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The DIY Dialysis Machine
Millie Kelly was born with a condition that required an immediate operation. During this operation her kidneys started to fail and since she was too small for dialysis machines, doctors told her parents that she was unlikely to live. Luckily for Millie, Dr. Malcolm Coulthard and a colleague tried to build a much smaller kidney machine on their own and they were successful. Her mother said, "It was a green metal box with a few paint marks on it with quite a few wires coming out of it into my daughter - it didn't look like a normal NHS one." The girl was hooked up to the machine over a seven day period to allow her kidneys to recover. Two years later, her mother Rebecca says she is "fit as a fiddle." You should see what Dr. Coulthard can build using a postage stamp, a tuning fork, a lawn chair and a jellyfish.
Don't put pictures with stories unless you're going to take being a news organization seriously, with you know, editing and responsibility.
Chewing gum was used, he's got nothing on Macgyver.
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
Sadly, this would have never happened in the US. The malpractice liability would be too great.
now i trust there will be a whole slashdot article category devoted to these girls? i, for one, welcome our new humanoid dialysis-building overlords.
Is the picture really worth a thousand words? I think the summary is more than enough.
He has one of these in each cave
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Indeed, I SHOULD see that. What the hell DOES the good doctor make out of those things?!?
"You should see what Dr. Coulthard can build using a postage stamp, a tuning fork, a lawn chair and a jellyfish"
I guess some sort of reclining jello chair that resonates with certain sonic frequencies that he can send in the mail. See, being MacGyver isn't THAT hard.
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The picture of the patient is nice and all but the interesting part is the machine, right? I'd like a clear picture of that instead ...
Why, yes I have been touched by His noodly appendage. And I plan to sue.
Doctor Who?
Only if you count the baby. This idea that women gain ten pounds during pregnancy is a fallacy that was propogated, in part, by an early belief in the medical establishment that women needed to gain weight for a healthy pregnancy. Once that idea was disproven, fewer women forced themselves to gain weight during pregnancy.
In fact, most women only experience a mild increase in food intake while pregnant. My understanding is that it's more important to pay attention to sudden food cravings, as those are often signs of missing minerals and vitamins. (e.g. my wife wanted bananas while she was pregnant)
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How can the existing machines be too big? From what I understand, a dialysis machine simply filters blood by pumping it through the machine. One needle for input, one for output. Was the needle too big or something? I suppose the pump might have been too powerful, but wouldn't that be an easy thing to switch out, rather than creating an entirely new machine?
The doctors deserve to receive some sort of notice from whatever professional association they belong to, and also a Patent for the smaller size machine that they created. Thats some pretty amazing work - and they already have a human test trial to back it.
If you'd RFTA (but why should you be different?) you would have seen that the UK, just like the US, does indeed have miniature dialysis machines designed for children. However, this child -- weighing less than six pounds at birth -- was too small to use them. Not just the UK ones -- she was too small to use any existing dialysis machine anywhere in the world.
So, had this happened in the US, she would have been OK, just as long as she had a doctor who was willing to spend his own time and his own money inventing a new machine and building it himself in time to save her life.
I have mod points, but I would rather say something.
That is a beautiful woman with a happy, healthy child child. Get out of your make-believe Hollywood world and into the real one. I for one, saw the picture and thought it was sweet.
weirdest thing I ever saw: scientology advertising on slashdot.
True poetry, this I like to add.
Big lady, Big lady at the Starbucks Talk about sweet creamy latte and big nice smile - this lady's got it
Slim lady, Slim lady at the Starbucks Talk about bitter latte no cream and small awkward smile - that lady's got it
Good latte, big smile drive me out of my mind
How could I leave this behind?
put my menial, insignificant, network admin job into perspective. Dr. Malcolm Coulthard is a brilliant man, and he is saving lives.
We should all try to be like this man.
-ted
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dia_de_Los_Dangerous!
And he didn't even complete his doctorate!
Oh stuff it. At least this article doesn't say what the "condition" that required operation was; for all you know it could be something that is just a one-time occurrence, or at least that requires a one-time fix for each person.
