Prompt #2 Defining Ethics

Hello, today I will be talking about the American Dental Association code of ethics  a specific topic that I find quite interesting. The code of ethics states many important rules that each practice should abide by. For a quick summary, the American Dental Association code of ethics contains five sections that are broken into multiple sub-categories. The five sections are: Patient Autonomy, Nonmaleficence, Beneficence, Justice, and Veracity. Each of these categories are extremely important to the way a dental office is run, how patients are treated, and how privacy of the patients’ documents is protected.  The section I find the most interesting and important is Sections one: Patient Autonomy.

Patient Autonomy may be the most basic but the most important. It states that “The dentist has a duty to respect the patient’s rights to self-determination and confidentiality” (ada.org). This simply means that if I were to go to the dentist  and they determine that I needed all of my teeth pulled they cannot just start pulling teeth without my permission.  Your dentist only has the right to suggest treatments and procedures that may benefit you as a patient but they cannot perform and treatment or procedure without your permission. Given how pervasive the fear of going to the dentist is already, many people, including myself, would not go to the dentist due to fear of total oral destruction and the thousands of dollars that would be spent where if not for this rule.  

Section one further explains that “Dentists are obliged to safeguard the confidentiality of patient records” (ada.org). This is another crucial rule that keeps your files safe and confidential between  you and your dentist. This is very important - imagine if your boss saw your dental records and was aware of all the procedures you have had to your. He or she could form an opinion on you, your dental habits and even your overall health. Assuming that your boss is not a dentist this can be very dangerous, especially given the high premiums on health insurance you could be labeled a high risk. It could theoretically cost you your job!  This sort of scenarios really strikes home with me since I had a lot of cavities and root canals as a kid because of being on antibiotics for long periods of time due to chronic ear infections. My history certainly does not mean that I have black gums and crooked teeth or that I am otherwise in poor health! Thanks to the ADA code of ethics, my mouth full of metal is a secret shared only by me and my dentist -oops, until now. These codes correspond with my own code of ethics. I do not like someone telling me what to do, I like to make an informed decision and I do not like people in my business. Having the choice to receive a treatment and the privacy of your personal records fall in the category of basic human rights. Prior to writing this blog, I personally never read the ADA code of ethics. I asked several friends and family if they were familiar with it and they all said no. I really don’t think that many people know it exists! Unfortunately many people do not see their dentist as someone as their best interest at heart. In fact many people see the dentist office as a business that is out to to make as much money as possible.    In many ways I think the negative perception of dentists and dentistry is due to fear, but it is real and needs to be addressed in order to have a patient/doctor relationship that is built on mutual trust.  The code of ethics is key in building this trust.  

Ideally, all dental patients would make themselves familiar with the ADA code of conduct, after all it is important to be an educated consumer; especially when it comes to one’s health and well being. Unfortunately, that is just not likely to happen. For that reason  I think it is important that all dentists make their patients aware of the code and how it is followed in their practice. It should also be posted in waiting areas and mentioned to any new patient to the practice. As a dentist it is important to build a trusting relationship with patients in order to alleviate fear of basic dental work.  I feel that giving patients the basic knowledge of how a dental office should be run as well as their rights as a patient and a consumer is a great place to start building this relationship. I know that I will utilize this valuable tool in my practice and use as the base for my patient care.  

So if you are going to the dentist, make sure to pay attention and ask yourself if your dentist is following these basic guidelines for ethical behavior. If you answer is no, perhaps it is time to find a new dentist.     

Thank you and I will see you next week!  

Robert Mora

Bee Deaths and the Effect on Plants

In the past couple of years bee death rates have been increasing at an alarming rate and the effect on plants could be drastic.  Honey bees are the world's best pollinators, their pollinating abilities have been utilized by humans for thousands of years, one third of the food you eat was most likely pollinated by a honey bee at some point.  This use of bees could be coming to a close a lot sooner than we think.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey_bee

Bee deaths can be attributed to the use of certain pesticides, changing environments and habitats, and something called Colony Collapse Disorder.  Normally the annual colony loss is around 10 percent, but recently it has been closer to 30 percent.  Colony Collapse Disorder is strange because a bee keeper will open a hive and the bees seem to just "disappear." Since most bees in the world are domesticated this is extremely alarming to scientists, who don't have a great understanding of why this is taking place.  

