If you have been out of work for some time and have difficulty finding a job you can seek help from one of the Manpower Service Commission’s disablement resettlement officers (DROs). It may be that as a first step to helping you find a job, they will suggest that you apply (with their help) for a stay at one of the MSC’s rehabilitation centres, where you will be helped to establish a working routine and given advice about future employment. The next step may be to join a Training Opportunities course which will equip you with a special skill.
While you are doing these courses you will be given a tax-free living allowance, and your National Insurance record will be kept up to date by giving a credit of contributions.
REGISTERING AS DISABLED
Every handicapped person has to decide whether there is any advantage in being registered as a disabled person, or whether this might actually put off a prospective employer. There are advantages in being registered as disabled, and the more severely you are handicapped, the greater these advantages are likely to be. The registered disabled person can apply for sheltered employment and assistance with taxi fares to work if they are too severely handicapped to use public transport or drive themselves, for example. Employers of over 20 people are obliged by law to employ a quota of three per cent disabled people.
SHELTERED EMPLOYMENT
The DRO can help people who are too disabled to manage an ordinary job to find a job in sheltered employment. These jobs are available either through a government-sponsored company which provides work for nearly 8,000 people, or in a workshop run by a local authority or voluntary organization. Some local authorities employ people with epilepsy to work in parks and gardens; anyone doing such a job will be paid the full rate for it.
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February 25, 2011
WHEN EPILEPSY BECOMES A HANDICAP: EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES FINDING A JOB
February 20, 2011
DIABETES: PROBLEMS OF HIDDEN DIABETES; INJECTING INSULIN-MAKING CELLS
The Special Problem of “Hidden Diabetes”
Of the estimated 12 million Americans with Type II diabetes, at least half do not know that they are victims. If left untreated, life-threatening complications can result.
If you are over 40, overweight, or have relatives with diabetes, you should be checked by your doctor periodically. However, you should see your doctor immediately if you are thirsty and urinate excessively; tire easily; have blurred vision or cuts that are slow to heal; feel tingling, numbness, or cramps in your legs, feet, or fingers; or have frequent skin infections or itchy skin. These are all classic symptoms of diabetes.
Injecting Insulin-Making Cells
In September 1984, in one of the most promising advances, researchers at the University of Miami transplanted the insulin-making cells of the pancreas (called islets) into dogs with diabetes. Their disease was completely and permanently reversed. Human patients now are being prepared for these revolutionary experiments. If the scientists are successful, they will, in effect, have done a pancreas transplant without surgery – only an injection of cells into the patient. Experiments are being carried out at a dozen institutions. As of this writing, scientists are still struggling to make transplants work for a long time in humans.
Another promising method involves wrapping the insulin-making cells in plastic. The plastic has microscopic holes that allow small molecules to enter the space where the cells are. The small energy-containing molecules can seep in to feed the cells. But the tiny holes will not allow larger, cell-killing molecules to attack the insulin-producing cells.
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February 13, 2011
CANCER: WHAT CAUSES MALFUNCTION IN ONCOGENES AND TUMOUR SUPPRESSOR GENES?
It is clear that a number of crucial control elements called genes within the cell have to be altered before it becomes cancerous. What we have not yet said is how these alterations that produce the malfunctioning genes actually occur. A few of the processes that damage the genetic material are well understood, but most can only be described in very general terms. A small number of well-understood examples comes from the study of rare inherited cancers like retinoblastoma. Here it is easy to understand how the inheritance of an abnormal gene from parents can put the child at risk of developing a cancer. There are other examples of inherited cancer patterns. Perhaps the most closely studied is a condition (called familial polyposis coli) in which multiple growths occur in the bowel, many of them turning into cancers. Here again, the inheritance of an abnormal gene from parents puts the patient at risk of developing a cancer. However, we have already said that cancers that clearly run in families represent a small minority. Studying them has given important insights into how cancers develop but cannot tell us what happens for most common cancers where no clear family pattern exists. For these cancers it is likely that the oncogenes and tumour suppressor genes are damaged by factors present in the environment. There are very many chemicals which are known to damage DNA, our genetic material.
Such substances are usually referred to as mutagens (that is mutation-generating) and when they are capable of causing cancer they are called carcinogens (that is cancer-generating). We believe that exposure of normal cells to damaging substances in the environment produces the changes in oncogenes and tumour suppressor genes that lead on to the development of a cancer. We know that many of the environmental factors which appear to be associated with the development of cancers, each of which will be discussed in some detail in subsequent chapters, are capable of damaging DNA. We do not yet know which environmental factors cause consistent damage to particular oncogenes or whether the damage can (often) occur in many different oncogenes. Perhaps, when we do have this knowledge, the process of preventing cancer will become much simpler to plan and explain. For the time being, the new biology has provided us with an understanding of how cancers grow and what the essential targets for carcinogens are. It has not yet filled in all the gaps to explain step by step the link between cancer-causing substances in the environment and the development of the cancer in the patient.
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