Blogs / Discoblog

With a global pandemic afoot, the last thing many people want to do is put their hands in water that many other people have already touched, even if it happens to be holy water. But in Italy, where about 30 people have already died from swine flu, many Catholics will soon be able to get untainted holy water as part of church sacrament.

Catholic churches around Italy are scrapping their traditional water fonts in favor of new automatic, motion-activated holy water dispensers invented by Luciano Marabese.

BBC News reports:

The design of the dispenser is similar to a traditional water font, but with an infra-red light that reads the presence of a hand and squirts holy water onto the person’s fingers.

Mr Marabese says he is receiving hundreds of emails from all over the world requesting information about the product.

“Some people had stopped dipping their hand into the holy water font as they were afraid of infections,” he told Reuters.

“Some people even pretended to touch the water but they just touched the marble edge of the font.”

Afghanistan isn’t taking any chances with swine flu, either. In response to concerned zoo visitors, the predominantly Muslim country has been keeping its only pig under quarantine. The pig should be glad: It’s more likely it would catch “swine flu” from humans than the other way around.

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Image: flickr / DominusVobiscum

As medicine becomes super advanced, and super expensive, the super rich may evolve into a completely different species from everyone else, according to American futurologist Paul Saffo. He thinks medical technology such as replacement organs, specially tailored drugs, and genetic research tools to alert the moneybags of any possible hereditary health dangers, could all lead to a new class of rich, elite, and longer-living humans.

Here are Saffo’s thoughts on the advantages this would give the rich, as reported in the Guardian:

“I sometimes wonder if the very rich can live, on average, 20 years longer than the poor. That’s 20 more years of earning and saving. Think about wealth and power and the advantages that you pass on to your children.”

At the very least, they’ll be able to afford health care—and keep opposing it for the rest of is.

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Image: iStockphoto

A new device for people who have trouble swallowing pills looks like it might become more of a health hazard than a medical savior. The Remote Intelligent Drug Delivery System (RIDDS), the latest in pill technology, relies on electronic implants to dispense medication automatically or via a wireless medical network. Ultimately, RIDDS will have built-in sensors to monitor the biomarkers of a patient’s symptoms—such as pulse rate or blood oxygen level—and health care workers will use wireless control to monitor the patient and adjust the device or medication accordingly.

Researchers, however, warn that serious security risks are involved. Because current wireless communication technology is inherently vulnerable to hacking, the new device can be tampered with.

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