Respiration: Taking a Deep Breath

Welcome to our blog on respiration. We hope to introduce you to a number of current issues in the world that influence respiration so you can see the importance of our topic. Please take some time to review 3 of the articles posted and respond to them in the following 3 ways.

1. What is the objective of the author? What is the main point of the article?
2. What is your opinion? This may be how you felt about the article when you read it. Could you relate to the article? How do you think the article will change what you do? Do you think the article would change other people's views?

3. How does this article connect with our study of the respiratory system?
   

Please respond to 3 of the 5 blog articles. You will receive 1 mark for presenting the author's perspective, 1 mark for giving a thoughtful opinion on the topic and 1 mark for relating the article back to our studies of respiration.

You will receive an additional mark for responding thoughtfully to 2 or more of your classmates' responses for a total of 10 marks.

Cheating Death???

Scientists develop artificial heart that beats like the real thing.

An artificial heart that beats almost exactly like the real thing is to be implanted in patients within three years in a trial that may offer hope to heart disease sufferers unable to receive a transplant.

The device, which uses electronic sensors to regulate the heart rate and blood flow, was developed by Alain Carpentier, France's leading cardiac surgeon, and engineers from the group that makes Airbus aircraft. Presented yesterday, it was described by its inventors as the closest thing yet to the human heart. "If you show the graphs to a cardiac surgeon, he will say it's a human heart," Professor Carpentier said. "But no, it's not a human heart, it's the prosthesis."

He said that he had spent two decades on the project because "I found it intolerable to see young people - aged 40, 45 or 50 - dying of massive heart attacks without having a prosthesis available to replace their hearts".

The French announcement is the latest in a race by doctors to produce a device that could be fitted into the 20,000 patients a year worldwide who are unable to receive a life-saving heart transplant because of a shortage of donors.

Two artificial hearts have been invented in the US, the Jarvik 7 and the AbioCor, but both have drawbacks, according to Professor Carpentier's team: the first has wires that protrude through the skin, and the second can produce blood clots that can lead to strokes, they said.

Carmat, the company founded by Professor Carpentier and EADS, Europe's aerospace and defence giant, says that it is close to overcoming these hurdles. Sensors in the artificial heart will automatically regulate the heart beat, detecting the body's needs: increasing the rhythm when patients are walking, for instance, and slowing it when they are resting.

"If you get up in the middle of the night to go to the loo, you need the artificial heart to know immediately or you'll collapse on the floor," said Philippe Pouletty, an immunologist whose private equity firm, Truffle Capital, has invested €5 million (£4 million) in the project.

Professor Carpentier said that he had reduced the risk of clots by creating the heart with a "pseudo-skin" of biosynthetic, microporous materials. "This has been the essential problem until now," he said.

Two options are under study for the power supply, which remains a significant hurdle. One involves implanting a titanium receiver in the skull that would channel energy sent through the skin - without piercing it - from a battery outside the body to the heart. The second would work by a similar method: getting electricity through the skin between two transformers, one inside and one outside the body. Carmat says the battery could last for between 5 and 16 hours, after which it would have to be recharged to prevent the artificial heart stopping.

The artificial heart has been tested successfully on calves and sheep, according to Professor Carpentier, and will be implanted in patients with terminal heart failure for a clinical trial in two or three years' time. If that is successful - and if Carmat can find about €100 million in funding - the French artificial heart will be available as an alternative to transplant in 2013.

"These are tremendous advances," said Leslie Hamilton, consultant cardiac surgeon at Freeman Hospital in Newcastle upon Tyne. "Transplantation is limited to a fixed number of patients. But for artificial hearts, the sky's the limit." He added that the French device needed to undergo trials before it could be used in hospitals, which may take many years.

Smart heart

As the artificial heart's motors compress the left chamber and open the right one, oxygen-rich blood from the left chamber is pumped out into the body and blood lacking in oxygen fills the right chamber.

The left chamber is then opened while the right chamber is compressed, pumping the deoxygenated blood from the right chamber back to the lungs and drawing a fresh supply of oxygen-rich blood from the lungs into the left chamber.

Unlike previous artificial hearts, this one detects the body's activity level (and therefore how much oxygen it requires) and changes its pace accordingly.

Air Pollution and Asthma

According to the Government of Canada, air pollution prematurely kills an estimated 5,900 Canadians each year. Recent studies show that close to eight per cent of all non-traumatic mortality in Canadian cities is attributable to air pollution.

Dangerous one-two punch

Burning fossil fuels is the main cause of both air pollution and climate change, and health experts have concluded that climate change will actually make air pollution an even greater health threat - unless fossil fuel emissions are drastically reduced.

Studies also show that warmer temperatures drive up pollen counts, which worsen symptoms of allergy sufferers. Researchers have found that increased levels of carbon dioxide not only cause more weeds to grow but also encourage each individual weed to release more pollen.

