjamin E. Hippen out of North Carolina recently published a paper called “Organ Sales and Moral Travails: Lessons From the Living Kidney Vendor Program in Iran.”

If you are shaking your head at this point asking if I am serious, indeed I am. Here are some excerpts from Dr. Hippen’s paper… Continue reading For Sale: One Kidney, Used But Not Abused

Are You Suffering From Smurf Syndrome? Take Dr. Dagger’s Medication Side Effect Quiz

You’ve seen it before. An elderly couple sitting on the beach, holding hands, gazing at the sunset, reveling in their restored health thanks to a few magic pills. The tone of the narrator changes as he starts rattling off side effects for the newest wonder drug at blazing speeds.

“…can cause a very disfiguring blue-grey discoloration of the skin, generally in areas of sun exposure, and that gradually worsens over a period of years. It is not clear that this “smurf syndrome” clears up when the drug is stopped. In younger patients this side effect can be devastating.”

Did you catch all that? Think you know your pharmacology? Take the quiz below to see how you match up with other DaggerPress.com readers.
Continue reading Are You Suffering From Smurf Syndrome? Take Dr. Dagger’s Medication Side Effect Quiz

Up in Smoke: A Cigarette-Lover Supports the Maryland Smoking Ban

We’re taught early in our school years that tobacco was first discovered upon European’s adventures to North American Indian territory. Cheek and jowl with its addictive quality, tobacco use quickly went ‘Internationale,’ pretentiously inhaled among the upper classes.

It wasn’t until the late 18th century that smoking was perceived as vulgar by, “the arbiter of high fashion in high society in London, Tunbridge Wells and Bath, George Brummell. Beau Brummell, succeeded in making it unacceptable for nearly 80 years. Then in the 1860’s smoking reemerged, influenced by royalty and the aristocracy.”

Now, nearly a century and a half later, smoking is once again under siege, for reasons unbeknownst to the earlier pretenders of fashion and spiritualistic tradition. Scientific advances, health research and taxations are culminating to produce mixed signals regarding the use of tobacco products. Continue reading Up in Smoke: A Cigarette-Lover Supports the Maryland Smoking Ban