Genetic Diseases

I finished a chemistry project on Saturday. We were able to choose a topic of our choice to research. Each person in the class had a different topic. Mine was Wilson’s disease. It is a genetic disease (autosomal recessive), which cause an accumulation of copper in the body. The excess copper first attacks the liver, then enters the bloodstream and attacks vital organs such as the brain, the liver, the kidneys and the eyes. We did another project in bio about genetic disorders. I had Huntington’s disease, which basically is a progressive degeneration of brain cells. The patient looses his ability to control his movements, his peripheral vision and faces many other symptoms. After having finished my paper, I stopped for a second and asked myself questions. Since all these diseases are genetic, a person is born with the abnormality. So I thought, omitting the scientific explanation of the mutations, why does a specific person get a disease like that? I mean you are born with it and your entire life is then based on and shaped by it. Is God have a role to play in all of this? If so, why would he punish a baby who has done nothing wrong? I do not know. I did not find the answer to all these questions yet.

We sometimes talk about this in biology class and I always find myself without any answers. People with that kind of genetic disorder usually have a 50-50% chance of having the disease (like with Huntington). If you knew you had a chance of having such a disease, would you want to know in order to get treated and live with the fear of the disease getting worse with time or would you prefer to stay in ignorance and live your life without worrying about it (with the risk of dying younger and transmitting the gene to your children)? It all comes back to the same question: is ignorance bliss? It is certainly easy to give an opinion when not actually experiencing a situation like that. But if I were in that position I think I would prefer to not know and live my life as I want and enjoy every second of every minute of every day. We all die after all (does it remind you of somebody?).

Designing a ideal school… not that easy

Reshma and I just finished the project consisting in designing our own school. Well, I do not know if it was the all point of this project but it is VERY hard to do. At first, when we were assigned the project, I thought in my head, “Oh, it is going to be an easy thing to do. There are so many things I would like to change in the current system…” I am sure of one thing. I was wrong. In the current system, especially as a student, we feel that many things could be changed, which would make the school day way better and less stressful. We would like to make classes and school day shorter, lunch breaks longer…. But when we think about it, many of these ideas are very hard to apply to real life when we take into consideration the curriculum to cover, bus schedule, safety of the school and plenty of other factors. When Reshma and I were designing our ideal school, we realized that our ideal system, when thinking of all these factors, was very close to the current one. So students, we complain a lot about an educational system that is not so bad. Of course, there are some things that could be improved to make the system better and when reflected that in our project but there are not as many as we thought there would be. And also, I thought it quite hard to think of an ideal system different to one (well actually two) I have known my all life. I just thought that would be interesting to point that out since we will present our project pretty soon. And I have the feeling that we (Reshma and I) will not be the only group having an ideal school strangely close to the current system we are used to.

Reliquias encontradas (¡en español!)

Yo no lo sé porque pero me siento en una humor de escribir un diario en español hoy entonces es lo que va a hacer (¡ya empecé si no lo nota!). Entonces voy a hablar de un tema de actualidad que se pasó esta semana o la semana pasada (yo no ya había decidido) que me interesaba o que era extranjero. Leí un articulo la semana pasada en el periódico español El País sobre estatuas griegas antiguas que habían volado y que se encontraban entre las manos de contrabandistas.

La policía griega recuperó dos estatuas que representan a dos jóvenes que datan del siglo VI antes del Cristo. Estas estatuas fueron volados por dos contrabandistas de antigüedades. Las autoridades griegas recuperaron las estatuas el lunes pasado antes que los contrabandistas las vendan. Ahora las estatuas son en seguridad en el Museo Arqueológico de Atenas. Los expertos afirman que es le descubrimiento más importantes de los últimos cuarenta años en arqueología y las estatuas son prácticamente intactas. Pienso que este descubrimiento es fantástico y que es una gran suerte que nosotros podemos contemplar reliquia tan antiguas. También es una buena cosa que las reliquias son en seguridad en el Museo de Atenas en lugar de el los manos de contrabandistas. Espero que los arqueológicos encontrarán más reliquias en el futuro.