The Pros And Cons Of Potassium

In the early 1900’s, the discovery of a luminescent material, radium, arrived on the scene to the delight of a fascinated and eager public. At first, it seemed to be a miracle remedy, not just harmless but even beneficial. However, when a multitude of watch dial painters were exposed to this substance on an extremely consistent basis, the negative effects began bubbling to the surface. These “Radium Girls” were unknowingly consuming a potentially lethal substance and would be the first victims of radium poisoning and radioactivity. Not many people knew about the dangers of radioactive substances or radium poisoning and many others had made judgements that were clouded by the perfection of the glowing sensation. In spite of this, the horrific afflictions that the Radium Girls endured helped shift the public perspective of radium from “wonder drug” to “pitiless poison” and started the country on a path to regulating the handling of radioactive

Potassium in the human body is largely located in the cells as the major cation of the intracellular fluid. There is also a small amount of potassium in the

5. Angels of mercy medical professionals will kill their patients for financial gain, or just because they can, or they feel like they are helping their patients by getting rid of the pain or sickness.

Some physicians are using a lethal combination of drugs and or euthanasia on patients with or without their consensus. Euthanasia/active euthanasia (sometimes called “mercy killing”) occurs when a person, usually a physician or nurse, performs an act (e.g., administering a lethal injection) to end a patient’s life. Additional descriptors for euthanasia include “voluntary” (i.e., the patient requests euthanasia) (tcmd/euthanasia/2009).

The story of radium girls has to begin with the discovery of radium in 1898 by

In the early 1970s, Silkwood worked as a lab analyst in an Oklahoma Kerr-McGee plant which manufactured plutonium pins used as fuel for nuclear reactors (The Karen Silkwood Story, 2004).. Plutonium, a radioactive chemical element, is known to be highly toxic and carcinogenic. Silkwood, an elected union official and outspoken critic of Kerr-McGee’s health and safety practices, began collecting and recording information to substantiate her charges that employees at the plant were dangerously exposed to toxic chemicals. In early November 1974, Silkwood was

When you stop to think about the issue of active killing, you have to wonder why anyone would want to die in the first place. This is a practice that had been going on for years in many cultures. Not to say it was legal or the moral thing to do, but many people at times felt that they had the right to decide to die. Some people don’t really want to commit suicide or they are at a point in life that they cannot do so themselves so they seek out a medical person to assist them in dying. The ruling

An article posted in CNN talked about a German nurse, Niels Hoegel, was arrested in 2015 after being convicted of killing six people (Schmidt & Shubert, 2017). He attempted to kill his patients by lethal injection. Police suspected Hoegel had killed over thirty-six patients in Oldenburg, Germany between 1999 and 2001. They also suspect him of committing the same crime in a different hospital in Delmenhorst; here he is assumed for murdering forty-eight patients. The authorities say that the number of patients killed may be higher, but the total number cannot be determined due to some possible victims being cremated. In hearing in the past, Hoegel has admitted to injecting patients with drugs that causes them to have heart failure so he can try and revive them. He claims that it was euphoric when he could revive them, but devastated when he could not. Police say that this is one of the country’s worst cases of serial killing ever.

Potassium is a mineral that is needed for the body to function properly. It was first discovered in 1807 by Humphry Davy. It is important for both cellular and electrical function. Potassium is an important electrolyte in the human body. It helps control the amount of water in the human body, and help maintain a healthy pH level. Electrolytes are lost through sweat, so it is important always have a source potassium during or after physical activity. Potassium is also important for the balance of blood pressure. It helps lower your blood pressure, along with sodium. Even though potassium helps lower your blood pressure, there are other things that affect it.

Whether murder is done in a peaceful, non painful way or in a very gruesome, unimaginable way, it is still considered murder. Physicians have no way of knowing ‘what is best for the patient’ especially if that patient’s terminal illness prevents them from speaking.

Even though, mercy killing helps the victim to overcome the never ending pain to reach the death bed but in the modern world is no longer valid. Most of the developed nations find medicine to reduce or heal the soul taking pain. In the advanced medical world following the conventional way to killing the person is merely a murder.

The first element the Curies discovered was called polonium, which contained a unstable nucleus. Yet she felt there was something more powerful still trapped in the pitchblende. On December 26, the Curies announced they had found another element. This was radium! Sadly, other scientists wouldn't believe them because they didn’t have any proof. So for the next four years Marie toiled day and night in a cold and damp shed to get a piece of pure radium from a ton, as in 2000 pounds, of pitchblende. Finally, in 1902, Marie produced one-tenth of gram of pure radium. In November, 1903, Curies along with Antoine

Curie thus began studying uranium radiation and made it her doctoral thesis. With the aid of an electrometer built by Pierre, Marie measured the strength of the radiation emitted form uranium compounds and found it proportional to the uranium content, constant over a long period of time and influenced by external conditions. She detected a similar immutable radiation in the compounds of thorium. While checking these results, she made the discovery that uranium pitchblende and the mineral chalcolite emitted four times as much radiation as their uranium content. She realized that unknown elements, even more radioactive then uranium must be present.

     It was not easy for Marie and Pierre to convince the science community of their new findings. Marie succeeded in separating the radium from the barium, but it wasn't easy. She had to treat very large amounts of pitchblende, but she had plenty of pitchblende to use. (The Curie's

Potassium is crucial to heart function, important for normal digestive and muscular function. It is the primary positive ion (cation) found inside body cells that it is essential for normal cell function. The proper function of the body requires 8% electrolytes in the bones,90% in skin intracellular fluid and 2% in extracellular fluid. Buttarro, et. al., (2017) mentioned that the human body average potassium is about 50 mEq/kg and normal blood potassium level is 3.5 - 5.0 milliEquivalents/liter (mEq/L). The decrease in potassium level is known as Hypokalemia; it profoundly affects the nervous system and heart, and when extreme may lead to sever complication or death (Buttarro et. al., 2017). Hypokalemia is a possible life-threatening imbalance that in some cases are acquired through inducing drugs (iatrogenic), genetic, endocrine, vascular and renal disorders (Butarro et. al.,