The effect on the plant community will be quite large.  The death of bees could lead to the deaths of many plant species that require pollination.  Plants use their flowers and scents to attract pollinators, which is very competitive, and although bees are not the only pollinators, they are the best at the job. If a plant that requires pollination to germinate and produce new seeds doesn't get pollinated, it will not pass on its genes and the species could go extinct.  Plants that do not require pollination, or require little pollination, will then thrive over plants that require more pollination, disrupting the natural balance that is there.  

For the source and more information about bee deaths click here.

Garrett Mulanix

Doctors' Code of Ethics

The code of ethics as stated by the American Medical Association is interesting because it gives a look into the way medical professionals are supposed to practice as well as the structuring and regulation in the medical field. The main parts of the code detail that medical professionals are to practice in a way that they keep the patient informed and do their best to fulfill the patients wishes in terms of treatment. However, doctors must also make difficult decisions about the greater good when it comes to things such as who receives an organ transplant. Something that stood out to me though was the fact that the AMA is self regulatory and is allowed to set its own standards and reprimand doctors that do not meet them. For the most part, I agree with this code of ethics and feel that it is an effective set of rules, but that part about them being self regulated raises some questions.  

I personally feel that we rely so much on modern medicine that a field this important should be at least partially regulated by an outside source. This isn't to say that the medical field has some plot to extract every last penny from our pockets, but some regulation other than that of the field itself could be a failsafe if there was corruption in the field. Overall though, their code is based on doing their job effectively and putting patients and public health first which is hard to disagree with. 

-Alex Wallace

"Code of Medical Ethica," AMA, 24 sept. 2016, www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/physician-resources/medical-ethics/code-medical-ethics.page 

                                                CANCER METABOLOMICS
Hey guys, today I will be talking about the possibilities of a perfect cancer therapy that will not have any negative side effects on the subject involved. After reading from scholarly articles and research papers, I found out that it took Otto Heinrich Warburg a long time before he was able to prove that cancer cells were not as a result of defects in the mitochondria, He found out that proliferating cancer cells take in more sugar than the normal growing cells and instead ferment to produce lactose and very little ATP even in the presence of oxygen gas. This was supported by an experiment where sugar was added to pancreatic cells of both a normal cell and cancer cells. The pancreatic cell was expected not to glow in both cases since they hate sugary environments but for the cancer cells, they did radiate. This has since sparked a debate among scientists over the role of respiration and glycolysis in cells.

(Photo from Scientific Reports)

Despite the irregular pattern these cancer cells and tumor cells have, there are hypotheses which try to prove that cells with possible higher rate of ATP production that instead produce lower yields of ATP can have the advantage of competing vigorously as compared to normal proliferating cells. These tumor cells use the acquired lower yields of ATP to convert sugar to DNA, RNA, lipids, proteins and carbohydrates. This favors the proliferation of new cancer cells. A distinct example scientists use to prove the competitiveness of the cancer cells is when they compare the growth pattern of normal cells and cancer/tumor cells in the presence of the M2 form of enzyme pyruvate kinase which is present in both the normal growing cells and the cancer/tumor cells. When pyruvate kinase is kicked out, it is expected that both cells will stop growing but after the results, it only applies to the normal growing cells. Cancer cells have proven to be flexible and what propagates their activities even in harsh conditions is still intriguing to everyone. 

The Warburg theory is clear that cancer cells will always try to find a way to proliferate. They do not necessarily rely on one enzyme, but more than half of the enzymes in our bodies. In order to identify the best procedure for cancer therapy, Dr. Sophia Lunt in her lab think that potential target for cancer therapy are the enzymes in our bodies. Because cancer cells adapt to their micro-environments, they hope that by adapting antimetabolites that mimic biologically active metabolites will attract the enzymes which will bind with them then they will stop the reactions. This way, normal cells won’t be affected in any way and cancer cells will not have enzymes to propagate their activities. The strategy her lab has at hand is to investigate metabolic alterations in specific types of cancers using cancer models and identifying if there could be any side effects to cancer drugs that target metabolism.

