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Posts by this author
April 24, 2009
Friday April 24, 1:40 pm: AP and NYT reporting that Mexican authorities are saying that they have determined that 16 of 60 deaths are "swine flu," with 44 more being tested. They have yet to confirm whether it is the same as the California/Texas cases, but that's a bit irrelevant since either way…
April 24, 2009
Late yesterday we summarized a CDC media briefing about the developing investigation of cases of influenza in California and Texas with a previously unknown flu virus with genetic components from pigs ("swine flu", humans and birds). At the same time reports were surfacing of an especially virulent…
April 24, 2009
As an academic epidemiologist I routinely do NIH funded research involving human subjects. That means my university must adhere to very strict regulations and guidelines for the protection of research subjects. Approval and monitoring of the ethical conduct of research funded by the Department of…
April 23, 2009
This afternoon CDC held a "media availability" on the evolving swine flu cases. Evolving is an understatement. There are now more recognized cases, although not all cases are "new," with some cases retrospectively recognized now that more intense investigation is occurring. The total is now seven…
April 23, 2009
There are plenty of tragedies in this story about a plant manager sentenced to almost 6 years in prison for criminal conspiracy, covering up safety violations that killed a fork lift worker, and polluting the Delaware River. Fifty-nine year old John Prisque worked for Atlantic States Cast Iron Pipe…
April 22, 2009
Late yesterday afternoon a Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) Dispatch appeared on CDC's website that is unique in my experience. MMWR is usually heavily vetted and edited and nothing gets out of there fast. Indeed, in recent years, nothing at all got out of CDC very fast. And yet here is…
April 21, 2009
Every day, it seems, we find out that what we thought we knew about flu isn't the case. As one noted flu expert said to me once, "I knew much more about flu 20 years ago than I do now." So it's good to remember that we are also finding out a lot about flu that we never knew or even thought we knew…
April 20, 2009
When a small body of water, say a slow flowing creek or water in a drainage ditch, "goes septic" it starts to stink, often giving off a rotten egg odor (hydrogen sulfide, H2S). This isn't a sign that the water is polluted in the chemical sense of toxic materials. It means that so much organic…
April 19, 2009
The US national news is all about American journalist Roxana Saberi who has received an 8 year sentence in an Iranian prison for who knows what. There are plenty of places to read about it (CNN here). There aren't that many places to read about another Iranian miscarriage of justice affecting…
April 19, 2009
A kind reader (h/t geodef) has passed on to me a really juicy item from the National Catholic Reporter about Reiki. Since I'm not much interested in alternative medicine I don't really know what Reiki is, other than it involves using a Reiki therapist's hands to pass some kind of "life energy" into…
April 18, 2009
Scottish linguist Geoffrey Pullum's take-down in the Chronicle of Higher Education of the venerable Strunk and White Elements of Style has received some notoriety. It's Elements' 50th anniversary this month, but Pullum isn't celebrating in "50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice." I have a copy of…
April 17, 2009
This year's flu season isn't over, but it's almost over, and it was fairly typical and much better than last year, which was nasty. It began at the end of September but didn't take off until early January, peaking in mid Februrary. New cases are still appearing but much less frequently and they are…
April 16, 2009
The news of a new antiviral comes at a Press Conference. That could either mean a blockbuster breakthrough or an unwarranted device to get attention for some otherwise decent but not blockbuster science. Unfortunately, the news that "Experts Identify Compound That May Fight Bird Flu" is of the…
April 15, 2009
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) calls it a "reality check," meaning, in their terms, a check against the mistaken idea that there is more foodborne illness these days. That's one way to look at it. Another is a look that is reality based. The reality is that there is a tremendous health burden from…
April 14, 2009
If you have any of your clothes dry cleaned it's more than likely you are being exposed to a chlorinated solvent called PCE (for perchloroethylene aka perc aka tetrachloroethylene/tetrachloroethene). You may be lucky enough to also get some in your drinking water, too (which means you are also…
