Tara C. Smith
Associate Professor, lab rat (microbiologist/infectious disease epidemiologist) and occasional blogger, full-time nerd.
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Posts by this author
May 18, 2007
So, Dave over at The World's Fair has started a coffee mug meme, suggesting that "...it's almost like it s an emblem of your character. As if the type of cup you use can offer insight into the sort of personality you are.
Or maybe not..."
He asks then:
1. Can you show us your coffee mug?
2. Can you…
May 17, 2007
I wrote several posts last year on the mumps outbreak here in Iowa. We didn't get hit with mumps this year, but there has been an ongoing outbreak in Canada, primarily in Nova Scotia. So how do I fit into this?
Most recently, mumps has been diagnosed in Toronto:
Canada's ongoing mumps outbreak…
May 17, 2007
There were a few comments in the vaccine creation post asking about HIV vaccines. I've not had the time to get back to them yet, but in lieu of my response (and since I'm not 100% up-to-date on all the HIV vaccine literature anyway) I'll offer up a new review from the latest issue of the New…
May 15, 2007
I'm in DC again at the American Institute of Biological Sciences meeting, hearing all about evolutionary biology and human health. It's been busy, but yesterday I ran into fellow sciencebloggers Chris Mooney (who was giving his "Framing science" talk along with Matt Nisbet, who I didn't have a…
May 14, 2007
Readers may have noticed that a re-vamped "Ask a Scienceblogger" has appeared, with prior questions and responses at Cognitive Daily and Thoughts from Kansas. Aetiology gets the current installment, discussing the question, "Why is it possible to create vaccines for some microbes and not others…
May 12, 2007
....or, where I impersonate PZ.
As PZ noted last month, he was tapped to moderate the science caucus at YearlyKos, featuring fellow Sciencebloggers Chris Mooney and Ed Brayton, along with Cosmic Variance's Sean Carroll. However, PZ had to go and get himself some other plans, and I was fortunate…
May 10, 2007
Last month I noted the story of Robert Daniels, a patient with drug-resistant tuberculosis who's been held in isolation in Arizona in order to prevent spread of the deadly pathogen. While some patient's rights advocates have been outraged, Mr. Daniels' treatment pales in comparison to what Mona at…
May 9, 2007
I've mentioned several times here at Aetiology that, when it comes to pandemic influenza preparedness, we need more than just vaccines specific for H5N1. Though this virus looks like a looming threat right now, we can't be 100% certain that it will actually cause the next global pandemic; while we…
May 9, 2007
I've been remiss in linking carnivals lately, but here are a few fresh this week:
Tangled Bank #79 at Epigenetics News
Pediatric Grand Rounds can be found at The Wait and The Wonder
And Grand Rounds is up over at The Blog that Ate Manhattan.
May 8, 2007
Smallpox is, without a doubt, the biggest success story in all of vaccination. The practice of variolation, or the purposeful inoculation of naïve individuals with material from scabs of smallpox victims, was practiced for years prior to Edward Jenner's substitution of cowpox for the smallpox…
May 3, 2007
Busy today and have family visiting from out of town, so I'll take a few minutes instead to highlight some fairly new blogs.