Personally, I think there might be a solution if scientists can use the biological gene matching software created by Christopher Voigt. These may enable them to understand the type of genes they are trying to fight and come up with specific targeted therapies to treat cancer cells.I hope you guys enjoyed this post.



1. Jurica M.S et al. The allosteric regulation of pyruvate kinase by fructose-1,6-bisphosphate, Structure 6, 195-210 (1998)

2.  KHeather R. Christofk et al. The M2 slice isoform of pyruvate kinase is important for cancer metabolism and tumour growth. Nature vol. 452|13 March 2008.

3. Mazurek et al. Pyruvate kinase type M2 and its role in tumour growth and spreading. Semin. Cancer biol. 15, 300-308 (2005)

4. Dombrauckas et al. Structural basis for tumor pyruvate kinase M2 allosteric regulation and catalysis. Biochemistry 44, 9417-9429 (2005).



Expery.

HOW BIOCHEMISTRY AND MOLECULAR BIOLOGY IS CONTRIBUTING TO BIO-ECONOMY.

Hey guys, My name is Expery and as I mentioned in the About us page, I will be talking more about the biochemistry and the molecular biology field. Well I know most of you are familiar with the petroleum based economy that controls almost everything in this world. But as much as it important for our survival, we have to understand that it is very harmful to our health. These type of economy becomes harmful to our health when industries using the petroleum products and chemicals from the petroleum are expelled to the atmosphere.

(Photo by wonderisland)

(Photo by: James Jordan)

                   






Today, I want to give insights on the possibility that we can shift from a petroleum based economy to a bio-economy which is not as harmful as the latter. For us to change our focus to the bio-economy, we definitely need a source of sufficient energy to run big companies and produce agricultural chemicals that would otherwise be produced from refining petroleum. After researching more about this topic both from my classes and scientists' articles, I learnt that plant cell wall can actually produce a sufficient amount of sugar which can be converted through biological processes to produce various products like bio-fuels, bio-medical drugs and even motorcycle tyre. The reason most scientists think that the plant cell wall will be the best source of our sugar is because most part of it is comprised of cellulose and that by converting the cellulose to sugar, we won't be competing with the food production by the plant.  As much as this sounds like a perfect idea, Dr. Curtis Wilkerson and his team of researchers believe that it also has its own drawbacks which are; there is a possibility that the production of the raw materials might/will be limited to protect the rain forest from depletion. Secondly, extracting the sugar from the plant cell wall is currently challenging because the cell walls have very rigid lignin that inhibit the digestibility of the cellulose.

(Photo from: Research gate)

To overcome this specific challenge, Dr. Wilkerson in his lab have identified the enzyme responsible in producing the compound from the corn that will weaken the lignin to enable digestibility of the cellulose. They identified the FMT activity to be pronounced in the transgenic poplar plant and they produced the p-coumarate(PMT) enzyme in the Poplar plant which produced the same compound that will weaken the lignin in the plant cell walls. They have since planted more transgenic poplar plants to generate sufficient amount of the compound and at the same time produce a surplus amount of sugar for the bio-economy.
I am certain that scientists will identify a perfect plant with the genes to produce the PMT enzyme and a plant that will be able to produce a sufficient amount of sugar to drive the bio-economy. Recently, Christopher Voigt, a scientist from MIT created a software that will be used by biologists to determine the perfect gene for whatever they will be interested in.
I have hopes for a better and clean environment that will not be a threat to my health. All of you should hope too because science is soon making our lives easy.
I hope this post helped you understand this research that has been going on for years.

pacific environment, Fossilfuels,http://pacificenvironment.org/energy-fossil-fuels

Expery.

