Swiss clinic Dignitis and the issue of assisted suicide have been in the British media spotlight lately, mainly due to a debate that is taking placing before the  House of Lords.

This debate revolves around an old law and a new case. The old law, the 1961 Suicide Act bans assisted suicide in Britain and criminalises anyone who aids, abets, counsels or procures someone else’s suicide.

The new case -  a 46-year-old woman with progressive multiple sclerosis who wants to travel abroad to die and wants to ensure her husband Omar Puente won’t be  prosecuted if he helps her travel.

The law as it stands can allow for the prosecution of  relatives and friends who travel with someone planning to undertake assisted dying overseas. Granted, government law officers readily admit that those who goes abroad for this purpose are highly unlikely to face prosecution.

But law is law. And it looks as though this one is about to be changed.

Further reading…

To mark Parkinson’s Awareness Week (April 20-26th) in the United Kingdom (England, Wales, and Scotland)  the Parkinson’s Disease Society has launched a nationwide appeal to get people to pledge to donate their brains for Parkinson’s research.

Wanted: A Few Good Brains

Seems that they are running a little low on this organ and without it, are unable to pursue necessary research to help advance Parkinson’s Disease treatments and maybe even find a cure.

But getting people to donate their brains isn’t as easy as getting them to donate other organs. A survey recently commissioned by the Parkinson’s Disease Society has shown that while over 60% are comfortable with donating a heart or a kidney, only 7% are comfortable with donating a brain.

It’s hoped that this brain donation appeal will change that, by bringing out into the open what happens to the donated brains.

Take a trip to the Parkinson’s Brain Bank facility with Jane Asher, actress and president of the London-based Parkinson’s Disease Society, and see what they do…

(image from sxc.hu)

Today, I was inspired and moved beyond words.

Flicking on the television this morning, I was captivated by this news piece…

Watch Susan’s full performance on Britain’s Got Talent here.

Image details: Satin-Lined Gray Coffin served by picapp.com

The Japanese - an efficient, healthful group of people. People rooted in culture. People who cherish their elders. People who keel over from being overworked.

Say what?

Yes, it’s true. While America is sometimes looked at as slovenly and over-privileged, our Japanese pals are working so hard, they’re launching themselves into the grave. This has become such an epidemic, in fact, that it even has a name: karoshi.

For example, there was a poor fellow, a 45-year-old chief engineer for Toyota, who worked an additional 114 hours of overtime per month (overtime!). That’s equivalent to about 2.85 weeks a month. Can you even imagine?

Not surprisingly, the man died of heart failure, and now the Japanese government will need to uphold a law that gives money to the widow and children of this man, since we worked himself into an early karoshi for the good of his company. Amazing.

The Japanese government also has a national karoshi hotline, and a karoshi self-help book.

So, the lesson to be learned here? While a strong work ethic is admirable indeed, working yourself into an early karoshi is not. As with everything in life, let there be balance.

Source

Special thanks to my friends at the American Cancer Society for this head’s-up. Be sure to give them a visit.

Most of us use the toilet, well, to put it delicately, to relieve the body of no longer needed products.

But for two Belgian beer fans, that’s simply not enough. Seems that they think you should be able to relieve yourself and shot aliens or slalom down ski slopes at the same time.

To that end, they designed and have recently released the ‘Place to Pee’ video game. It’s set up in a booth and caters for two users at a time. Gamers (ie pee-ers) score by aiming and hitting sensors positioned on either side of the urinal.

And ladies, if you think that it’s just a ‘man thing’, think again. Seems that they have created a paper cone allows women to play too. Lucky us!

Personally, I think these guys have more than one beer too many!!!

(source - Reuters)

You’ve heard it time and again. Somebody tells you that you look just like so and so, and you eek out the standard reply: “Well, they say everyone has a twin.”

Well, if you’re a seemingly normal 9-year-old girl in central Greece, you not only have a twin, but you carry her (or him) around in your stomach.

Yes, this is true. The girl, who was suffering from stomach pains and a swollen belly, went to the hospital where doctors surgically removed a growth that was found to be the girl’s embryonic twin. A formed fetus, it was two inches long and had a head, hair and eyes - but no brain or umbilical cord.