First I'll note that my friend and colleague over in the Biology department, John Logsdon, has a new blog: Sex, Genes, and Evolution. He's a real live evolutionary…
May 3, 2007
Over at Deep Sea News, Craig has a heartbreaking story about the death of his dog a year ago, and it's possible connection to the current pet food recall. I admittedly haven't been paying very close attention to all the updates on this. I have two small dogs of my own, a 10-year-old chihuahua and…
May 1, 2007
A few weeks back during the whole Egnor kerfuffle, I mentioned how important an understanding of evolutionary biology was to many areas of epidemiology, and specifically, for vaccine development and implementation. As one example, I brought up the phenomenon of serotype replacement, which can…
April 27, 2007
I wrote a post back in February about HIV's "Kitzmiller vs. Dover" trial. The trial was appealing the sentence of one Andre Chad Parenzee, a native of South Africa who'd been convicted in Australia back in 2004 of infecting one woman with HIV (and exposing two others). Parenzee knew of his HIV+…
April 27, 2007
Of all the vaccines in a child's repertoire, perhaps the most controversial is the vaccine against Hepatitis B virus. It's not because of concerns about the vaccine's safety necessarily; parents tend to be more worried about the MMR vaccine, since that has received so much press. But many parents…
April 26, 2007
If you've been reading Scienceblogs over the last 24 hours or so, you've probably seen reference to Shelley's legal issues regarding Wiley publishing and their accusation that her use of one panel of one figure of a scientific paper violated copyright. Well, after the story was featured at Boing…
April 26, 2007
As pointed out by Dale in the comments over at Orac's post on Duesberg and aneuploidy, Duesberg and fellow HIV "dissident" David Rasnick are marketing a new cancer detection system, AnuCyte Cancer detection system, based upon his aneuploidy-basis-of-cancer ideas. And guess who else is on the…
April 25, 2007
A few readers have asked me what I thought about HIV "dissident" Peter Duesberg's recent article in Scientific American, entitled Chromosomal Chaos and Cancer. Duesberg's cancer ideas--and his claim of novelty for researching how chromosomal abnormalities, rather than more simpler gene mutations,…
April 25, 2007
"Wet nursing," or the practice of allowing a woman other than the mother of a child to provide milk to an infant, has been practiced for millenia. Two hundred years ago, wet nursing was common for a variety of reasons. Upper-class families could hire a wet nurse to enable the mother to more…
April 24, 2007
Clark has a meta-carnival up, highlighting some of the most interesting posts from the first year of the Pediatric Grand Rounds Carnival. Talk about one-stop shopping!
April 24, 2007
Last summer, I mentioned that groups receiving federal funding were providing misleading information about abortion, including the unsupported statement that having an abortion increases the risk of development of breast cancer. As I noted, this "link" has been refuted by a number of analyses,…
April 12, 2007
It's difficult to believe that it's been over a year since I last wrote a post on the use of masks in the event of an influenza pandemic. Since then, there's been a virtual glut of information out there, and from what I've seen at least, people, businesses, organizations, government, etc.…
April 11, 2007
As I've mentioned on here previously, I recently moved. Now that I've painted every room in the house, I've been s-l-o-w-l-y unpacking things, and today I started on my non-essential books (aka, the ones I don't need on a day-to-day basis for classes). One of the boxes I dragged in from the…
April 11, 2007
Welcome to another edition of Tangled Bank, a round-up of the best science blogging of the past fortnight:
Top story--mammals and the KT event
Since the previous Tangled Bank, a few big stories hit the blogosphere. One that generated a lot of attention was a paper in Nature analyzing mammalian…
April 9, 2007
Just a reminder that Tangled Bank will be hosted here at Aetiology on Wednesday. Send your best science writing along me at aetiology AT gmail DOT com by Tuesday afternoon for inclusion.
April 6, 2007
So, this "why do you blog> meme is apparently making the rounds here at Scienceblogs and elsewhere. Reading the other responses, I realized this is something I've discussed in interviews and with friends and others, but I can't recall writing about here. So, in case anyone is interested in the…
April 3, 2007
I've given a few talks recently on pandemic influenza. This topic of isolation and/or quarantine hasn't come up frequently during the question-and-answer period, but almost every time I've had someone approach me after the talk to ask about it (since I mention it briefly during the presentation…
April 3, 2007
A few submissions have already rolled in for next week's Tangled Bank, hosted here at Aetiology. Send your best science writing along me at aetiology AT gmail DOT com by next Tuesday the 10th for inclusion in Wednesday's carnival.
April 1, 2007
Check this entry out first. More here and at Pharyngula.
March 30, 2007
I don't know if you've seen any of the posts here at Scienceblogs or Panda's Thumb about the Discovery Institute's newest protégé, Dr. Michael Egnor. A professor of neurosurgery at SUNY-Stony Brook, Dr. Egnor has been pontificating on how "Darwinism" has nothing to offer to medicine; and indeed…