New Pain-Free Technique in Dentistry

Hi, I’m Robert Mora. If you read our About Us page you got to learn a little bit about me and my career interests - I want to pursue a career as a dentist. I know - you are thinking what kind of person am I that I would want to inflict pain in people’s mouths with drills and picks and other instruments of torture known as “dental tools”.  Actually, my interest in dentistry comes from my own uncomfortable experiences “in the chair”. I frequently research new breakthroughs, advancements  and techniques in dentistry. Believe it or not, there are many new discoveries that have made a dentist’s job easier and  the patient experience more satisfying and less stressful. I have created this blog to share some these fascinating discoveries with you.  

                    

                               

(Picture from shelbydentalcare.com)

According to althealthworks.com, scientists have discovered a way to make filling cavities pain free. The technique, called Electrically Accelerated and Enhanced Remineralization (EAER), uses natural elements that can fix decayed teeth without a single incision! (In layman’s terms that means no drilling.) With a quick two-step process you will be in and out of the dentist’s office in a matter of minutes. And instead of coming back with the pesky tooth ache or failed filling, the EAER regenerates your own tooth so you won’t have to go back to the dentist years later for a repair on a tooth that was filled in years ago.

                                (Picture from www.jc-italia.it)

        From reading this article I learned a lot of information that I once didn’t know about cavities, fillings, and the EAER. At first, I thought it was impossible to fix rotting enamel without a lot of drilling and injections. But with this new way of filling  cavities  with the same minerals your teeth are created from, it is an easy  and effective fix. As the article explains, 2.3 billion people EACH year have a tooth cavity (althealthworks.com).  This could save people the pain in their mouth and in their pocket. Once being the sugar obsessed kid who actually had his own gumball machine, EAER could have saved me a lot of pain and numbness. A question I still have is why is the process to begin using the EAER taking so long? Are dentists too used to the typical novacane and drill or are there negative side effects to the procedure?  As we head into 2017 more information will be released about EAER that could be critical in deciding whether if it will be widely implemented. As for now, all we can do is wait until further information appears as to when it will be available and used in general practices.

I hope this post gave you a little information about one of the newest and most exciting techniques you may see in your local Dental office in the next few years. Until next time don’t forget to brush twice daily and never forget, you don’t have to brush all of your teeth, just the ones you want to keep!

Thank you.

-Robert Mora

Prompt #1 Portrayal of Doctors in Media Over the Past Few Decades

Recently I've noticed something interesting about the way the medical field is portrayed in the media. After watching several medical dramas from recent years and older shows I've found that the overall composition of the cast of these shows has changed. Most apparent is the change in the cast of the shows. Older productions cast almost exclusively white men as doctors while newer shows include a much more diverse cast in terms of race and gender. I wondered whether this was just a product of social progress in Hollywood or if this change was a trend mirrored by the real medical field. I found that, based on the 2010 census, the medical field has become much more diverse over the past few decades. Men are still the dominant gender in the medical field, however, the ratio of men to women has shrunk significantly. On the other hand, the majority of doctors are still white but there has been quite a bit of growth in the number doctors that are part of minority groups. Social progress seems to have had a large effect on the composition of the medical field and this is reflected in the way the media portrays them on television.  

Another interesting trend is the way the role of a doctor was played on television and how it is played now. In older shows, the doctors are played as perfect humans with all the answers. The shift to a more flawed doctor that feels more human to the viewer is quite apparent. This is slightly different from the actual trend in doctors because, even though the doctors of today are definitely flawed and most certainly human, the amount of education and expertise that doctors have in the modern day is much greater than that of doctors from several decades ago. This is most likely a product of the way television and media has evolved rather than learning more about how doctors really are as people. I personally enjoy the more recent medical dramas because it is easier to relate to the characters and this is likely the case for most people. It is interesting to look back and see how our perception of the medical field has changed over the years as the field has evolved along with social progress.

