What is This World Coming to? 6

Food. We all need it. We all have our favorites. But what will be available for us to eat in the coming much-warmer world?

Like the topic of ‘climate change’, this sub-topic is just as broad a question and just as difficult to sort out.

My initial belief was that the tropics would probably become pretty uninhabitable. After all, at least one city in the Middle East has already come too-d****d-close to that with a temperature of 115°F with 50% humidity. Places that are NOT deserts could be even worse. Deserts at least cool off at night, because they don’t have any cloud cover to hold the heat in. But when the humidity rises, cloudiness increases, so that heat could be held close to the ground. Also, when humidity rises, that ‘drop-dead’ temperature is lowered. At least as low as 96°F.

But the more I’ve researched, the less sure I am of that. I recently spent a few days looking at the countries in Central America, because I figured they were definitely in the ‘heavily tropical’ part of the world. The thing is, Central America is pretty mountainous, so a lot of the land is actually ‘temperate’. The low-lying jungle might not be a place people would want to live, but the highlands could still be habitable.

Crops, on the other hand, might not like the new weather patterns that could come. Even without the global temperature rising, people living in those countries right now have trouble providing food for their families year after year. The rainy season and hurricanes can produce mud slides and flooding. If that doesn’t happen, they could lose their crops because of drought, like the one they’ve been suffering through the last few years.

Anthropologists believe the Mayan civilization crashed because of a severe drought. Now that area is facing another drought, and who knows how bad it will become? None of the articles I read mentioned wild fires like we’ve had in the western states, but will there come a time when Central American starts to burn?

These were my thoughts as I studied this particular area, looking for food crops that might not survive where they have been thriving and will need to be transplanted elsewhere. I don’t have any answers on that yet. The export crops grown here might be okay, as long as they can get enough water. I’ll have to research individual crops - for instance, bananas - in order to take a guess on their prognosis.

Still more to come!

Have a Heart

Heart transfers have been part of the medical scene for a good chunk of my life.

Donated hearts, along with other organs, used to be (and still are) ‘harvested’ from a donor, packed in ice and rushed to the recipient. But the waiting list is loooong, and many people die while waiting for a new heart.

Australian doctors have harvested a heart from the recently deceased - 20 minutes or less - placed the heart in a special fluid, resuscitated it, and kept it beating until it was placed in the recipient patient.

They have done this 3 times. The first 2 recipients were doing well, the most recent patient was still in intensive care after the surgery. The doctors stated that with this process, with the heart actively beating right up until placed in the new body, they know the heart is good, that it hasn’t deteriorated past the point of use.

When I mentioned this article to my husband, he made some comment about, ‘Dr Frankenstein must be living in Australia these days.’ Always ready to see the funny side.

I found this report a bit creepy, when I first read it. But after further reflection, it dawned on me that all donated hearts come from dead people. Nobody has a spare one they can donate while still alive. If anything, the brain dead person who is still breathing and heart is still pumping through artificial stimulation is slightly closer to being alive than the gruesomely decapitated person from the car accident that just happened on Interstate 2 (for example). So the idea lost its creepiness.

In the old method, the heart dies as soon as it is removed, and it remains dead until it is sewn into the new person and jolted back to life. In the new method, the heart still dies, but it is resuscitated and nourished until time to sew it in the new person. The patient still gets a formerly-dead heart, but it hasn’t been ‘dead’ for as long.

Okay, I was wrong. Thinking about it like that makes both ways creepy. But it works, and if it saves more lives without costing any extra lives, then I’m all for it.

I still think the ideal thing to do would be to take some cells from the patient who needs a new organ, put those cells in a nutrient bath and coax them into growing a new heart/liver/whatever for that patient. I would think that would avoid rejection, too. Maybe they’ll get to that, some day.

While I’m waiting, I’m making a list of the parts I’d like grown for me. Let’s see, both knees, right shoulder, pancreas, gall bladder... Since I’m making a list, is there anything you’d like to order?