Scientists Build Neonatal Incubator From Car Parts 211
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.'"
This is great! (Score:5, Interesting)
Someone pitch the idea to the car companies (Score:2)
Hell, the American Big Three are desperately looking for some good PR, after getting spanked out of Washington. A reformed Rick Wagoner could say, "I've given up taking joy rides in the corporate jet, and am now saving babies."
TFA mentions that they rummage around in junk yards for parts: Detroit probably has butt-loads of new parts that they will never need. The UAW will clean up their image by using volunteers to do the assembly for free.
As soon as they do this, the German auto companies will respo
I love projects like this.. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a reminder of what can be done with old-fashioned, low-tech stuff, and that breakthroughs can remain a down-and-dirty job and you don't need millions of dollars in funding to get one.
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Who paid for the engineers' and all the testing and certifications for that device?
That is what eats up the cost with all these medical devices, not the cost of parts.
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Um, no. Not in the US. If a unit had a failure leading to death, the family would sue, the hospital, and the equipment manufacturer for multiple millions each.
See, we've moved past just being happy to be alive. We now need to have someone else be responsible for providing for our existence too. That's how good it is here in America!
Cool (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Cool (Score:4, Insightful)
I get the feeling that better prenatal care of the mother would prevent a lot of those premature births. A lot more than better incubators, I'm sure.
Why Not Strive For Both? (Score:3, Insightful)
Parent is right but its a little to late to discuss that when the child is already there. And not to mention the cost of health service and insurance "quirks" may make it unaffordable to some anyway.
Why not get the best of all worlds? It is possible to strive for better, cheaper prenatal care and better, cheaper incubators.
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I get the feeling that better prenatal care of the mother would prevent a lot of those premature births. A lot more than better incubators, I'm sure.
Then again, maybe those premie babies wouldn't have made it at all if it weren't for good prenatal care. Kind of like the statistic that the US ranks like 37th in the world in terms of infant mortality. It's probably not because of poor care, but because of exceptional care. All those infants that died after birth probably would have been stillborn/killed the mother by dying in the womb. The babies would be just as dead, but not classified as "infant mortality".
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And you want the fun part of that... here in Japan. The Red Cross refuse donation other than... MONEY...
I'm in an old maternity clinic where they stopped deliveries as the owner is getting too old for this kind of 24h a day duty cr@p and so we have inpatient beds, newborn beds (all heavy duty japanese made, stuff that can survive a nuke). Brand new incubator and delivery table. ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING WAS REFUSED.
Seems that the japanese Red Cross suffer the common local problem known formerly only by politici
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But are you sure your current premise really holds water? Out here in rural Alaska, we have three (count'em) incubators. That's NOT what keeps us from keeping the premees. It's the fact that neither the doctors nor nurses feel comfortable caring for a even marginally ill peanut. It's the people, not equipment. I'm sure that both would be in short
What does this really mean? (Score:2, Insightful)
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Re:What does this really mean? (Score:4, Informative)
This article doesn't really say anything about the current state of medical devices, it just simply costs alot to build and verify they work in an acceptable manner for medical purposes. I don't think the machines talked about in these article will ever be adopted in the west. I doubt the reliability of these components will be up to scratch compare to the regular prenatal care machines BUT for third world countries where the medicial facilities are so poor, its probably worthy to think about adopting these machines as a temporary stop gap and thats probably the point of this exercise.
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Most FDA regulations are in place because someone died from a malfunction. The FDA is a very reactionary organization. They do not think ahead, they are trying to prevent a repeat of past problems. The problem is, there have been many problems that we do not want to repeat.
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-1 misses the point? (Score:3, Interesting)
Um, the problem isn't a lack of repairmen Mr Malkin - it's a lack of electricity. A problem which this incubator doesn't fix. (No, the motorcycle battery isn't a fix. It's a backup. With no electricity, this incubator dies just as dead as a high tech one.)
