Health
Category archives for Health
More on river blindness and related diseases
Posted by Greg Laden on February 28, 2013 We were talking about River Blindness. Trigger Warning: The video below is not for general consumption. Having said that you may want to watch it. The first part depicts the reactions of a handful of celebrities watching a series of shots depicting seven different related tropical diseases, and I must say, having seen all of…
A Test For River Blindness
Posted by Greg Laden on February 25, 2013 
River blindness, also called Onchocerciasis, is the result of the infection of several different eye tissues by the nematode Onchocerca volvulus. The bacterium Wolbachia pipientis lives symbiotically in the gut of the nematode, and escapes the small roundworm to cause an inflammatory response in human tissues, which results in damage to the tissue. These infections…
Should they allow pigs at the State Fair, and what if they do?
Posted by Greg Laden on August 22, 2012 The State Fair is about to start up here in Minnesota, and the top epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota has very clearly stated that the swine should be excluded this year in order to avoid swine to human transmission of a flu virus that has been showing up in increasing numbers lately. I’ve blogged…
Epogen, Procrit and Aranesp: ineffective, too expensive, and dangerous?
Posted by Greg Laden on July 19, 2012 The Washington Post has an article out (an “exclusive”) about three drugs used to treat anemia that their investigative reporting seems to show are less effective and more dangerous than people thought. Here’s the dramatic intro from the WP’s article: On the day Jim Lenox got his last injection, the frail 54-year-old cancer patient was…
The Cure for Everything
Posted by Greg Laden on May 26, 2012 
Timothy Caulfield’s book, The Cure For Everything: Untangling Twisted Messages about Health, Fitness, and Happiness, attempts to be a corrective in the area of personal heath (as in diet and exercise) management. From the publisher: “In The Cure for Everything, health-policy expert and fitness enthusiast Timothy Caulfield debunks the mythologies of the one-step health crazes,…
See? The Ammonia in Pink Slime is a Good Thing!
Posted by Greg Laden on April 23, 2012 It is not clear that Pink Slime has ever made anyone sick, but Tuna Scrapings certainly have. The difference? Chemical treatment of the former but not the latter, apparently.
Does sitting = death?
Posted by Greg Laden on April 20, 2012 There is a study that shows that people who sit more per day die sooner, despite other factors such as overall health. It is reported in The Atlantic and written up here.
Dining In The Dark: Hope for Retinal Disease
Posted by Greg Laden on March 19, 2012 Of the first dozen times or so that I ever saw Joel, my then future brother in law, I think we were in a restaurant a good four or five times. This was probably just a chance event, but there were a number of dinners and one lunch with the family that Joel and Alyssa…
Which works better, Acupuncture or Changa?
Posted by Greg Laden on December 13, 2011 Acupuncture is the ancient East Asian practice of poking people with needles in specific places and in specific ways in order to produce any one of a very wide range of results that could generally be classified as medicinal or health related. I don’t know much about it, but Wikipedia tells us:
Institutional research misconduct: Call for MMR scare inquiry
Posted by Greg Laden on November 13, 2011 The British Medical Journal has published an editorial calling for a Parliamentary investigation realted to Andrew Wakefield’s dishonesty:
Why isn’t there a malaria vaccine, and could there be one soon?
Posted by Greg Laden on October 18, 2011 There are several reasons why there is no vaccine for malaria, but the thing you might want to know is that malaria is not a virus, and it is not even a bacterium. It’s a protist. Generally speaking, there are not really vaccines for such organisms. One metastudy that looked specifically at Malaria had this…
What are the adverse effects of vaccines?
Posted by Greg Laden on October 6, 2011 A study incorporating over 12,000 prior peer reviewed publications, addressing the question of vaccine safety, is due for release by the National Academies of Science. The study attempts to understand adverse effects of vaccines and to assign causality to supposed negative outcomes. The 667 page study covers a large number of vaccines. And yes, it…
Anti-Vax Paranoic Police State Shenanigans: Skeptics visit AutismOne Conference
Posted by Greg Laden on May 31, 2011 You must go read the chilling and amusing account of Jamie Bernstein and Ken Reibel’s visit to the AutismOne Conference in the Chicago area. The story has all the elements. Horror: (that’s what they were forced to eat); Police Absurdity (though not brutality); Screeching Breathless Paranoia; Jenny McCarthy; and Chemical Castration. The story is told…
If your toddler falls from your window, will it necessarily die?
Posted by Greg Laden on May 29, 2011 No! A surprising number of toddlers who manage to get their way through a window opening to fall to the pavement below live. Something just over three thousand toddlers do this every year in the US.
The vaccination does make the baby cry, so why do it?
Posted by Greg Laden on May 2, 2011 It seems like every time I take Huxley (now 18 months old) to the doctor, the following things happen: 1) Somebody says “Well, he won’t need to get stuck with any needles for a long while now …. his next scheduled immunization is [insert phrase indicating 'a long time into the future']“; and 2) Huxley…
“Why is my poop green?”