Ground level ozone

Ground level ozone is the nasty cousin of stratospheric ozone. Whereas stratospheric ozone (the "ozone layer") protects plants and animals from ultraviolet radiation, ground level ozone is a primary ingredient of smog. Higher temperatures increase ground level ozone production - thus climate change will intensify urban smog.

Ozone is toxic at low concentrations and deadly at high concentrations. It bursts cell membranes in the lungs, and as cellular fluids build up, breathing becomes more rapid, shallow and painful. The elderly and children are especially vulnerable, and ozone can lead to lifelong damage as lungs stiffen and scar. Ozone also sensitizes the airways to irritants and other allergens. Elevated ozone levels mean more hospital admissions for asthma, respiratory disease and acute respiratory disorders.

Toxic Brew

Air pollution from burning fossil fuels produces many other compounds that hurt our health: carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, sulphur dioxide, volatile organic compounds, and small airborne particulates. They can cause impaired lung function, shortness of breath, wheezing, asthma attacks and premature death.

Air pollution is also the primary culprit behind rising levels of asthma. A recently published 10-year study of Southern California communities showed that children living in smoggy areas were three to four times more likely to develop asthma than those living in cleaner areas.

In Canada, rates of childhood asthma have risen dramatically. From 1978 to 1995, the percentage of children with asthma increased from 2.5 per cent to 11.2 per cent of children.

By reducing our use of coal, oil and natural gas, we can save thousands of lives and lessen the threat to human health of both climate change and air pollution.

More information:

Taking our Breath Away: The Health Effects of Air Pollution and Climate Change

Climate Change and Health: Research Report

Marketing a Deadly Habit

Richard Paquette has a cigarette while walking past the Supreme Court of Canada in Ottawa on Thursday on Sept. 29, 2005, following the SCOC unanimous decision to clear the way for the B.C. government to sue cigarette companies for the cost of treating smoking-related illness. Cigarette companies had another day in Supreme Court on Monday, Feb. 19, arguing that the Tobacco Act violates their constitutional rights. (Tom Hanson/Canadian Press)

Smoking ads

Advertising ban survives court challenge

Right from the beginning, the federal government's efforts to slap restrictions on the promotion and sale of tobacco products have met with stiff resistance.

The House of Commons passed the Tobacco Act in April 1997. The legislation replaced the Tobacco Sales to Young Persons Act and the Tobacco Products Control Act. It provided standards for tobacco products, regulated access to tobacco, set the rules for labelling and promotion of tobacco products, and put in place rules for enforcing tobacco laws.

The Act put in place a process that by October 2003 prevented tobacco companies from sponsoring events. Tennis tournaments and car races could no longer be associated with a company that marketed cigarettes.

It did not ban all tobacco advertising. The legislation allows brand advertising in places where young people are prohibited from entering. It also allows advertising in some publications and through direct mail.

But some provinces have gone further than the federal legislation. For instance, in Quebec, tobacco companies are prohibited from advertising in bars. And in some provinces, cigarettes cannot be openly displayed in stores.

The Act also required larger graphic warning labels on packages of cigarettes. Instead of taking up a third of the size of a pack, the labels would now occupy half the area of the fronts and backs of cigarette packs.

The three major tobacco companies — Imperial Tobacco Canada Ltd., Rothmans, Benson & Hedges Inc. and JTI-Macdonald Corp. — were in court almost immediately, arguing the legislation violated their constitutional rights. Increasing the size of warning labels was an infringement of the tobacco companies' right to free speech, they argued.

The companies also argued that they should be allowed some freedom to advertise to adult smokers, since they do sell a legal product. They conceded that prohibitions against "lifestyle advertising" and against advertising aimed at youth are acceptable limits on their freedom of expression.

Tobacco hasn't fared that well in its legal challenges of the Tobacco Act. But on Aug. 22, 2005, the Quebec Court of Appeal ruled that it is unfair to forbid tobacco companies from exhibiting their company names when they sponsor an event. However, the companies are still not able to sponsor an event using a brand name.

On Feb. 19, 2007, the tobacco companies went to the Supreme Court of Canada in their last bid to persuade the legal system to overturn the federal legislation. The federal government, the attorneys general of New Brunswick, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia and the Canadian Cancer Society argued in favour of upholding the legislation.

On the other side of the courtroom is the federal government. Acting as interveners are the attorneys general of New Brunswick, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia as well as the Canadian Cancer Society.

"On advertising, our legislation has fallen behind worldwide trends," he told CBC News Online. "The World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control requires signatories to ban all tobacco advertising. Canada has signed on to that treaty."

The WHO convention is the first global health treaty negotiated under the auspices of the World Health Organization. It's an attempt to regulate tobacco internationally and was developed to counter the globalization of the tobacco industry.

