'Butterfly child' given life-saving skin

This piece of news talks about Hassan, a boy who suffers from an odd genetic disease called junctional epidermolysis bullosa that leaves his skin fragile as a butterfly’s wing therefore the title of the news. This sickness means Hassan’s DNA lacks the instructions for sticking his epidermis to the dermis.

There was no cure, but a team of biologists specialising in gene therapy helped the family, and the parents, desperate because their child was going to die, approved the experimental therapy. They extracted from him a little bit of his skin and they injected a virus that inserted in Hassan’s DNA, the instructions to stick his epidermis to the dermis.

Nowadays, his skin is totally functional and there’s no sign of blistering.

Although this treatment is not currently available to the public, with some improves it could be a therapy that lasts a lifetime.

Personal opinion

From my point of view, science is making progress at full speed. Every day the world discovers and learns lots and lots of new things, and this is something amazing. Although, it could be good like new treatments or medicines, it could also be bad, like new weapons or bombs. But in this case, science has won and these scientists have probably discovered a cure for this illness.

I believe that maybe if this boy had been born to a different family, maybe he wouldn’t had survive, because nowadays there is still a lot of people who don’t believe in new science and refuse to try new treatments. Thanks to him and his family, science has taken a step forward and probably found a new solution to an illness.

Goosebumps

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-41914101

2nd of batxillerat

In this post I want to talk about how my second year of batxillerat is going. Maybe it's a little bit early to talk about it, but it already feels like there has been no summer, like if we hadn’t stopped. We started the first day so hard, and I thought well this year I know what is batxillerat, so I’m going to review everything we do every day, I’m going to be up to date, I will not leave till later what I can do at the time… Yes, well, that’s impossible. Maybe you can do it for the first week, but once you get the first exam you can say goodbye to your organization, because before you can summarize or revise whatever you did in class, you will have to do an essay, advance TdR, or study for another exam, so your perfect planning for the week is not plausible.

Since we started, we haven’t had a single week without an exam, maybe the two first weeks but from that point we have had an exam every week, if it’s not a subject it’s another, and besides we have to do homework, essays, and review what we’ve done in class. And yes, if we did all this just for one subject it will be fine, but no, all these things aren’t just for one but 9. Additionally, I’m not a robot; I’m only a human that needs to sleep, to eat and to have free time. When I don’t have volleyball training, I spend all the afternoon locked in my room studying, and doing all kind of school work. I need to socialise or I will freak out soon. I thank the universe that somehow we manage to go out every two weeks more or less because otherwise I would already be out of my mind.

I know that we are doing batxillerat because “we want to”, that we could drop out of school if “we want to”. But no, you have to keep studying and working hard if you want a proper life. And I’m tired, this is not what I want for my life, I don’t want to spend the next four or five years locked in my house, stressed because I will fail exams or I won’t deliver works on time. I want to live, I want to explore the world, I want to die satisfied with how my life has been.

I’m aware that I can’t change all this, that it’s hard because it has to be, so I’m going to get the best out of it, I’m going to keep working to improve my marks and above all, I will enjoy every moment I can.