MacGyver did it in season 5 episode 5 "Second Chance" way back in 1989. He must have taped it and copied MacGyver's design.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
It was my experience when I became a vegetarian that paying attention to cravings was just good practice in general. Not necessarily caving in to them all the time, but to this day, if I'm really craving a bean burrito, I know I could probably use more protein.
That's not true.
A healthy woman who is the normal weight for her height can gain 25-35 pounds. This is normal.
Baby weighs 5-10 pounds.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
What? When a woman is pregnant she is not only carrying a baby, but a very large uterus, enlarged breasts, and probably other stuff that I can't remember. Maybe your wife only gained the baby's weight but that honestly sounds unhealthy for the mom and child as she was net losing weight during the pregnancy due to other things adding necessary mass.
And if you could tell me what minerals and vitamins are in chocolate fudge brownies (my wife's latest craving at 7 and a half months) I'd love to know.
Maybe you have info to back your claims up, but none of this is in line with my current experience.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
...you should see what miracles occur when you're not oppressed by an onerous "single-payer" socialist-welfare-state "health" care system like the NHS.
Infant mortality rate in the US: 6.3 per 1,000 live births
Infant mortality rate in the UK: 4.9 per 1,000 live births
Personally, I'd rather not see the "miracle" of more dead babies.
Hate to feed the trolls here.
Hate to break it to you but YOU are a troll.
But if you're going to post a picture, at least have it be of an medium attractive woman.
I always find it amazing that guys who are rather hideous themselves (Howard Stern I'm looking at you) seem to feel it is their job to criticize the appearance of women. It's especially comical here on a website devoted to nerd news where most of the readership wouldn't have any idea how to please a woman. Here's a clue - no one cares what your ugly ass thinks of someone else's appearance. If you feel the need to criticize you had better be a model yourself. Given that you are posting here on Slashdot that's pretty unlikely - so kindly shut the hell up.
My wife, in fact, lost weight when she was pregnant with our first child. After the baby was born, she was 10 pounds lighter than she was before she got pregnant.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
It's got to take serious balls to whip something like this up and plug somebody's baby into it, even if the baby was going to die.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The normal adult has about 70 ml blood per kg body weight, or about 5 L total. An infant has something like 90 ml/kg, IIRC (I'm a doctor but not a neonatologist), so that would be about 270 ml for a 3 kg newborn. Two tablespoons would be about 10% of that, which is about what someone can lose suddenly without serious symptoms.
Troll? You morons, he posted lyrics to a Spinal Tap song!
http://www.babycenter.com/pregnancy-weight-gain-estimator Pregnancy weight gain estimator
Estimate for my wife:
You should gain roughly 25-35 lbs. during your pregnancy. Over the last two trimesters you should gain about 4 lbs. every 4 weeks. How it breaks down If you gained the average of range above, this is where the weight would go (totals are rounded): Maternal: Uterus 2.39 lbs. Breasts 1.0 lbs. Blood 3.09 lbs. Water 4.15 lbs. Fat 8.27 lbs. Subtotal 18.89 lbs. Fetal: Fetus 7.5 lbs. Placenta 1.6 lbs. Amniotic Fluid 1.97 lbs. Subtotal 11.07 lbs. Total 29.96 lbs.
And even though you are posting on /. - I'll trust the baby center site over your own experience.
Strangely, my mum craved the smell of petrol... To be honest, I'm kinda glad she didn't pay too much attention to it.
From the first comment here: http://www.amazon.com/MacGyver-Complete-Season-Charles-Correll/dp/B000CNESLW
5.) Second Chance First aired: 10/16/1989
In China,Macgyver and his old friend Jesse Colton help with a Phoenix Foundation funded hospital for sick children. While there,they discover a gang stealing supplies (including a dialysis machine vital to the survival of a girl name Susie) from the hospital,and something even more surprising: a Amerasian boy who is the son of Jesse Colton. A son he never knew he had. When he and Mac find out the boy helped the gangsters steal the supplies,they must get them back,before Susie dies....
