Sudden Cardiac Death: Should Young Athletes Be Screened?

Website: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1921260,00.html

Summary:
Eben Harrell’s “Sudden Cardiac Death: Should Young Athletes Be Screened?” focus on the today’s athletes’ main concern, Sudden Cardiac Death (SCD). SCD is a sudden and fatal loss of heart function. Joggers to high school soccer players all athletes have higher chance of getting this condition. In this condition individual can die with no or little warning. British and Netherlands researchers have made the conclusion that in order to prevent this condition; all athletes should be tasted for heart abnormalities routinely by Electrocardiogram (ECG). The ECG test cost about $500 per test. And there are higher chances of getting false-positive results. But some sport cardiologists think this test is more cost-effective. Instead they recommend all athletes to be screened through physical and health questionnaire. And only use ECG for higher research. The non-ECG test have same rate of annual death as ECG test. When there is a false-positive result there are more expensive test and anxiety over if there is something wrong with their heart or not. But we should not put price on young athletes’ death.

Personal Response:
I believe that SCD is a condition that we should not ignore. It should be up to athletes themselves to decide whether they want to have an ECG test done or physical exam. But I think they should get physical exam done and, then only if necessary they should get ECG test.

Miracle Organism: Lichens

Summary:
The article is simply talking about the organism “Lichens”. It talks about how lichens play part in our everyday life. The article gives importance to lichens by talking about in how many different ways the lichens help this world. It says lichens are the organism that we use in medicine, food, and clothing. The article says that it is very hard to find this organism because there isn’t much left of them. The author states that pollution is a serious threat to lichens even in the remote arctic, and reindeer that rely on them for food are under increasing stress.

Personal response:
I think that the lichens are very unique organisms. There aren’t many organisms on the earth like lichens that we use for food, medicine and clothing. There we should do our best to lessen the pollution for the species like lichens and try to save as much as possible of them.

Sharnoff, Sylvia D. "Lichens more than meets the eye." National geographic R5139 (1997): 60-71. Print.

Risk of Smoking

Evans, Kim. "Diseases Caused by Smoking will be Graphically Depicted on Packs."

Http://www.naturalnews.com/027015_smoking_disease_chemicals.html. 12 Sept. 2009. Web. 17 Sept. 2009.

Summary:
The author is basically informing us about the new law that Obama is trying to pass to decrease the level of smoking which is 20 percent right now. The author is also talking about how horrible diseases we get by smoking. The new law of forcing the cigarette productions to have a horrible graphic image of the diseases caused by smoking on cigarette packs hopefully will help decrease the level of smoking. At the end she also tells us that there are many other dangerous chemicals around us to acknowledge us that the toxic in the cigarettes are not the only dangerous toxic we should be worrying about.

Personal Response:
I think people shouldn’t smoke and we should have law for that because when people smoke they not only poison their body, but they also poison the bodies of people they smoke around. In the end I agree with Kim that we are not only polluted by smoking there are many other dangerous chemicals that we use pollutes our body.