Re:-1 misses the point? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you missed the point. The point is that this can be repaired with car parts by a mechanic and is more robust than the higher tech units. Having cheaper more robust technology is important for developing nations since it allows first world countries to help bootstrap improvements to their quality of life. While I can't speak to how many hospitals are lacking electricity, I would say this is going to enrich the lives of many people around the world and is definitely a good thing.
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Try reading TFA.
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Um, the problem isn't a lack of repairmen Mr Malkin - it's a lack of electricity. A problem which this incubator doesn't fix. (No, the motorcycle battery isn't a fix. It's a backup. With no electricity, this incubator dies just as dead as a high tech one.)
Not a problem. A small motorcycle internal combustion engine could run continuously to provide electricity via a generator. Now all that's required are babies that breathe carbon monoxide.
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Or someone comes up with a low tech method to make either a power cable or an exhaust pipe
Finally..... (Score:5, Funny)
A slashdot story that cries out for a car analogy.
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Look at it this way: If the incubator was a car...
Ok, that's all.
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Mission Criticality (Score:3, Interesting)
My daughter was born 7 weeks premature and spent 2 weeks in an incubator. As a side effect of spending so much time with her in the neonatal unit, I got to know what every switch and readout on her machine did. It was a very impressive piece of equipment designed to do one thing very well - keep a helpless human alive.
I would hazard a guess as to say that the insides of the machine are built with all sorts of hardware redundancy checks inside to ensure that its critical mission is carried out no matter what (I'm pretty sure it even had a UPS); which probably contributes somewhat to the high cost. That and the liability aspect inherent with any machine that keeps humans alive (from auto-respirators to space-suits).
I am fortunate enough to live in a country with a high standard of health care, and my daughter's stay in her expensive machine saved her life; however if a lower cost alternative that does the core functions of the expensive machines can be built for countries that are not as well off as we are, I am all for that. Expensive machines are also expensive to maintain, and if the TCO can be lowered to the point that poorer countries can operate them comfortably, that's got to be a benefit. It just goes to show that ingenuity knows no bounds.
Post-apocalyptic computing (Score:3, Funny)
This gives me hope.
Some day, someone will find a way of creating a computer from wood and stone. And then I won't feel inferior to car mechanics because of my uselesness in a post-apocalyptic scenario.
(Yes, I know a car is more useful than a computer in the first months, but years of gaming must have prepared me for fending the radioactive zombies till a new order is established.)
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We need... Bicycle Repairman !!! (Score:2)
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This is for use in third world countries where the FDA has no authority.
I'm one of those repairmen... (Score:5, Interesting)
Since we're a not-for profit facility, there's a lot of incentive to do things in a cost effective manner, but at the same time, safety and well being of our residents is paramount. I've found myself having to repair all manner of medical equipment with little or no help from the manufacturer or seller. Things as simple as wheelchairs and walkers, to moderately complex like lift chairs and adjustable beds, to stuff like oxygen generators and emergency nurse-call equipment.
My employer would never be able to afford vendor reps to fix all this stuff, and so its left to myself and the rest of our small department. I'm the only one with a college education, and the only one from a high-tech background. The other guys have backgrounds in things like HVAC and carpentry. Simply put, the cost of health care equipment has far outstripped the ability for many facilities to support it and still provide affordable care. I was used to working with engineers, programmers, and big budgets until recently. The future of health care is not more tech, but taking the tech we have and making it cheaper and easier to maintain.
Re:I'm one of those repairmen... (Score:4, Insightful)
I used to be an electronic technician in the medical device field (until I got fired for cutting through impenetrable FDA red tape regulations too many times).
I have noticed the unbelievable cost difference between medical equipment and consumer electronics that use the same technology. This is due I believe to the cost-plus guaranteed-giant-profit mentality of the entire medical industry in the USA. Every part of the industry; the lawyers, the doctors, the administrators, the drug dealers, the insurance companies, the equipment makers, the FDA regulators, everyone, is working to drive the costs up without any consideration whatsoever for the long term consequences. And these consequences are the premature painful deaths of millions of people who are denied health care in the USA, both now to a limited extent and in the future to a much greater extent.