The girl has since made a full recovery, but the staggering thing is that this phenomenon has happened before. While it certainly isn’t considered common, instances where one of a set of twins absorbs the other in the womb (called fetus in fetu) happens in about one in 500,000 live births.

Once again, I am in awe of the human body and mysterious behavior of Mother Nature. You?

Source: msnbc.com

More reading on fetus in fetu
Even stranger reading on fetus in fetu

Wim Hof, aka ‘The Ice Man’, runs barefoot in the snow and is somehow able to survive and even thrive in temperatures that would put the average person into a hypothermic coma.

Scientists are mystified by this 48 year old Dutchman who seems to be immune to frostbite and hypothermia. So is the Dutchman. Unable to explain it, Wim Hof has instead decided to push the boundaries to see how far (into the cold) he can go. So far, he has run a half-marathon near the Arctic Circle in his bare feet, dove under the ice at the North Pole wearing only a swimsuit, and become a Guiness World Record holder for swimming 80 meters under the ice (the longest time yet). He then climbed Mt Everest in shorts. Still the cold didn’t touch him.

The scientists appear stumped. Given that Hof is in good physical health, the only answer seems to be that something in the wiring in the brain allows him to survive the extreme cold.

Meanwhile, Hof continues to break Guiness World Records - his latest being submerged up to his neck in a 5-foot tall plexiglass container filled with ice, wearing only a swimsuit, for an hour and 12 minutes.

One can only imagine what he’ll try next.

(source)

Terry Pratchett, bestselling author of the Discworld novels, was diagnosed with a rare form of early onset Alzheimer’s disease last year.

When he announced his condition in December, he called it ‘an embuggerance’.

Now he has a whole lot more to say. At the recent Annual Network Conference of the Alzheimer’s Research Trust in England, Terry talked about how it felt to discover he had Alzheimer’s disease and the extreme measure he would go to in order to get cured…

“Part of me lives in a world of new age remedies and science, and some of the science is a little like vodoo, but science was never an exact science, and personally I’d eat the arse out of a dead mole if it offered a fighting chance.”

He also discussed at length the lack of funding for Alzheimer’s research…

“I am, along with many others, scrabbling to stay ahead long enough to be there when the Cure comes along. Say it will be soon - there’s nearly as many of us as there are cancer sufferers, and it looks as if the number of people with dementia will double within a generation. In most cases, alongside the sufferer you will find a spouse suffering as much. It is a shock to find out that funding for Alzheimer’s research is just 3% of that to find cancer cures.”

Terry then pledged $1 million to the Alzheimer’s Research Trust.

(source)

I mentioned the Improv Everywhere last month, highlighting their Frozen Grand Central Station mission.

Well, it turns out this concept of becoming ‘frozen in time’ is catching on. People from all over the world have been inspired to conduct their own frozen missions.

Check these out…

Paris

London

And if that’s not enough for you, there are over 30 more frozen cities missions to check out.

Seems like everyone really does want to ‘go slow.’

And given the fact that most of us aren’t getting enough sleep, slowing down is probably not such a bad idea.

Meet Buster Martin.

He is a man on the move.

Last year he was in the British band, The Zimmers, who made their way up the charts with a remake of the old Pete Townsend song ‘My Generation’. Nothing unique there, except that the band was made up of a group of pensioners with a combined age of over 3000 years. The youngest was 64. The oldest was 99. And they were great.

Just in case you missed it….

Well, it seems that Buster has moved on to bigger and better things. He signed on as an ‘agony uncle’ for men’s magazine FHM, offering guidance to a younger generation.

And he is running marathons. Just last week he ran a half marathon in 5 hours and 13 minutes. Now he has his sights set on the 26 kilometer London Marathon.

At a 101, he hopes the be the world’s oldest competitive runner.

This is one man who obviously doesn’t believe that age should hold you back.

Just goes to show what exercising the brain and the body will do.

Go Buster! We are keeping our fingers crossed for you.

You can watch a video about Buster’s marathon efforts here.