Marcus just sent me a link to an article about a young cat that lost both his hind limbs in an accident, and the British veterinary surgeon who implanted prosthetic limbs. It's pretty fascinating, and very exciting. The prosthetics have been so far successful. (What could go wrong? Sores, pain, INFECTION, the implants move, bone fractures, the list continues...) I'm always excited with these types of strides not only for veterinary medicine, but for human medicine, since a lot of veterinary based research and techniques are then used to enhance human medicine. My concern with these types of things is quality of life. Since in my opinion animals live in the "here and now" it's hard for me to justify doing extensive procedures IF animals will be in pain or stressed for long periods of time. And of course vets NEVER want that, and I'm sure that the cat was made to be comfortable and pain free. I'm just saying that since animals can't talk, I'm always scared that people will go above and beyond not for the well being of their pet, but for them. And that's not what it's about. But this whole prosthetic procedure is really exciting...the reason why is because this surgeon has successfully gotten the cat's skin to bind to the metal prosthetic, and of course because now this cat has bought more time to live (comfortably). F#ckin' cool. Apparently he's done this before with a canine patient. Speaking of medicine, in Germany it's been decided that unassisted euthanasia is legal, meaning if a patient wants it, life support can be removed. Now although this is a step forward for humane euthanasia, I argue that this example is not truly one of euthanasia. Because euthanasia literally translates to "good death"...meaning pain free. And if someone requires life support to live, taking it away, sure will lead to death, but it may not be pain free. If someone needs a ventilator to breathe---and you take it away, they technically can suffocate to death. And that's horrible. Anyway. Onto something much more light hearted: have you heard of chatroulette.com? Well, it was supposed to be this free chatting website where you log on and you and some random person somewhere in the world can start chatting. And if you're not feelin' them, you can move onto the next. Great, fun idea, right? Well, the complaint is that most of the people on the site are masturbating men! And Christina and I checked it out, and yup...it's true. We did chat with a normal person, but ya encountered, well, you know...ha ha. But it was super easy to get on the site, you don't need to register or make complicated adjustments to your computer settings to get the video cam on and running.
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