I'm toying with the idea of an underground health movement that uses 'open-source' medical equipment that is cheap and safe, but illegal because it can't get FDA approval. Nothing in the USA gets FDA approval if it is created outside of the insaisibly greedy medical industry. I've come to the conclusion that whenever people in the USA talk about the need for 'extensive testing and ultimate safety' for medical equipment, they are expressing a code word for getting paid off big time.
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My employer would never be able to afford vendor reps to fix all this stuff, and so its left to myself and the rest of our small department. I'm the only one with a college education, and the only one from a high-tech background.
When someone dies or becomes injured the plaintiff's attorney will have an easy open and shut case against your employer for hiring unqualified technicians. Health care is affordable, liability insurance isn't.
Economy of scale (Score:3, Insightful)
I didn't RTFA, but what a lot of commenters seem to be missing is the concept of economy of scale. The great idea here seems to be that using "off the shelf", mass-produced car parts to create an incubator with equal functionality to that of a standard incubator saves a great deal of money. Plus, the car parts have been better tested and are apparently more reliable. So this is kind of like building a software system by combining lots of preexisting, well-tested components rather than custom designing everything in-house.
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It is also about going into a third world junkyard and getting a local mechanic to fix the thing when it's broken. The article mentions how that many of the expensive neonatal incubators end up not being used because they either don't know how to operate it, or can't fix it five years later, when it breaks down.
I am curious how, in terms of effectiveness and quality this stacks up to what we have in America, but, in some places, they have no other options.
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Though it could well be that the "mechanic" and the "junkyard owner" are the same people.
The article mentions how that many of the expensive neonatal incubators end up not being used because they either don't know how to operate it, or can't fix it five years later, when it breaks down.
Even if they did know how to fix it they probably can't get the parts. If these "donations" are supplied w
Too much legal liability. (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't see it happening.
The medical industry is all about litigation. If you invent something that saves peoples lives, then of the 100 people it saves, there might be someone who dies anyway, because of device failure and you can be sure that some lawyer's already prefilled out the lawsuit against you and is just waiting for an opportunity.
A friend of mine invented a very simply device that measured skin resistance and could be placed over someone's torso (like a blanket) to look for internal bleeding. This isn't just some inventor guy, he works as an engineer in one of Australia's top universities.
As soon as the university lawyers found out it had a medical application, they killed the project.
There's no doubt it would have saved lives, but the sad truth is that the university involved would actually rather see those people die than risk the litigation of being sued if anyone tried to prove that someone actually died of the device if it was somehow misused by a paramedic at the scene of an accident.
And I don't think it's likely to change. There's too much money invested in keeping medicine esoteric and away from everyone else too allow too many companies in to dilute the spend of sick people.
Maybe it's a rant, but it's a sad truth that I beleive. Doctors are pretty much the only people who seem to get away with doing this kind of research but even then I've read of far too many doctors who are persecuted because they came up with some kind of new treatment/device.
I'm guessing that car-parts-incubators is just radical enough to get anyone who tries to market it into trouble. Even if it saved a million livess, it would bring a thousand lawsuits and while I'm sure if some parents saw an infant die because of a lack of incubators, they would say these are needed, but if an infant dies while it's in an incubator, they'll look for someone to blame. Not that commercial units are any more reliable. But what judge is going to beleive that a $1000 unit was just as good as a $40,000 unit?
Please excuse my cynicism. It's just that I've observed this more than a few times.
GrpA.
Re:Too much legal liability. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Well, bonehead, why the hell does everything medical-oriented in lawyer-land cost so damned much? The OP was right! Medical suppliers have a vested interest in making sure that competition does not exist! Whether their involvement is in actually filing lawsuits or simply providing "expert witness" testimony to help lawyers get a settlement, they are raising the bar for anyone else to enter a market that they control with overpriced, overfeatured equipment.
