Word: penicillin
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...life expectancy at birth, as an African American girl, was less than 40. But she lived in the age of invention, of penicillin, vaccines, x-rays, cat scans, lived in the century when life expectancy doubled. She was hardly ever sick, her grandchildren said, until a stroke two years ago left her unable to tell her stories anymore...
...take for granted is another adjustment. Even in the Centers of Excellence, which represent the higher end of medical care available in Africa, supply chains aren't always reliable. "There are still many challenges here with labs and medicine - not ARVS but things like iron supplements or antibiotics like penicillin that are not consistently available," Megan Harkless e-mailed last week from Botswana. "There is still stigma and fear, and families that are financially very limited with no [electrical] power and therefore no refrigerator. Some patients have to travel for several hours or even an full day to come...
...Little Women and my thoroughly modern daughters have reminded me of how miraculous the antibiotic era has been. The advent of penicillin was hailed as miraculous and indeed it was. Mickey Mantle would have had his leg and future baseball career amputated if not for penicillin. Thousands of wounded soldiers would not have returned home from World War II. But the battlefields around us have changed. We have quietly entered a new era of antibiotic resistance, and the rules of germ warfare are changing as fast as military tactics. The next generation of patients, scientists, and drug therapy must...
...moral cost: the technical term is "disinhibition, which the CDC defines as "an increase in unsafe behaviors in response to perceptions of safety caused by introduction of a preventive or therapeutic intervention." (Once upon a time the concern was raised about introducing anesthesia during childbirth, or using penicillin to treat syphilis, as spurring more sexual activity; more recently, the argument is made about needle exchange and condom distribution...
...sleeping next to him and often awoke during the night, screaming for his mother to " kill it! " No amount of bribes had worked, and his lack of sleeping was affecting his days in kindergarten. He refused to go outside for recess and was withdrawn from his peers. After prescribing penicillin for the strep and ordering a blood test on the jaundiced infant, I called the appropriately anxious mom back...