jjablkowski's blog

September 2018 marked the 20th anniversary of the World Health Organization’s report recognizing familial hypercholesterolemia (FH) as an important global public health issue.[1] FH results in life-long elevations in low density lipoprotein cholesterol and increased risk for cardiovascular disease, and affects one in 250 individuals.[2] It is among the most common inherited diseases to be encountered by clinicians; however, 20 years after the WHO’s report, FH remains underdiagnosed and undertreated in most of the world,[3] including British Columbia.[4]

In 1828 it took 8 months for the young doctor William Fraser Tolmie (1812–1886) to sail from Scotland to the Pacific Northwest to assume his combined medical and fur-trading position with the Hudson’s Bay Company. Now NASA is planning to send a group of astronauts to Mars—a trip that may also take about 8 months. The big difference will be that instead of being tossed around on the ocean, the astronauts will be flying at supersonic speeds through space in weightlessness.

Can lobsters feel pain? The government of Switzerland seems to have decided that, yes, they can. It recently passed a law that lobsters have to be stunned or killed before being placed into boiling water.

Recently Cam Levins from Black Creek, BC, crossed the finish line of the Toronto Waterfront Marathon in 2 hours, 9 minutes, and 25 seconds. He broke the previous record held by Canadian Jerome Drayton, set 43 years ago in Japan in 1975 at 2:10:09.

This year the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month marked the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War. It all started on 28 June 1914 with a sniper bullet that killed the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria during his visit to Serbia. Like dominos falling, Austria-Hungary, Germany, Russia, France, Britain along with Canada entered into war within weeks, and the United States entering the fight later. All of this happened well before I was born, but my then 20-year-old father served as a sublieutenant of horse artillery in the Hungarian Army.