April 13, 2009
The idea that if the United States joins the rest of developed nations and finally adopts a universal health care system it will bankrupt itself is not based in reality. The reality is that the US spends a larger proportion of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) than any other developed nation. By far…
April 12, 2009
Fomites are inanimate objects that act as modes of transmission for infectious agents. You know. The doorknob or airplane armrest handled by someone who coughs on his hand or blows her nose. We know that some agents, like influenza viral particles, can remain viable (i.e., retain their ability to…
April 12, 2009
Newsweek's Editor, Jon Meacham, himself a "liberal Episcopalian" and author of a book on the religious views of the Founders (American Gospel), has raised a large cloud of dust with a Newsweek cover story, "The Decline and Fall of Christian America." I saw Chritopher Hitchens on TV refer to it as "…
April 11, 2009
The Weekly Toll is at once inspiring and heartwrenching, a record of unending and unnecessary death in America's workplaces. We've posted about it a couple of times in years past (here, here; read some of the entries), but not for a while. The Weekly Toll appeared for some years on Jordan Barab's…
April 10, 2009
When we started Effect Measure almost four and half years ago, there were few public health oriented blogs. One notable exception -- and an exceptional exception it was -- was blogger Jordan Barab's Confined Space. It wasn't just a health and safety blog. It was the health and safety blog. It was…
April 9, 2009
A tantalizing Reuters story yesterday called attention to the uptick in human bird flu cases in Egypt, the African country with more cases than any other (although far behind Asian countries like Indonesia). The observation prompting renewed expressions of concern are that new cases seem to be in…
April 8, 2009
A Reuters piece under the headline, "Biotechnology Boom Raises Security Fears: Mild Diseases Could Be Turned Into Deadly Ones, Experts Caution" we see the biotech Frankenstein/terrorist bogeyman raised once again by "experts" in the area at a scientific conference in Casablanca. The weekend…
April 7, 2009
I rarely do quack posts here. For one thing, this is an area ably covered by my Sciblings, chief among them Orac at Respectful Insolence (who likes to call it "woo"; I don't like the term; whatever you term it, it's quackery). For another, I'm not much interested in it. I do religion once a week on…
April 6, 2009
When an Ebola virus related lab accident in German occurred, special pathogens researchers girded themselves for bad news. Working with agents for which there is currently no treatment of vaccine requires high containment laboratories, often touted as being virtually fail safe. While engineering…
April 5, 2009
My public health colleague DemFromCT continues his public health interview series on the front page of DailyKos today, talking to Dr. Georges Benjamin, Executive Director of the American Public Health Association (APHA). Dem clearly likes Dr. Benjamin, which is not a surprise. He is a very likable…
April 5, 2009
So what do you do when a big organization insists on maintaining false information about you? You'd demand they remove it, right?
More than 100,000 people have recently downloaded "certificates of de-baptism" from the Internet to renounce their Christian faith.
[snip]
John Hunt, a 58-year-old from…
April 4, 2009
If you know your bugs you know that Blattella germanica and Periplaneta americana are cockroaches. They aren't the only cockroach species. In fact there are an estimated 4000 different kinds of cockroach, many of them living in fields, forests or jungles. Unless they are living in your hospital's…
April 3, 2009
If you had a prowler at your house you'd call the police. You'd want them to come. But what if they sent a SWAT Team, surrounded the house and blasted it from all sides. Not good. That seems to be something like the scenario for a response to a class of virulent influenza viruses. They trip the…
April 2, 2009
There has been more talk recently that our wastewater are loaded with pharmaceuticals. No surprise. People often dump out of date pills down the toilet, but much more important, they send them flushing in by excreting them. That's wastewater, though, not drinking water. They do get into drinking…
April 1, 2009
We have a small dog in our house. She came to us from Mrs. R.'s elderly mother, who had decided that a dog would be a good companion. She lived alone in the city. She also had low vision, and within weeks she had already fallen over the frisky little pup who was constantly under foot. As a public…