Lawyer-land could use a lot more of these $1k solut
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I'm guessing that car-parts-incubators is just radical enough to get anyone who tries to market it into trouble. Even if it saved a million livess, it would bring a thousand lawsuits and while I'm sure if some parents saw an infant die because of a lack of incubators, they would say these are needed, but if an infant dies while it's in an incubator, they'll look for someone to blame. Not that commercial units are any more reliable. But what judge is going to beleive that a $1000 unit was just as good as a $
No big deal (Score:5, Funny)
Hamster Wheel (Score:2)
Just hook them up to a hamster wheel- the running will keep them warm. Plus it will build their muscles. No need for a muffler, if you get them exposed to all the toxins early enough they will grow up nice and monstrous (good for NBA/NFL ticket sales). And just think how many cars we will be saving from silly reuse when we can encapsulate homeless people in them and then present them to French art critics as "Still Life in Auto".
What a bunch of geniuses, durr. (Score:2)
Almost any medical device or drug can be made dirt cheap if you throw enough safety considerations out of the window.
Or do these guys want to tell me that those $1000 also include R&D (just how many hours did they spend designing it?), biocompatibility testing (I don't think most materials used in cars undergo this by default), electrical/mechanical/chemical hazard analysis, etc.
Also, they're comparing the parts&labor price of their contraption to the list price of an actual incubator. Sorry guys, y
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Based upon the typical behaviour of most businesses in the health services business sector, I'd say it's more likely that the per machine cost of parts&labor, (including R&D, testing and support) comes to about $1000, The remainder is a fat profit.
. The fact that a couple of guys can whip up what is essentially a free replacement, is an indictment of our health services industry but should come as no surprise to a
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How much of the pharma companies executive compensatio
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If you didn't give that dollar to the CEO, it's not like the company will take a dollar off the cost. They know you'll pay it.
My question is, why do these large companies feel compelled to give one person as much money as 500 workers combined? What could that one person possibly be doing that is worth so much money to the company?
I'm not saying that a CEO should only be paid $40K, but let's get real... the company would profit much more by cutting his salary to the 6 figure range plus stock options.
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I've tried to work this out using somewhat reasonable titles for the appropriate 'sphere' of influence
I can't believe many organizations have this many layers of management, but if they do
worker =~ 50K (I'll be generous)
team leader =~ 75K
supervisor =~ 110K
department head =~ 165K
division head =~ 250K
group head =~ 375K
region head =~ 550K
global vice-head =~835K
global head =~ 1.25M
CEO =~ 1.8
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As a physician or health-care provider, you'd be faced with a choice - do nothing, and suffer a X% infant mortality rate; or hack something together out of available components that does the job, reducing the infant mortality rate by Y%. What's the correct choice? That'll depend on what X and Y are. Beyond that, there are social implications (
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It's also likely to depend on exactly what those "safety" considerations are.
Or do these guys want to tell me that those $1000 also include R&D (just how many hours did they spend designing it?), biocompatibility testing (I don't think most materials used in cars undergo this by default)
Yet cars are typically sold with the idea of transporting humans.
electrical/mechanical/chemical
Supplier? (Score:2)
No more lame excuses to the state troopers... (Score:2)
[From a courtroom transcript]
Prosecutor: So according to your earlier testimony, the defendents were travelling in the breakdown lane at a high rate of speed. Am I correct?
Trooper: Yes, that's correct.
Prosecutor: So what happened when you pull them over and approached the operator of the vehicle?
Trooper: The male defendent stated that the female defendent was his wife, and that she was going into labor. I offered to help them after I issued their citation, but they refused.
Prosecutor: They refused?
I know this guy (Score:2)
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insurance (Score:2)
Until you include the insurance against being sued. In America anything medical has to be insured against enormous law suits. It s unrelated to the risk of causing damage to pateints. It is very closely related to the potential profit from lawyers.
And the FA approval orocess could reasonably be expted to add $1,000,000 to the cost of each unit if you are not careful.
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When I was in engineering school, my manufacturing professor held up two screws. Both screws were nearly identical, except one was for orthopedic surgery and the other was not. He told us the orthopedic screw cost 100 times what the other screw cost, and asked us to come up with reasons why. Most peoples said things like quality control, tighter tolerances, different materials, or cleanliness specs. The correct answer was insurance.
