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Scientists Build Neonatal Incubator From Car Parts
Peace Corps Online writes "The NYTimes ran a story this week about a group of scientists who have built a neonatal incubator out of automobile parts, including a pair of headlights as a heat source, a car door alarm to signal emergencies, and an auto air filter and fan to provide climate control. The creators of the car-parts incubator say that an incubator found in any neonatal intensive care unit in the US could cost around $40,000, but the incubator they have developed can be built for less than $1,000. One expert says as many as 1.8 million infants might be spared every year if they could spend just a week in the units, which help babies who are born early or at low birth weights regulate their body temperature until their organs fully develop. Experts say in developing countries where infant mortality is most common, high-tech machines donated by richer nations often conk out when the electricity fizzles or is restricted to conserve power. 'The future medical technologists in the developing world,' says Robert Malkin, director of Engineering World Health, 'are the current car mechanics, HVAC repairmen, bicycle shop repairmen. There is no other good source of technology-savvy individuals to take up the future of medical device repair and maintenance.'"
Bonehead, this is intended for use in the developing world, not lawyer-land.
I dont see what that has to do with it, do a search for "american junkyard" or "african scrapyard", etc, etc.
There are millions of cars just sitting around all over the world, and stuff like air-conditioning has been around since the 1950's or so, headlights for even longer, etc.
It's not like we need to create an incubator for every baby born or anything either, there's what, 20,000 or so cities in the US? say, 2 incubators per city, thats 40,000, easily do-able, and a savings of about $1,560,000,000 (provided all 40,000 cities needed new incubators, lol)
Everett's Auto Parts ... Everett's recycles over 10,000 cars a year and has more than a thousand cars in stock for you to find just the parts you need. You can even ask us to find those parts for you!...
That single junkyard could do it in about 16 years or so (given that not all vehicles have air-con, working lights, etc), nevermind the other hundreds maybe thousands of other salvage and junkyards in the US, nevermind elsewhere in the world...
You get the idea.
Honestly, i dont really give a damn about the incubators, but the point is its a worthwhile recycling program, plus it uses a relatively small amount of the vehicles, leaving a large amount of other parts that could (should) be used for other things.
...and this is modified +5? I hope you've elected to avoid any form of surgery or medical attention in your country should you need it, to be even-handed.
I fail to see how making incubators cheaper/more prevalent can be seen as anything other than a good thing. Following your line of logic it'd seem the logical extreme would be bombing continents for the good of the "civilised" western world...