Movie Theater Ad

Picture this: You score a date with someone you have been eying for a long time, and you tell yourself if you play your cards right you might have a late night tonight. Everything is going smooth so far and you end up at the movies. You are sitting down in the theater, the lights go dim, the audience grows silent, and the mood is just right. You look at the screen and...





This lovely PSA about chlamydia plays and you happen to make some silly mistake (comment or action) to make your partner hesitate and ruin the rest of your night. Bummer!

I believe this little PSA video is highly effective in capturing the attention of its audience, beings that in the movie theater everyone tends to focus on the big, white screen, especially when the lights are dimmed. The lovely analogy about being in the dark is clever in that chlamydia doesn't necessarily show symptoms for everyone infected by it. A movie theater PSA is definately a step in the right direction in that it is able to target young lovers in the movie theater and perhaps scare them a little bit, or just give them a little wake up call on the dangers of chlamydia. I believe if clever ad placements, such as this one, about STI's were done more often, many people will pay attention and take home its message.

Note: The video shown above can be found here (Just right click link, and choose Save Link As)

Tuskegee Apology

The Tuskegee Syphilis Study in Macon County, Alabama is a pretty low point when it comes to breaking the rules of the Nuremberg code. Not only was it unethical in that the participants did not consent to the study and underwent excruciating forms of "free" treatment like a spinal tap when there penicillin around to cure syphilis, but the fact that all parties conducting the study did not think they were doing anything wrong when the study finally was closed in 1972.

I am happy that President Clinton was able to acknowledge that there was wrongdoing and racism in conducting this study and offered an apology on behalf of the federal government, but it is truly sad that such an apology took as long as it did after the study was over. The blindness of the American people of this time to such racism says a lot about the generations past, and now it is easily understandable why people from around the world hate the United States, which I believe to be the greatest country on Earth. I know most of the racism and hatred of other people in the world today is passed down from adults that people look up to such as parents and grandparents. I, myself, have firsthand knowledge of this fact and feel that I have looked through the deceit and lies put upon me as a child and am able to judge people on who they really are, and not by their skin color, religion, lifestyle or personal beliefs.

The one thing I hope that the Clinton apology will change is the trust in medical research studies. It is completely understandable how the Tuskegee study has affected the African American involvement in medical research studies and organ donations, but I really do hope that trust can be established with the medical community once more so that Americans as a whole can wage war against foes such as cancer, diseases, and harmful infections.

The Problem With Drug Resistance

Antibiotic resistance is a continuously evolving problem in modern medicine. One such example I will focus on is that of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, or MDR TB. Tuberculosis back in the early 1900's, according to CDC, was the leading cause of death among US citizens. But with the invent and usage of effective antibiotics (streptomycin in the 1940s, isoniazid in the 1950s, and rifampicin in the 60s) tuberculosis was becoming less and less of a threat to human lives, and thus people stopped their treatment of TB when they felt better, and TB, as people knew it, was all but a thing of the past.

Fast forward to present day and we find ourselves in a situation with TB reemerging and some of these TB cases becoming unaffected by the viable antibiotics of the past, such as rifampicin and isoniazid. The reason for this resistance is because people afflicted by TB in the past cut short their treatment, due to feeling better, causing the resistant subset of TB flora, thought to be dead, to survive within the lungs in a latent state. Later on in life, during the onset of an immune compromising disease, the bacteria become active and flourish once more and the highly infectious MDR TB is free to infect those unfortunately nearby.

I believe we as a people need to be concerned about this because drug resistance in today's modern medicine poses a serious health threat to humans. However, I am pretty certain most people have the mindset that they need not worry about a reemerging disease such as TB, until the unfortunate day arrives when a drug resistant disease, whether it be MRSA, MDR TB, or any other disease caused by drug-resistant bacteria, happens to infect them or a loved one.

I believe that reemerging drug-resistant pathogens in general has affected the way that many patients are being treated these days, and not necessarily those afflicted by MDR TB. Although using a directly observed treatment is obviously the best solution for making sure people complete their antibiotic treatment in its entirety, it is not the most cost effective. I believe if more people were well educated about the rise of drug resistant diseases, they will be more inclined to complete their treatment leading to the end of MDR TB's reign on people.

"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change." -Charles Darwin