This Week In Health: Bionic Limbs Are Here

“This Week In Health” offers some highlights from the world of health and wellness that you may have missed this week:

• Fighting fire with fire? There’s been a promising development for treating skin cancer in virotherapy, in which viruses are reprogrammed to attack diseases. Researchers have had early success using a modified form of the herpes virus to treat skin cancer, even when the cancerous cells have spread throughout the body.
• Obesity rates continue to soar across the country. According to a new survey, it may not simply be a matter of mitigating weight with diet and exercise. Obesity seems to be tied to larger issues, as the survey indicated high correlations between being overweight and a poor sense of well-being in other factors, including purpose, social, financial, community and physical.
• No longer the stuff of science fiction, brain-controlled bionic limbs are not some near-future promise — they are already here. The hardware, which receives wirelessly transmitted signals from the brain, has already been introduced on a limited scale, and it’s only a matter of time.
• An American traveling from Liberia to New Jersey died of what was later confirmed to be Lassa Fever, a viral hemorrhagic similar to Ebola, but not as deadly or contagious. It does not pose a major public risk, experts say.

Image from Mad Max: Fury Road