I'm counting that toward the baby weight as most of that stuff will be gone as soon as the baby is born.
Here's the Mayo Clinic page on weight gain during pregnancy.
Here's the breakdown:
* Baby: 7 to 8 pounds
* Larger breasts: 1 to 3 pounds
* Larger uterus: 2 pounds
* Placenta: 1 1/2 pounds
* Amniotic fluid: 2 pounds
* Increased blood volume: 3 to 4 pounds
* Increased fluid volume: 2 to 3 pounds
* Fat stores: 6 to 8 pounds
Here's the information on how much your caloric intake needs to increase:
Emphasis is mine.
The expectation is that once the baby is born, the remaining weight will disappear on its own through a normal diet. Much of the extra fat put on supports breast feeding of the child. Once weened, many women actually find themselves slightly lighter than they were before, even if they were not overweight. (Which is also what happened to my wife. ;-)) I've heard some women refer to pregnancy as a good way to shed the pounds. I don't recommend it, but it does seem to work.
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The costs are lower, in part, because less treatments are provided.
For example, half of all the joint replacement surgeries done in the entire world are done on US patients. That's 50% of the procedures on less than 5% of the world population. Either people in the US blow out their joints way more frequently than Europeans with socialized health care (unlikely), or their system isn't providing them with that option.
So our "inferior" privatized system is providing more people with life-improving treatments, and when something goes wrong the error rate (not the treatment rate) is used to tell people our system sucks. If you don't get the procedure, the system has failed you, but it wasn't screwed up, so you're a positive statistic!
Sorry, but I'd rather pay more, and pay for myself.
You're aware that civilized people consider eugenics to be out of vogue, right?
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This happened here in the UK, we have the NHS. Indeed this appears to have been done by a doctor working in the NHS.
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I for one, saw the picture
I thought most Slashdotters used lynx so people wouldn't know they were slacking off?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I don't think the motivation for building this had anything to do with compensation or payment. Socialized medicine really just means to provide equal care to all. (and in Western states this means excellent care - check life expectancy statistics!)
This is a great story and its sad how people are making rude comments about the mom. If you had a dying child, you were helpless and couldn't do anything to help save the child, you'd be like that too. So, please be a bit more sensitive about others. Regardless, this is something that can save the life of these insensitive people's children too if needed (if they are able to reproduce in the first place!) Give the guy some credit doing the best as a doctor to save a life.
Your argument is flawed for two reasons.
First, not everything that causes a dependence upon medical science is perpetuated to subsequent generations. I lost my kidneys to a non-hereditary disease at 21 -- ten years before I had a child. Yes, I now have to take immunosuppressants for the rest of my life, at quite a bit of cost to my health insurance provider, and that sucks. But my daughter should be free of the problem I had, and so should her children and so on.
Second, those of you who argue "survival of the fittest!!!" should keep in mind that a better understanding of science -- including medical science -- may well imply "more fit", even if it *physically* weakens us. Considering that, so far at least, humanity is one of the more successful species on the planet despite the fact that 1) we are far weaker than many other animal species, 2) we are far slower than many other animal species, 3) we have fewer natural defensive weapons (teeth, claws, venom, etc.) than many other animal species, 4) we have much poorer senses than many other animal species (and so on), I would say that there is ample evidence in favor of this line of reasoning.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
You've got to be kidding. They spend MORE than we do? I'd got the idea that they put up with having no health service because it meant they could spend more money on, er... I think the term they use is 'defending freedom'. I'd never imagined they spent anything like as much. I mean, the common wisdom in the UK is that the NHS is a colossal money pit. The American system is even more expensive?
Jesus. So, 15% GDP in the US, versus 6% in the UK... and adjust for the higher per capita wealth of the US... that's just horrible. Where the hell is all the money going?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
It's going to our emergency rooms. All the people without decent health insurance are forced to rely on emergency room care for medical issues that could be handled, at a vastly lower cost, by a general practitioner. Also, they tend to let what start out as minor medical issues progress far longer because they can't afford to get them treated until an emergency room would deem it bad enough to deal with. That's the hidden reason why socialized healthcare ends up saving money overall, you get to take advantage of preventative medicine and catch issues early before the cost to treat them skyrockets.
