Recent TED Talk by Marc Kosca on the health concerns associated with syringe re-use and his non-profit SafePoint (posted October 2009). The comments in response to Kosca’s talk are particularly interesting.
For people not familiar with TED talks, they are a series of talks posted on the internet about a range of topics. They are freely available to everyone with internet access, and are supported by TED, a non-profit organization focused on open access information.
From the site:
TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with the annual TED Conference in Long Beach, California, and the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford UK, TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Program, the new TEDx community program, this year’s TEDIndia Conference and the annual TED Prize.
There are a number of TED talks on health, poverty, as well as a number of other topics. Definitely worth checking out.
I watched a video clip about Alan Russel that discussed the idea of regenerating our bodies. Its really interesting to think about how far we’ve come with research and yet we’ve still maintained the “fountain of youth” ideal. Our society does not want to age or live with physical impairment. Innovations in limb regeneration can help soldiers from Iraq “grow” back their limbs instead of relying on a prosthetic device. I also found Russel’s explanation of embryonic regeneration fascinating. I did not realize that the body has the capacity to regrow body parts while in utero, and that a child can regrow their finger tip if they lose it in an accident before the age of 6 months! Russel also explains that body regeneration in older adults can be achieved through re-establishing the “communication” that we have with the body’s earlier restorative functions…I am interested to see where this new research takes healing, especially as someone interested in rehabilitation science.