Next time you take your pet to the animal hospital, lo
I think I saw this on TV once (Score:2)
Just what we need (Score:2)
More people, especially children, living in poverty stricken countries. And, more reasons for those fake charities to beg for money.
Kris Olson (Score:2)
This is pretty cool - I remember when Kris Olson started talking about this project (he was one of my attendings at MGH). In any event, it's good to see that they have reached their goal. Having spent time in Africa where there's no shortage of newly donated equipment but a dearth of people to fix broken equipment, this should be a huge deal.
Talk to the chicken farmers (Score:3, Insightful)
idiotic approach (Score:2)
Re:but (Score:5, Informative)
Thats sarcasm right?... cause, you know with stuff like...
Police have seized more than 25,000 cars in Greater Manchester since new powers to tackle rogue drivers were introduced last year.
More than 10,000 have been crushed. [manchester...news.co.uk]
And thats in "Greater" Manchester alone, which is about 3 million people or so... and that doesnt include just normally scrapped vehicles, or accidents.
Calculate that for various other locations in the world.
Re:but (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [yardquest.com] ... 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.
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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.
Exactly! My baby was concieved in the back of a 57 cadillac, it's only appropriate that he's incubated in one too.
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OK. Drug possession on the other hand...
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Ok cars are expensive outside of the Nanny State then. Here in Amerikkka you can't just take people's cars for speeding or reckless driving.
Here in the Nanny State we have a lot less road deaths.
Most seized cars were uninsured. If you pay the fines you can get the car back, but if you've been banned from driving for a year or two for driving uninsured and your car wasn't worth much anyway it might not be worth it.
Nanny states and car confiscations... (Score:4, Interesting)
your car wasn't worth much anyway it might not be worth it.
There was an article in a paper a while back where the police mentioned they'd confiscated like seven cars from this one dude - he had basically a lifetime revokation for DUIs, and they'd take his car whenever they caught him(usuaully drunk). He'd just go out and buy another cheap sub-$500 car - cheaper than impound fees and such. Part of the article was, of course, outrage over why the guy wasn't in prison.
Personally, call me old fashioned but I think that car confiscations, even/especially for drug stuff should be handled through the courts. Confiscations, period, for that matter.
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You can't just take them in the UK either.
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Yes, there are piles of car parts. (Score:5, Interesting)
From my experience, I would say yes, there are huge supplies of car parts lying about in developing nations.
Sure, only the small fraction of wealthy people can buy a car, even one heavily used, but what happens to the car when it breaks down beyond all repair? Does the non-existent trash-collection agency come to haul it off to the non-existent recycling facility or proper landfill? Nope, it sits right where it broke down - unless it broke down on the road, then it will be pushed aside just enough for normal traffic to resume. After that, everything that can be removed and hauled off without special equipment will be removed. Fans, engine, alternator, lights, pumps, belts, bits of plastic, body panels, I mean EVERYTHING. All this stuff ends up back at the mechanics, since they are the only people who could get any use out of it. Parts rarely match up exactly, but things get shoe-horned into place and made to work. In a few months or so, if a big flat-bed lorry comes along, what is left of the frame will be hauled off and turned into hand carts.
My single data point: In my small little remote town there are about 4 private cars (1 was a missionary doctor), a couple of government cars, as well as a bus-stop that ran 3 or 4 buses between the nearest towns. The mechanics at the bus stop stand had a large collection of spare parts. I have no idea how many of them were functioning or to what degree they did, but there were piles and piles of all different sorts of parts. I'm sure that with a bit of trial and error, enough working parts could have been pulled out of there to construct something equal to what was in TFA. Even more, there was a shop selling solar panels to charge car batteries for 12v lighting systems. While still quite expensive, a system like this could be set up to be totally independent of unreliable mains.
I know that what passed for the hospital in town did not have an incubator, or regular electricity to run one if they did. I never personally knew anyone there who lost a baby shortly after birth, but I heard of it happening often enough. Something like this could have saved some of those lives.
