revere
Posts by this author
June 2, 2008
In a typically well informed and thoughtful commentary over at the mega-blog, DailyKos, DemFromCT reminds everyone that just because the media aren't talking about bird flu and pandemics and just because the candidates are arguing about the economy, the war and whose pastor is worse doesn't mean…
June 1, 2008
Republicans are supposed to be the tight fisted fiscal conservatives and Democrats the ones who think that problems can be solved by throwing federal money at it. In reality it is just the opposite, a triumph for Republican image makers but a disaster for the rest of us who have lived through a…
June 1, 2008
Most people are religious by default. Religion is a social custom inherited from their parents, like being Italian or Sudanese. Some people turn to religion for comfort or to help them cope with troubles. I'm not sure how this is different than using alcohol or drugs or Transcendental Meditation to…
May 31, 2008
Many years ago -- about 40 to be exact -- I was working as the only medical doctor in a bioengineering research laboratory in a famous technological university. A lot of what was done there involved speech synthesis (one of the first reading machines for the blind using text to speech recognition)…
May 30, 2008
The big climate change news isn't that there is now a consensus that humans are mostly likely driving it. That's not news at all, at least to anyone who isn't paying attention or isn't just mouthing Bush administration talking points. The big news is that the denier group just got significantly…
May 29, 2008
Earlier in the month there was a hilarious piece on Fox News (where else?) by hack lawyer turned hack commentator Steven Milloy trying to counter the extremely bad publicity one of his closest friends was getting. This close friend was a chemical, bisphenol A (BPA; see here and here) which just got…
May 28, 2008
Stories on the wires this weekend highlight a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) suggesting that some bird flu viruses are adapting to the human respiratory tract, thought to be a prelude to increased transmissibility and possibly ushering in a…
May 27, 2008
IEDs, or Improvised Explosive Devices are killing American soldiers in Iraq. In Massachusetts people are dying from more prosaic things: auto accidents, heart attacks, homicides and suicides. IEDs aren't on Death's Menu in Massachusetts. So naturally the Bush-Chertoff Department of Homeland…
May 26, 2008
The fifth Memorial Day of the Iraq War. I have no words. I'll give you this instead:
Priscilla Herdman is singing this 1971 song by Eric Bogle.
I feel like weeping.
For the Reveres. Memorial Day, 2008.
May 25, 2008
Until the middle of the last century the main victims of war were combatants. Since World War II the main victims of war are innocent civilians. Not just "collateral damage" (the euphemism to hide war crimes). Now there are "weapon systems" designed to be indiscriminate in their effect. The most…
May 25, 2008
Whether in the name of all that's decent or in the Name of God, Bring 'em Home:
May 24, 2008
Bangladesh now has its first confirmed human case of avian influenza. That's news. Maybe:
Bangladesh announced its first human case of bird flu on Friday in a 16-month-old baby boy, bringing the number of countries which have recorded human infections to 15. Avian Influenza has already spread…
May 23, 2008
If you aren't in the business of figuring out if a chemical is a health hazard you might never have heard of the EPA's IRIS (Integrated Risk Information System) database but suffice it to say it is a wealth of valuable information on the topic. Considered authoritative by many states and countries…
May 22, 2008
Over the years I've seen more than enough of the murderous destruction "the magic mineral, "asbestos, has caused in the lives of workers and their families. Exposure to asbestos causes a serious, often fatal, scarring of the lungs called asbestosis and also two different kinds of cancer of the…
May 21, 2008
Stephen Johnson is a career professional, now the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. He is reported to be very religious and to hold prayer meetings with select staff at the start of the day. Apparently he also takes "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's" seriously. Too bad…
May 20, 2008
When the Religious Right made a Big Deal that SpongeBob Pants was gay or was advancing the "Gay Agenda" I didn't pay much attention. First, my kids were grown and I didn't have the faintest idea who SpongeBob Pants was (actually I still don't). Second, the whole thing was just too ridiculous for…
May 19, 2008
It seems with every terrible natural disaster we have to say the same thing. Dead bodies aren't a public health risk:
Contrary to popular belief, dead bodies left from natural disasters such as the China earthquake and Myanmar cyclone are not a source of disease or a health threat to survivors, the…
May 18, 2008
Almost all stories in the news about H5N1 (bird flu) have some obligatory line in them, "It is believed that all or almost all human cases come from contact with infected poultry." This is like a mantra of many public health officials and I suspect some reporters have the requisite disclaimer as a…
May 18, 2008
A letter written by Albert Einstein to Jewish philosopher Eric Gutkind just sold at auction for $404,000. That's not the news, though. It's the contents of the letter that have surprised some, although it merely reveals what most of us already knew: he was an atheist. That's only pseudo-news, the…
May 17, 2008
It contaminates the water supplies of about 11 million people in 35 states. It is suspected of interfering with iodide cycling in a way that could suppress thyroid hormone, a hormone necessary for the proper development of the fetus. Its source is military bases and aerospace companies. The health…
May 16, 2008
At this moment I'm sitting in a Chicago O'Hare airport waiting room reading a news article on MSNBC's website telling me I am in more danger from breathing the air here in the terminal than I would be breathing the air on the airplane when it reaches cruising altitude. This was the conclusion from…
May 15, 2008
Last week WHO's flu maven, Keiji Fukuda, said what we and others have been saying for a long time. Flu scientists need to change their research ethics. The world of flu virology has developed a mandarinate that is impeding progress for its own benefit. And their bad behavior is enabled and imitated…
May 14, 2008
For all you climate change deniers out there dismayed at John McSame's apparent embrace of global warming, you have nothing to fear:
John McCain had the eager press lined up on this one for weeks. He was going to take a stand and differentiate himself from Bush by offering his solution to climate…
May 13, 2008
Second Life is a virtual reality site, superficially similar to some massive multiplayer role playing games one finds on the net (like World of Warcraft). But it's not a game but a social venue. I've tried it out and posted on or mentioned it several times (here, here, here and here). Second Life…
May 12, 2008
Suppose someone owned and managed business premises which had recently experienced a dangerous incident. They were also carrying out work there that was generally acknowledged by the industry to be risky. But when a government official came around they misrepresented the earlier incident and…
May 11, 2008
The subject of a recent post, rabies, put us in mind of another rare, invariably fatal neurodegenerative disease, Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease (CJD). There is now pretty good evidence that the outbreak of CJD in Europe since the 1990s is caused by the same agent that causes Bovine Spongiform…
May 11, 2008
Let's face it. Tolerance for other religions is bad for religion. As long as people only knew about their own religion (translation: their parents' religion) they didn't question it. As soon as they became aware there were a lot of religions and theirs only one among them, then the question of why…
May 10, 2008
We talk a fair amount about intellectual property issues here. When it comes to the free exchange of scientific information already paid for by taxpayers or the rapacious use of intellectual property laws by Big Pharma to price gouge the developed world and pillage the developing world the…
May 9, 2008
Last October (2007) a 46 year old Minnesota man died of rabies, the only known victim in the US last year. Rabies is a rare disease in the US because we have good veterinary services. Most animals in routine and regular contact with humans are vaccinated against the disease. But bats have become a…
May 8, 2008
We seem to be doing a lot of vaccination stuff here lately. It's an obvious public health topic, one that's in the news and (in some quarters) considered controversial. I'm a strong proponent of vaccination where it makes sense (which is in most of the instances where it is used) but that doesn't…