Tag Archives: ecuador

Patient Privacy Should be Respected Abroad and Online

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Taking an unauthorized photo of a patient and posting it on Facebook is a giant no-no for health-care providers, who follow strict federal guidelines protecting patient privacy.

But what if the patient is a little girl in Ecuador receiving a vaccine from an American medical student, who’s in the country on a medical outreach trip? Although taking photos of patients in developing countries and posting them on the Web may not be illegal, it’s not ethical, say researchers from the University of Florida.

It’s long been a common practice for health care providers to snap photos while volunteering their time in developing countries, generally to bring back evidence of the conditions patients face there. But reporting in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, UF College of Medicine researchers say providers should treat patients’ privacy with the same reverence no matter where the care takes place. (more…)

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For Longer-Life, Disease-Free Roses, NC State Researchers Insert Celery Gene

A rose by any other name would smell … like celery?

North Carolina State University research intended to extend the “vase life” of roses inserts a gene from celery inside rose plants to help fight off botrytis, or petal blight, one of the rose’s major post-harvest diseases.

Some fungal pathogens, the bad guys that infect plants, produce a sugar alcohol called mannitol that interferes with the plant’s ability to block disease like petal blight, which produces wilty, mushy petals – an effect similar to what happens to lettuce when it’s been in the crisper too long. (more…)

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