Under the FCTC, countries are obliged to:

• Work towards the elimination of illicit trade in tobacco products.
  
• Ban tobacco sales to and by minors.
  
  
• Help tobacco farmers diversify and find other uses for their land.
  

As well, the treaty specifies that signatories are required to ban "all tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship within five years of the WHO FCTC's entry into force for that Party."


In cases where total bans are unconstitutional, signatories are required to apply as many restrictions as their constitutions allow.

Canada signed the treaty on July 15, 2003. It entered into force on Feb. 27, 2005, 90 days after the 40th country to sign on ratified it.

Cunningham notes that the tobacco companies have refrained from advertising while this case worked its way through the courts. But he is concerned that no matter what the courts rule, the tobacco companies will look for loopholes.

"Tobacco companies are creative marketers," he said.

After the ruling, Simon Potter, a lawyer for Imperial Tobacco, told CBC News that the country does not need a total ban on tobacco advertising.

"Just last week, there was a report of a huge decline in smoking in New York City. They have all kinds of [tobacco] advertising, but smoking rates still fell. I'm not so sure we need an ad ban."

On June 28, 2007, the Supreme Court ruled to uphold the federal legislation. In a unanimous decision, the court ruled the ban is constitutional, not vague and does not restrict free speech as the companies had argued.

But while the legal challenge to Canada's Tobacco Act may be over, the debate will likely go on. The law stands and that means tobacco companies are free to end their self-imposed moratorium on the advertising that the law allows:

• In places where young people are prohibited from entering.
• In certain adult publications.
• Through direct mail.
  

The law does not specifically address advertising on the internet, a medium where age restrictions are a little tougher to enforce.

Blood Doping in Sports - Athletes Cheating

On the last day of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, three cross-country skiers were booted out of the Games for blood doping.

Two of the skiers lost their medals, the other was disqualified from the games. Blood doping by athletes is cheating - just like using steroids or bribing a judge.

How Does Blood Doping Work?

Blood doping is a method of increasing the number of red blood cells in the body which in turn carry more oxygen to the muscles. It is most often used by athletes who compete in high endurance races like cycling or cross-country skiing. In the past, a liter of blood would be removed from an athlete's system and then frozen and stored for several weeks. A day or two before a big rac the stored blood would be re-injected into the athlete's system - creating extra red blood cells. These extra red blood cells would carry more oxgen to the muscles - giving the athlete an advantage over the other racers who don't use blood doping.

Blood Doping

Athletes don't re-inject blood very much anymore. Instead, cheating athletes will inject genetically engineered drugs which cause the body to create extra red blood cells. The most common type of blood doping chemical used is called EPO - which is used to treat patients who have kidney disease. The one supposedly used by those scamming skiers in Salt Lake City is called darbepoetin, which is also used to treat kidney disease.

What's So Bad About Blood Doping?

Blood doping is cheating and has several unhealthy side effects. Injecting blood doping chemicals can cause kidney damage, jaundice (the skin, eyes and body fluids turn yellow) and blood clots. Re-injecting blood from an athlete's own body can cause blood infections and heart problems.

How Are Blood Dopers Busted?

Athletes who use blood doping to increase their performance will have a higher red blood cell density. This can be detected by testing the athlete's levels of hemoglobin (protein which causes blood to be the red color we see.) EPO and other blood doping drugs can be detected in an athlete's system by urine tests. It's believed there are some blood doping drugs out there that drug testers don't know about which some athletes are using.

Related Stories:

Steroids

Making Magic Muscles

Gene Doping

http://www.kidzworld.com/article/1832-blood-doping-in-sports-athletes-cheating

Changing the Face of Cigarettes

Graphic Health Warnings

Tobacco product packaging also displays health information messages on diseases caused by tobacco use or tips on quitting smoking which are printed on the inside slider or leaflet. The regulations that allowed for these images became law in June 2000, making Canada the first country in the world to implement such strong labelling and reporting measures.

Studies have shown that tobacco can be harder to quit than heroin or cocaine. The facts behind this label

Your children are twice as likely to smoke if you do. Half of all premature deaths among life-long smokers result from tobacco use.

Tobacco use during pregnancy reduces the growth of babies during pregnancy. These smaller babies may not catch up in growth after birth, and the risks of infant illness, disability, and death are increased. The facts behind this label

Second-hand smoke contains carbon monoxide, ammonia, formaldehyde, benzo[a]pyrene and nitrosamines. These chemicals can harm your children. The facts behind this label

Tobacco use during pregnancy increases the risk of preterm birth. Babies born preterm are at an increased risk of infant death, illness and disability. The facts behind this label

Tobacco use causes crippling, often fatal lung diseases such as emphysema. The facts behind this label