This week's compendium

Here’s this week’s compendium. This week…

1. 20-27 February to be exact, is DonateLife Week [1a] (nee Australian Organ Donor Awareness Week). I’m still mulling over whether to be a donor [1b].

2. Michael Danby, Federal MP for Melbourne Ports (which includes Albert Park) spoke in parliament against the Grand Prix [2]. Good on you, Michael.

3. I read in treehugger that in the US solar-powered homes sell twice as quickly at a higher price than equivalent grid-powered homes [3]. Here’s hoping it’s so here too.

4. JAMA reported that mobile phone use changes the metabolism in the part of the brain closest to the phone’s antenna [4]. The clinical significance of this remains unclear.

5. further to my 24 January post [5a] the government said the axing of limited practice rights for retired doctors was ‘to protect public health and safety’ [5b]. Let’s see the evidence, then, policy czars.

6. 31 of the 33 Chilean miners rescued from a collapsed mine last October landed in Israel on Wednesday for a week-long visit [6]. I wish them an enjoyable time.

7. the Internal Medicine Journal published Tasmanian research showing knee arthritis severity’s closely correlated with the severity of x-ray changes, and independently with pain severity [7]. Odd that this had never been shown before.

8. darling Kate, in her wondrous Foxs Lane blog [8a], introduced me to the ‘sweater curse’ It’s charming how the curse’s Wikipedia entry analyses it in scientific terms [8b].

Finally, I wish you, dear Farmdoc’s Blog readers, a wonderful week.

Will I or won't I - donate my organs?

I’m a secular Jew. To me that means I’m a non believer but I still identify with Jewish history and culture, however I choose which customs I observe and which I don’t. In other words, I draw a line. Why I’ve drawn my line where I have, I can’t explain. For example I don’t keep kosher, i.e. I mix meat and dairy foods at the same meal off the same plate; but I don’t eat forbidden food including pig, shellfish and rabbit. And so to the issue of organ donation by Jews. It’s a complicated and controversial issue [1]. But, it seems, attitudes are becoming more liberal as time goes on [2, 3]. And practices, of course, follow attitudes. Until now I haven’t signed up to become an organ donor [4]. It’s something I’m thinking about, though. But so far I’ve not made up my mind one way or the other. Despite DonateLife Week (formerly Australian Organ Donor Awareness Week) this year not being until 20-27 February [5], yesterday it was announced that Tasmanians are donating their organs at the highest rate of any State: in 2010, 20 actual donors per million population compared with the national figure of 14 [6]. That surprised me. I’d thought that because on average Tasmanians aren’t as well educated as mainlanders, they wouldn’t take to an altruistic activity like organ donation. But perhaps less educated people can see organ donation’s advantages in simpler and thus clearer terms. Food for thought, eh. Ho hum.