New Malaria Vaccine?

Today's post will be reasonably short, and I fear for the next few weeks at least, the majority of my posts will be short, due to the unavoidable fact that is I have my AS exams in less than 2 weeks, so my time is solely occupied by revising for them. I apologise in advance therefore if there are a lack of posts in the weeks to come.

However, whilst revising transmission of different diseases in AS Biology, I was fascinated by malaria, the severity of the disease and how prevalent it is in the world. One thing that struck me the most about this disease was that my textbook did not mention anything of a vaccination, so I took it upon myself to research whether or not there was one, and if not will there be one soon. As my gut instinct told me, the internet confirmed there is no vaccination as of yet for malaria, and the ways of prevention are by tablets and of course a mosquito net (along with others). Despite knowing these facts already (particularly as I myself have taken tablets to prevent malaria when I travelled to India), I was surprised and also inspired by reading on BBC news that a new malaria vaccine could be available in months!

The article stated that this vaccine was going through its final clinical trial, and despite not being hugely effective on the young, I believe this is a huge step in the possible eradication of such a devastating disease. If a vaccine were found for malaria, no doubt would this lead to a gateway for the possibility of new cures to be found, and undoubtedly it would be a huge triumph for mankind.

I will leave a link to the BBC article below as I highly recommend reading it.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-32446287

As a result of reading this article it reminded me one of the reasons why I want to go into medicine so badly, to help cure or relieve the symptoms of someone who is in pain, and using your own knowledge to help people for the better is undoubtably one of the greatest satisfactions and most rewarding jobs you can do.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

When you think of movies that are related to medicine it cannot be denied that One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is definitely one of the great classics, not only in medicine but of all time. It is, for me, a member of my top 10 movies.

The reason why I class this movie as a classic for movies related to medicine is because One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest deals with themes such as mental illness, living in a mental institution, and how to treat patients (or how not to treat patients in Nurse Ratched's case). The movie not only tackles these themes, but in my opinion it tackles them perfectly, and to me the movie depicts a very realistic idea of living with a mental illness in such institutions during the late 1950's and early 1960's.

The movie itself to me was eye opening to the transformation of views on mental illness, it shows the change in the connotations with mental illness through the past decades, and how far as a society we have progressed, in both our views on those who are mentally ill and how we treat them. Whilst yes it cannot be denied we still have a long way to go, I think it can be universally agreed that the fact frontal lobotomy has become a disparaged procedure shows we have come a long way and are heading in the right direction. However, to me particularly the movie also highlights the fine line between what we class as sane or insane, it made me question whether Nurse Ratched was insane or not, and if I am being honest, how someone sane could treat patients in the cruel, dictatorial way she did.

As good as it gets

I find it quite hard to write about scientific and medical advancements that are occurring in the news at the moment, purely for the fact that I feel such advancements are already highly documented on other websites, newspapers etc and so I feel that in order to maintain a degree of individuality and uniqueness to this blog, posting about such advancements can be hard and can become slightly boring.

Of course, I will continue to do so with particular advancements that have resonated with me hugely, but I have decided that to create a blog that is more relatable I will post about books, TV documentaries, and even movies that are related to medicine. I feel as an aspiring medical student these are the posts I would love to read, as to me they are not as common upon the internet. I always love reading reviews and discovering new ways to expand my knowledge related to medicine that is not typically 'within the classroom'. This idea has also come to me due to the fact that my post of my review and thoughts on The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat is to date my most popular post, and so it would seem this type of post is most interesting and helpful to others.

Recently I watched As Good as it Gets, and whilst it is predominately a 'romcom' what struck me in particular was the way that the main character had a severe case of OCD.