-Alex Wallace

"TV Doctors' Portrayal Evolves From Saintly to Human," AMEDnews, 17 Sept. 2016, www.amednews.com/article/20121119/profession/311199949/4/ 

Castillo-Page, Laura. "Diversity in the Physician Workforce," AAMC, members.aamc.org/eweb/upload/Diversity%20in%20the%20Physician%20Workforce%20Facts%20and%20Figures%202010.pdf, 17 Sept. 2016. 

Observing the Plant Biology World

Writing Prompt #5

Have you ever wondered what it is that a group of undergraduate biologists actually do with their time?  Well the wait is over because I have just the news you've been waiting for!
Going into a meeting with the Plant Biology club at Michigan State University, I didn't really have a lot of knowledge of what it'd be all about, I thought it might consist of a big lecture hall with some biology professors speaking at the front and then we'd all leave, but I was wrong.  The group was very small, maybe 10 to 15 students, and everyone was so passionate about the plant world, which hooked me instantly.  We started the meeting by introducing ourselves and naming our favorite species of plant, which dove directly into the next topic for discussion, what kind of plants do we want to make this year?  Every year the Plant Biology club gets involved with many public events, one of which is a food drive made up of all different sorts of foods grown right on campus.  They like to grow exotic plants to catch the eyes of a passerby; last year for example they were selling purple tomatoes, which became quite popular at the event.  The proceeds from this event helps them to fund other events to get the public excited and involved in the plant world, one of which is geared to younger kids specifically.  Going to elementary schools and presenting the kids with tons of cool looking plants is their way getting the youth involved to start a whole new generation of plant loving people.  One plant that always riles up the kids is the Mimosa pudica; a plant that is extremely sensitive to touch, when it is touched, the plant quickly drops it's leave inward toward itself, almost like it is cowering, the link to view this is here.

The Plant Biology club also teams up with different professors and lab instructors who are involved in the biology world outside of school.  Each professor focuses on a different specialty, some focus on sustainability, while others work on manipulation of plant genes, and so on.  With these professors we will do anything from go on camping trips, to observe a forest stand in different forest reserves around Michigan, to working in greenhouses, doing a variety of tests and experiments to try new growing methods.  Last year for example they grew Pineapple from just having a leaf.  For me personally, getting involved with these professors through this club will be extremely beneficial to my career as a biologist and my goal to focus on sustainability.  I hope this post helped you get a better idea of what an undergraduate plant biology student does when involved through the Plant Biology club at Michigan State University.

-Garrett Mulanix

What is a Periodontist? How is that field related to microbiology?

Hi! I'm Jarrett. I'm quite sure you have learned a few interesting facts about me in our about us page. Well as it states in my section of the "about us" page, I am a Microbiology major with a

Pre-Dental tract. I am going to become a Periodontist in the near future; but, I am working on research right now in order to achieve a better understanding of what a Periodontist is. I am also researching how the study of periodontics is related to microbiology.

                                           (Here is a picture of a periodontist.)

As I did thorough research to try and get a clear and educated definition of what a Periodontist is; I, found a website that has some pretty good detailed articles. Judging by the name of the article you can see that the website is mainly focused on periodontics. Periodontics is the branch of dentistry concerned with the structures surrounding and supporting the teeth. A person who studies this is known as a periodontist. Periodontist is a dentist who specializes in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of periodontal disease; and, the placement of dental implants. 

(What is a Periodontist? ,2016) 

(This is a picture of what eventually happens to your gums and teeth when you have periodontal disease.)

Now the BIG question is, how is periodontics related to microbiology? Well first I would have to explain to you what periodontitis is. Periodontitis is disease that is the main cause for tooth loss. Now to answer the question we have all been waiting for. The reason microbiology is involved in periodontics is because there is bacteria that gets into the gingival sulcus. Once the bacteria reaches the gingival sulcus it creates a periodontal pocket. These pockets are dangerous because once they evolve in someone's gums they allow pathogens to enter. Once these pathogens enter many periodontists will use microbiology in order to remove these pathogens. If these pathogens and pockets are not removed, periodontal disease will start to occur. 
.
I hope that this post gave you little information on what a Periodontist does and study, I hope it informed you on how periodontics is related to microbiology. 

-Jarrett