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You're absolutely right. EMTALA essentially created universal healthcare in the US by making it illegal for an emergency room to refuse to treat someone based on their ability to pay. This is (in my opinion) a worthwhile goal, but one which is terribly inefficient with health-care money if not backed by a socialized healthcare system at the same time.
If you've got no healthcare, but get sick, you can roll into the ER for free treatment. Of course, ER care is an order of magnitude more costly than care from a family doctor, and does not include checkups, history, or preventative care that could have avoided the issue in the first place. It also requires that you wait until your condition is far enough gone that it constitutes an emergency, likely making things more difficult and expensive to treat.
So we pay for healthcare for everybody, except we do it as inefficiently as possible, tying up ER doctors, nurses and facilities with things that should have been taken care of at a tenth the cost elsewhere, earlier, and without occupying a bed somewhere at a facility designed for broken bones and heart attacks, not festering infections you should have had cleaned up a year ago.
very interesting ! that sounds like something that should be studied more widely
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While a DIY dialysis machine is pretty awesome; it was successfully designed, built and put into use 2 years ago. Shouldn't this story have come out then?
Perhaps because it prevented an increase in premiums? Or it went into preventing a decrease (or an outright increase) in quality of care?
These possibilities are worth considering.
Or course, it's also quite likely that malpractice insurance companies, health care providers, and health insurers had little incentive to pass any savings on to those insured. An insurance marketplace isn't like some other basic marketplaces like, say, restaurants (if it were, we wouldn't eat out at the restaurant of our choice, we'd get subsidized meals at the company affiliated locations). Most of us don't chose our health plan on our own, and nobody really knows how good their plan is until they really, really need it -- and by that point, if there's a problem, you're going to have trouble getting someone else to cover you, so it's not easy to switch away from a poor alternative. Furthermore, choice at signup time is plagued by the problem of considerable information asymmetry -- the insurance companies most assuredly have an army of actuaries and lawyers and others to assess and manage the risk each potential new customer adds to the pool, but individual consumers don't have ready access to similarly significant information about insurers for comparison, and even where some sources exist, the time investment's pretty daunting. Market forces operate pretty weakly for the consumer, if at all.
So, two plausible scenarios:
1) Tort reform prevented cost increases, and resulted in more stable costs for consumers, but not price reductions
2) Tort reform prevented cost increases, and resulted in more stable or reduced costs for insurers, who kept extra as profits
Which is it? Either's fairly plausible; we'd probably have to see either stats on health care / insurance prices in texas, or have public balance sheets for insurers....
Tweet, tweet.
I got that same sudden "bean burrito" craving out of the blue, while I was in college. I'd been vegetarian for about four years, was coping with some heavy depression during my first year of school...I guess it must have been chemical, because as soon as I ate what my cravings told me to, the depression vanished. Like, in a day. Not vegetarian any more, but I still pay close attention to my cravings.
Well, now I know what a DIDG is...
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
"Problem is you're in England. You're stuck with socialized health care."
First, it's the United Kingdom, not England. Second, a national health service is not "socialised medicine". Socialised medicine is just perjorative spin used by heavy investors in healthcare to ensure that their profits remain uninterrupted. What the NHS is, is a national health service funded by tax contributions. Roads in the US are paid for by taxes. Does this mean you have a "socialised transport network"? Third, if you don't want to use the NHS, you can go private and be seen immediately, in the UK. There are plenty of private healthcare facilities along with various plans, insurance policies etc. Fourthly, the NHS appears to deliver higher quality treatment for a lower cost than in the US and for many conditions (eg, cancer) there is no waiting. Still, who cares about the health of a nation when shareholder value is booming? There is also no wrangling with insurance companies or having to remortgage your house or borrow vast amounts of money with little realistic hope of paying it back.
Having lived in countries with both a NHS and with entirely private healthcare, I can say from sore personal experience that I would take the NHS every time.
bang goes my karma... again...