Now I'm feeling some kind of reverse home-sickness :(
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Well, in poor countries they keep things running longer, so there aren't a huge supply.
One way of thinking about this might be that there are different financial scales of purchasing in rich countries and poor countries. This leads to different qualitative phenomena, e.g., the attitude towards labor and the prevalence of things like personal servants.
In a rich country, a proper neonatal incubator probably costs a considerable amount of money, but not so much that a hospital with a maternity ward would hes
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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
Something tells me that as long as you aren't restricting the cars utilized for this to brand new Mercedes-Benz or Hummers, the cost isn't going to be as high as the current ICU equipment.
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I'm still kinda riding the fence on the Neo-Malthusian/Cornucopian debate.
Why? Here's a question. In the technologically advanced parts of the world, what is their birth rate, especially for people native to that region? Once you've answered that, you'll see why the neo-Malthusian view of the world is broken.
Re:but (Score:4, Interesting)
Technology has also vastly increased the Earth's ability to support human life
Unfortunately, it's much worse than that. First, so long as countries have a high birth rate, any technological advance only delays (and magnifies) the coming Malthusian disaster.
Secondly, many of the technological advances are temporary, especially in 3rd world countries, as they depend on cheap oil for mechanisation, fertiliser and pesticides.
The current economic situation has given oil a small reprieve, but the shit will hit the fan some time. It might start with some "unexpected" coincidence of multiple factors: a drought here, a war there, a crop disease somewhere else.
N.America, Australia, Brazil etc suffer a little with reduced exports. China bids high for what remains. Africa starves first, with places like Indonesia and even India not so far behind.
And guess what? There is nothing we can do to stop it, short of mass involuntary sterilisation. Even if all the Americans go vegetarian, banning grain-fed beef and ethanol fuel, it only delays the problem a short time.
Birth rates are the time bomb, and China is the only third world county to be doing anything about it. Mass-starvation (millions of deaths!) is _very_ fresh in their minds.
You can argue over all the variables of crop yields, oil reserves, etc, and it only changes when, not if, mass global food shortages will come.
Re:but (Score:4, Insightful)
First, so long as countries have a high birth rate, any technological advance only delays (and magnifies) the coming Malthusian disaster.
True, but when higher technology is actually available, the birth rate drops. This has held true for about 1/3 of the earths population across several cultures.
Secondly, many of the technological advances are temporary, especially in 3rd world countries, as they depend on cheap oil for mechanisation, fertiliser and pesticides.
Right, in the long run the only solution is to covert them into first world countries.
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Re:but (Score:4, Insightful)
Looking at our species the same law naturally applies...
The numbers work out the same, but I don't think it's due to that law. In nature, choosing an R-type (many and cheap) or K-type (few and expensive) reproductive strategy is something the occurs at a genetic level, and has to happen because resources are limited.
But since that balance is in the genes, you can 'break' that law by putting the creature in an unnatural situation. Bacteria in culture or rabbits in Australia can have low mortality and rapid reproduction, because they aren't being held back by predators or a lack of resources. Human beings are in a similar situation in the first world - we could easily have an average of eight children per female like in the third world and still have very low mortality - but we don't, so some other factor must be involved.
Re:but (Score:4, Informative)
Thank you for the first reasonable post in this thread! (I know there are others to follow.) People who don't know any better can talk about birth rates all they want, but it's the infant mortality rate that tells the tale. Combine that with the number of otherwise healthy adults dying from diseases like HIV/AIDS and you have places in Africa where the few children remaining are being raised by their few remaining grandmothers because there aren't any parents left to do the job--or to put in the crops or otherwise bring in money and food.
For the past eight years, very capable American agencies have had their hands tied because they can't mention (for example) the fact that you can prevent the spread of HIV by the use of condoms or that you can space the births of your children by means of condoms or other birth control. I'm optimistic that all this is about to change with the new administration, but a lot of ground has been lost in eight years.
The other issue that hasn't been mentioned is that birth rates may be higher in rural, agrarian, or subsistence-level economies because it takes more people per family to make a living. Children, and large families of them, have been an asset across thousands of years. It's only in the past couple of hundred that this has changed.
