My name is Rachel Ogdon and I am a freshman. I currently am in the Division of General Studies here at University of Illinois, and I am hoping to either get into the business school or become a communications major. I am taking this class because disease interests me. I am curious about how disease spreads and why there are certain diseases in certain places of the world, but not in others. I have never written a blog before or been a part of one so I am excited to see how this goes this semester and maybe even continue on blogging after this class ends.

These are some blogs that I found that I believe I can relate to this class.

http://lymedisease.org/ - This is a blog about people who have had lyme or known someone with lyme disease.

http://www.rarediseaseblogs.net/ - This is a blog about people who have diseases that are not common diseases.

http://www.virology.ws/ - This blog teaches people about different kinds of viral diseases.

One post that I found particularly interesting was from the blog about people who have uncommon diseases.

 http://www.rarediseaseblogs.net/category/rare-disease/

This post interested me greatly because it really shows how science and technology are improving so greatly that we can actually test infants before they are born to find out if they are going to have any rare diseases, which are almost always chronic diseases and can lead to there death. If they were to perfect this screening of babies with no problems, it could be extremely beneficial.

On the other hand, if they did it would be extremely expensive and therefore only wealthy people could use it, which I find unfair because everyone should get the chance to use the new technology that is being made to help everyone, not just wealthy people.