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August 17, 2008
A recent letter on the worldwide prevalence of head lice in CDC's journal Emerging Infectious Diseases made me nostalgic for the good old days when our two kids were in daycare (they are both adults with children of their own in daycare now). In particular, I got to thinking about the days when I…
August 17, 2008
There are some things that cannot be undone. You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. You can't put the genie back in the bottle. You can't flush the Holy Spirit once you have been Baptized. No, wait!
Belief in God symbolically evaporated when more than a hundred atheists were "de-baptized"…
August 16, 2008
One of the effects of high gas prices is to encourage people to use bicycles. This also includes the police, where some jurisdictions are taking cops out of cruisers and putting them on foot or on bikes. Bike police (and bicycle messengers, people who use their bikes in crowded urban areas to…
August 15, 2008
A couple of days ago we discussed the murky questions surrounding the death of accused anthrax attacker Dr. Bruce Ivins. At the center of stipulating the cause and manner of death were the procedures for filling out the state of Maryland's death certificate by the medical examiner. Determining and…
August 14, 2008
The headline was kind of strange: Doctor pays for 'letting polio out of hospital'. It sounded like a hospital doctor had negligently let an infectious polio case out into the community. But in fact the doctor was the hero of the story:
A Samundri Tehsil Headquarters Hospital child specialist, who…
August 13, 2008
The Bush administration wants to slow walk worker protection regulations, even when required by law, through the use of additional layers of review by the Office of Management and Budget. We wrote about this recently here (and see Celeste Monforton's excellent work at The Pump Handle). But let's be…
August 12, 2008
We've argued before that the US biodefense laboratory effort -- whose planning principle seems to be based on "more" -- was making us less safe, not more safe. Whatever else you say about the anthrax attacks, they are a perfect illustration of this. The weapon and the culprit(s) came directly from…
August 11, 2008
Questions about the FBI's case against popping up like mushrooms after a rain. There are too many to address in just one post. Meryl Nass's site has cataloged a number of them and Glenn Greenwald's latest installment others. We've weighed in a couple of times (here and here) and now want to add…
August 10, 2008
There are 163 days left in the Bush administration and we can hope that there are that number -- or less -- left in the Gerberding era at CDC. Julie Gerberding is the CDC Director and her abrasive, brutal and incompetent management style have taken the agency that was the jewel in the crown of…
August 10, 2008
It's really hard to know what to say about the following clip. As a doctor I am appalled by it. It is the kind of preaching that leads to tragedy. It might seem like an extreme case, but I don't think it is. It shows a preacher telling his congregation doctors and medicine won't do them any good,…
August 9, 2008
Recently a relative was sent home from the hospital with her own oxygen supply. It wasn't a cylinder of compressed oxygen but an oxygen concentrator, a device that takes room air and removes a lot of the nitrogen by passing the air through a zeolite canister. These devices can supply 50 - 95%…
August 8, 2008
I've been looking at the documents deposited online by the Department of Justice making their case against Dr.Bruce E. Ivins, the Army scientist they allege is the lone anthrax attack culprit. My perusal of their case leaves a mixed impression. If their portrayal of his mental condition is at all…
August 7, 2008
The anthrax story just gets weirder and weirder. More than weird, some of it reeks. A circumstantial public case first via media leaks and now via a press conference by the Justice Department is being built against Bruce Ivins, the Army scientist who reportedly committed suicide as federal…
August 6, 2008
A curious paper on the 1918 flu pandemic appeared this month in CDC's journal, Emerging Infectious Diseases. It seemed provocative, at least on the surface. It claimed that the conventional wisdom underlying pandemic flu preparations was wrong. It's not the flu virus we should be defending…
August 5, 2008
The Health Care Renewal blog has made a business of chronicling the undreside of the American health care system: fraud, conflicts of interest by respected academics, bureaucratic incompetence and malfeasance. I do basic research and don't get involved in health care delivery so I only refer to…
August 4, 2008
The unfolding anthrax story may not unfold much because the government seems to be in a hurry to keep it folded. They claim -- not officially but through the news media -- to have found the nutjob who did it. He had opportunity, means and motive (he was a nutjob). Now he's dead and can't defend…
August 3, 2008
We have numerous examples of basic science that becomes unexpectedly useful and other examples of how veterinary science is useful to human health. Once you begin to understand how the world works it gives you tools that can be extended. The first stick used to knock a banana off a tree proved…
August 3, 2008
Birmingham, England is not a little country burg. The Greater Birmingham area has about a million people. It also has a city council to run the place and a computer web access monitoring system to help the people who run the people who run the place "control internet access." Not so unusual. Mrs. R…
August 2, 2008
A new article in the British scientific journal, The Lancet, suggests that seasonal influenza vaccines may not be effective in preventing community acquired pneumonia in people 65 years old and older. This is the group specially targeted by CDC for vaccination each year and, not coincidentally, an…
August 1, 2008
There's a mighty storm a brewin' in the occupational health world. It is always a marvel to us that no matter how jaded we think we are, there is always room for more indignation. It is the Bush administration's only form of renewable energy.
The issue first poked its head above water on July 8…
July 31, 2008
There's a tremendous amount of influenza A/H5N1 ("bird flu" virus) all over southeast asia and other areas where the virus is endemic in poultry. Where is this virus, exactly? We know it's in the infected birds and in their respiratory secretions and feces. We know it occasionally infects mammals (…
July 30, 2008
The FDA is saying they still aren't sure how over 1200 Salmonella stpaul cases resulted from food chain contamination but they are saying its from jalapeno peppers grown in Mexico. This from a press release July 25:
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is advising consumers that jalapeño and…
July 29, 2008
If you read the comments you know that in the last day or so Mrs. R. and I have had the excitement and anxiety of expecting a new grandchild. He is number three but the only thing that gets old about being a grand parent is the grand parent. The little guy is cute as a button, the mom (our daughter…
July 28, 2008
As we noted two days ago in a post about how the produce industry is now interested in tracking regulations they previously opposed after being whacked with billions of dollars in losses because of a protracted Salmonella outbreak whose source was presumably produce but couldn't be easily traced,…
July 27, 2008
The toughest time when losing something dear to you is the period after all the mourners go home and you feel really alone. But if you mourn the death of the Fourth Amendment, whether you are on the Right, the Left or are Unpolarized, you aren't alone -- yet:
July 27, 2008
Maybe it's my imagination, but the great desecration in cracker-gate died down more quickly than I would have imagined. That's some kind of internal imagining contradiction, I suppose, quite appropriate for talking about religious questions, which themselves seem to be endless sources of linguistic…
July 26, 2008
We've been saying this for a while. The produce industry has taken a big hit and their successful lobbying is one of the reasons. But it's not just their fault. It's also the fault of the Bush administration:
One of the worst outbreaks of foodborne illness in the U.S. is teaching the food industry…
July 25, 2008
A tragedy in Massachusetts is highlighting the terrible strain the housing crisis is taking on millions of former homeowners who are losing their homes:
The housing crunch has caused anguish and anxiety for millions of Americans. For Carlene Balderrama, a 53-year-old wife and mother, the pressure…
July 24, 2008
The headline said, "Vaccination plan puts health care workers first," but you had to read the article to find out who goes next: the military. This according to the Guidance on allocating and targeting pandemic influenza vaccine released yesterday by the US Department of Health and Human Services (…
July 23, 2008
Hurricane season is upon us (Hello, Dolly), so it's time to drag out the still heaving corpse of Hurricane Katrina. There was always this weird mismatch between Bush administration tales of how much aid was going to the victims and the pictures of forlorn, unaided and then outraged victims. Given…