Tuesday, October 18, 2005

fever...

grips you.

exams yet again. everyone around me is starting to study! and here i am, getting distracted by tv. hurhur. just watched an old episode of CSI:miami which i discovered i haven't watch before even though i have the dvd! haha. nice episode.

the weekend was spent half-studying and half-relaxing. watched tv, slept for 3 hours in the afternoon! (i really culdn't help myself. the rain and cold was too tempting. and i was way too tired). went church, which was good. :) as always. consolation of watching medical investigation is that it's related to my microbio module! this week they touched on a water-borne infection that was spread in a catholic church, the holy water. the source came from rats! eeks. oh...and there's a bit of biostats too! there was a double-blind control clinical trial done by the hospital and complications arose in this patient, but neither the doctor nor the patient know if the drug is the real thing or the placebo.

see....so related right. i actually see the applications of what i learn on TV! so exciting.

i watched corpse bride with sam. it's so nice!! sigh. loved it a lot. good plot. nice animation. gd ol' tim burton has done it again. just discovered sis has the limited edt. dvd of nightmare before christmas. i wanna watch!

oh..but must study.

yes. study. tmr and wed are 2 free days for me to mug in school with friends.

anyways today we talked about malaria in microbio lecture. this stupid horrible parasite. it's so darn smart to evade all our defenses. it just doesn't die! many vaccines are manufactured. but they're not effective. it's killing 200-300 million a year, translating to 3000 a day.

and here i am..worrying about exams. when victims of the south asia earthquake are struggling against the cold, homeless, penniless, getting hypothermia and all sorts of infectious diseases which i learn in school. victims of hurricanes and typhoons and mother nature struggling against all odds to survive.

HIV-positive children in africa. malaria-stricken villages in africa and india. tuberculosis infecting many worldwide. the big 3 "neglected" diseases.

and we have pharmaceutical companies not willing to invest in developing countries to provide them with the necessary vaccines and drug treatments because the drugs are just too expensive for them to make a profit.

signs pointing to some herbicides being effective in killing the parasite causing malaria, but the companies manufacturing herbicide not willing to change their product to a malaria-drug treatment, 'cos the market for it is just not comparable to the billions in the herbicide market.

so as renchun put it. they would rather save plants than humans.

how nice.

This girl posted at 1:50 AM