In the United Kingdom, ethicists are debating whether to allow men to volunteer to posthumously donate their sperm to strangers. That is, their sperm would be retrieved postmortem and used by persons unknown to them.

Advocates say it will help ease a shortage of sperm donors and meet a critical need in the same way as organ donation. They say it should be viewed as a similarly altruistic gesture. Skeptics ask who would pay for sperm retrieval and whether donors' families could veto their loved one's decision to be a dead donor.

Body of Knowledge

It's estimated that 1% to 5% of people have polymastia or polythelia: They possess an extra nipple. The extra nipple is typically small, may look more like a mole than a nipple and can appear anywhere on the body, though most often it appears somewhere on the front chest or abdomen. The nipples are generally not dangerous and are easily removed for cosmetic reasons, rather than health reasons.

Get Me That, Stat!

A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that between 2014 and 2018, nearly 40,000 injuries from electric scooter accidents were treated in the emergency room, an increase in the injury rate over that time of 222%. Injuries to the head and lower extremities were the most common injury sites, while fractures, contusions and abrasions were the most common injury types.

Counts

15: Percentage of American adults who are physically inactive, who do not even meet minimum exercise recommendations.

1 in 10: Number of premature deaths linked to physical inactivity.

Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Doc Talk

Olecranon bursitis: Inflammation of the olecranon, the outside point of the elbow. It can be caused by nothing more than repeated pressure while leaning and resting your upper-body weight on your elbows. Thus, its nickname: "student's elbow."

Phobia of the Week

Genuphobia: fear of knees.

Best Medicine

A man goes skiing. While getting off the ski lift at the top of a run, he stumbles and falls, and the following chair hits him in the head, rendering him unconscious. He wakes up in a hospital bed with a headache. He calls his health insurance carrier and describes what happened.

The insurance rep listens carefully and then declares nothing about his claim will be covered.

"Why not?" exclaims the man.

"You hit yourself in the head with a chair on a ski lift. You're an idiot. That?s a preexisting condition."

Observation

"Fresh air impoverishes the doctor." — Danish proverb

Medical History

This week in 1918, the first cases of Spanish influenza in the United States were reported at an Army hospital in Fort Riley, Kansas. What began with one soldier complaining of fever, sore throat and headache multiplied to more than 100 cases by noon. In a week, there were 500. That spring, 48 soldiers died at Fort Riley. No one identified the flu as cause of death because the strain had never before been seen. The virus quickly spread across the country, becoming the nation's worst infectious disease epidemic. More than 600,000 Americans died, and perhaps 40 million worldwide.

Ig Nobel Apprised

The Ig Nobel Prizes celebrate achievements that make people laugh and then think. They look at real science that's hard to take seriously, and even harder to ignore.

In 2003, the Ig Nobel Prize in medicine went to researchers at University College London for studies that showed the brains of London taxi drivers were more developed than those of the folks who generally used their services.

Curtain Calls

In 1951, 67-year-old Mary Hardy Reeser was found virtually cremated inside her otherwise-unaffected Florida apartment. Investigators determined that Reeser fell asleep while smoking, igniting her highly flammable acetate nightgown, housecoat and chair. All that was left was her left foot in an undamaged satin slipper, a portion of her skull and part of her spine.

To find out more about Scott LaFee and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: geralt at Pixabay