Also, idly, I'd entertain thoughts of taking the "let the babies die" folks on a stroll through a neonatal intensive care unit and allowing them to choose which of the babies got to live and which had to die. That's because I also believe at some level that humans who haven't been conditioned or brutalized have a natural instinct to try to save any distressed human young that we happen to run across.
I'd heard it was quite tough in the USA... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd heard teaching birth control in countries with strong Christian cultures like the USA [duggarfamily.com] is tough is as well...
Re:I'd heard it was quite tough in the USA... (Score:4, Insightful)
Dear God (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
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Following your line of logic it'd seem the logical extreme would be bombing continents for the good of the "civilised" western world... ..and you live very comfortably in a country that has 10,000 hydrogen bombs... for peaceful purposes.
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I thought the point of using car parts is that they are cheap, easily available, and run on 12 volts (so the device can run without A/C, and be charged by another vehicle).
Car parts - cheap! (Score:4, Informative)
I thought the point of using car parts is that they are cheap, easily available, and run on 12 volts
The thousand dollars quote leads me to believe that you're right - it wouldn't be even a grand if you're taking parts out of a junk yard, but who wants to do that? I figure that these incubators are using new parts, just ones from the automotive industry and not the medical industry for economy of scale and robustness. Though, yes, the ability to use junkyard parts for repairs is mentioned.
For example, most headlights are under $20, so that's only $40 for your heat source. 12V cabling is relatively cheap, there's various thermostats you can get. They're vibration resistant, and a AC-DC transformer will provide a good amount of protection from surges, especially if you put a car battery in the circuit to provide backup. Automotive fuses can provide safety and prevent damage. For that matter, car equipment is designed to take anything from like 12V to 14.4-15V, so it's robust from that angle as well.
The article mentions detractors that say that intervention, skilled delivery people, emergency care would be better. I'd argue that those would cost more - importing a western trained doctor is expensive. Low-hanging fruit, people. One step at a time. Incremental improvement.
Heck, if it's good enough, I'd like to see them in our hospitals. Perhaps a fancier, more expensive model, but still cheap compared to current ones. Look at our healthcare costs. How much money would be saved if we could get, instead of a $40k incubator, a $5k incubator instead? Figure a thousand incubators a state per year(50k total), that'd be $1.75 BILLON saved. Not including any maintenance savings, given that current incubators are maintenance hogs per the article, and I didn't see any mention of parts that you'd expect to replace any given year with the auto one. Sure, not much against the trillions we spend now - but as they say, a billion here and there, and suddenly you're looking at real money. ;)
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I take it you don't have kids, do you?
Call me cold-hearted, but there is a reason that those babies are not surviving.
Yes. They don't have access to proper medical care. Cold-hearted asshole.
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Pretty absurd, eh?
Only for people who are bad at math. They're quoting $1000, which is probably just the cost for the parts, and compare it to the catalog price of a brand-spankin'-new incubator which comes with such niceties as being already assembled, being safety- and biocompatibility tested (and you can sue the heck out of whoever made the thing if anything goes wrong), etc.
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A forty-fold increase in the price of a tangible item to cover feel-good intangibles is something you consider reasonable for a health care appliance?
Being already assembled is a very tangible benefit, and the whole biocompatibility stuff is also very tangible (or rather - you'll realize the difference after having been in contact with the surfaces of the thing). Same goes for all the other questions. Can it be sterilized properly?
And no, a factor of 40 between a bunch of low-quality, untested parts that
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Your own newborn baby needs an incubator. There are two sitting there, one but together with old car parts and another brand spanking new unit. Just for the hell of it they offer you $5k if you use the old car parts one. Which do you choose to save your baby?
Now I don't disagree with you. The medical industry is insane with its costs. I just got the bill for a minor surgery and its insane when you look at the line items. $100 for a friggin scalpal. But relying on do it yourself medical equipment might not b
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THIS is the real reason why this article is meaningless
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And which one will you want to put YOUR kid in?