Posted by Greg Laden on February 20, 2011 As a science blogger, I hear a lot of interesting questions, and this is one of the more interesting questions I’ve heard in a while. It is, I’m sure, rather disconcerting to notice that your feces are the color of a corroded penny, and not know why. Or, if your feces are the usual brown…
A Universal, One-Shot Flu Vaccine?
Posted by Greg Laden on February 8, 2011 A Better Grip: T Cells Strengthen Our Hand against Influenza Clinical Infectious Diseases, 52 (1), 8-9 DOI: 10.1093/cid/ciq018Flu vaccines are important and useful, but also relatively ineffective compared to many other vaccines. Immunity is imperfect, there are many ‘strains’ of influenza in a given year only some of which are addressed by the available vaccine…
I See Dead People Everywhere
Posted by Greg Laden on January 24, 2011 And most of them are boys with their toys
Milk allergy is the most common form of food allergy found in humans, but you don’t have one and neither does your baby
Posted by Greg Laden on January 20, 2011 Well, maybe, but probably not. Even though milk allergies in infants and very young toddlers are the most common food allergy, they still occur in only about 2.5 percent of the population in the US and other Western groups. For this reason, I was rather perplexed some months back when I encountered a group of…
The Genetics of Pesticide Resistant Bedbugs
Posted by Greg Laden on January 19, 2011 Bedbugs (Insects of the Cimicidae family, commonly Cimex lectularius) are annoying, might carry diseases (though this is unclear, so probably nothing importat1, and are apparently becoming more common in the US. Interestingly, there has been very little study done of their genetics. A new study just out in PLoS ONE looks at the bedbug genome…
Vaccination vs. Disease: Which is worse?
Posted by Greg Laden on January 17, 2011 It is very reasonable for a parent to worry about vaccines. For one thing, most of them involve sticking the baby or child with a sharp object, thus making the little one cry, and it would be abnormal to not have an automatic reaction to that. For another thing, they are drugs, in a sense.…
Don’t forget to get your flu shot
Posted by Greg Laden on January 13, 2011 According to the FluView report for the week ending January 1, influenza activity has picked up over the last few weeks in the United States. This increase in activity is typical of the start of flu season. The number of states reporting regional or widespread influenza activity increased. Although influenza activity can rise and fall…
How to make homeopathy work
Posted by Greg Laden on December 19, 2010 Homeopathy involves the acquisition of a substance often chosen because of its harmful nature (but sometimes for other reasons) followed by the dilution of that substance, or an extract of it, in water numerous times until the substance itself is essentially gone, but the memory of the substance is retained by the water. This water,…
How social networks predict epidemics
Posted by Greg Laden on September 22, 2010 You will recall my post: A genetic cause of rapid degeneration in some Alzheimer’s patients. Well, now it (the topic) is a Ted Video. But before you watch it, I need to take down Nicholas Christakis for saying the dumbest thing I’ve heard all week. No, Nicholas, it is not true in any way whatsoever…
A genetic cause of rapid degeneration in some Alzheimer’s patients
Posted by Greg Laden on September 16, 2010 A new study identifies a likely cause of rapid degeneration in some Alzheimer’s patients. The results of this study may lead to improved treatment. But first, let’s look at the method used in this study, because that may be almost as important as a development. And for this, we will use a sports analogy.
Science proves that your friends are more important than you!
Posted by Greg Laden on September 16, 2010 Editor’s Selection IconThe other day a friend of mine bumped into some news that concerned her. She could have asked a random person about this to find out more information, but there was a bit of information that came with the news indicating that I might know more than the average person about it. So,…
Health and well being
Posted by Greg Laden on September 4, 2010 The Vaccine-Autism Link has been ruled non-existent by a federal court. Details. Homeopathy still doesn’t work. Even a little. Very little. Corexit in Florida water supply? A health related blog post, Pushing towards acknowledging sex differences in physiology and treatment efficacy by the blogger known as Michelle, has been awarded the PLoS ONE Blog Pick…
New link between exercise and weight loss uncovered?
Posted by Greg Laden on August 27, 2010 A recent paper provides the groundwork to establish a way for exercise to diminish appetite. Or, more likely, for sedentary behavior to increase appetite.
Cardiovascular Disease Prevention Policy = Wider Rich/Poor Gap in Health
Posted by Greg Laden on August 27, 2010 The question is being asked, Will Cardiovascular Disease Prevention Widen Health Inequalities? in a Policy Forum essay in the OpenAccess Journal PLoS Medicine.
Congress: Fix this dumb stem cell ruling
Posted by Greg Laden on August 27, 2010 I just thought I’d pass on this letter from Rush Holt to Nancy Pelozi and Steny Hoyer:
, which is now available for the 
