Careful What You Say

Careful what you write.

I received a telephone call from one of my sons today telling me that he had seen something I wrote about my pacemaker experience on Google while he was looking for some information on pacemakers. Of course I had to check it out and found that some of our postings on the PM Club site do make it to Google for whoever to read. Frankly, that information made me think that I had better be sure of any replies I make. Since I normally run some amount of time behind everyone else, all of you may know this already, but it was news to me.

Also, during my trip to Google I came across the message shown below about iPods. If I remember correctly someone was asking about this a few days ago. Based on the study by this student, I have to say an iPob and similar devices may put some pacemakers at risk.

Smitty


Saturday, May 12, 2007
Heart Stopping Music
According to a study carried out by Jay Thaker, a 17-year-old high school student, which was presented to a selection of heart specialists yesterday, close proximity to an iPod can trigger monitoring malfunctions in cardiac pacemakers due to electromagnetic interference.

Thaker, lead author on the heart-related study and a student at Okemos High School in Okemos, Michigan, revealed that iPod units positioned a mere 2 inches from the chests of patients fitted with a pacemaker caused electrical interference in 50 percent of them. Even when located around 18 inches from a patient's chest electrical interference was registered as disrupting the pacemaker's telemetry equipment, leading the implanted device to misinterpret the pace of the heart. In one test the pacemaker ceased to function completely.


3 Comments

Google is watching

by tman - 2007-11-02 04:11:37

yes, anything you post on a publicly viewable website will eventually be read by google, yahoo, and similar search engines. There's not much you can do about it...

Of course, anything that's in a "members only" section, like your private messages, cannot be searched unless Google figures out how to log into the site --- something they have publicly state that they will not try to do.

oh okay

by jessie - 2007-11-02 05:11:56

i would worry that mostly not other people but my children couldn't read it. i am sure this all scares them anyway. so that would really be my only concern but i will be careful for sure other than in private messages. jeesh nothing is sacred is it? jessie

Member only sections ...

by admin - 2007-11-03 10:11:04

To expand on tman's comment, I want to say that the member sections include chat, private messages, member directory and the photo gallery. Your name and email address is never released unless you include it in your posting.

Having seach engines "crawl" sites help others. For example, when you post a a question or comment others who are searching for information on the same topic will be happy to find your posting. It actually extends our support network.

I agree with Smitty in that you should not post something you do not want public like your real name, address or email address. However, search engines indexing our pages should not prevent you from posting.

Enjoy the site and stay invloved,

Blake

You know you're wired when...

You know the difference between hardware and software.

Member Quotes

In fact after the final "tweaks" of my pacemaker programming at the one year check up it is working so well that I forget I have it.