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January 28, 2008
Geoerge Bush doesn't want government involved in climate change. Best done by voluntary measures, he says. Volunteers anyone? Guess not:
Global warming ranks far down the concerns of the world's biggest companies, despite world leaders' hopes that they will pioneer solutions to the impending…
January 28, 2008
Everyone knows it's flu season. We see the evidence in birds and people with H5N1. The Indian subcontinent is awash in birds with H5N1. Sometimes here we forget to remind people it is also flu season with the regular circulating subtypes, H1 and H3 and this is shaping up to be a predominantly H1…
January 27, 2008
There's no vaccine for the influenza subtype, H5N1, of most concern as the agent of the next pandemic but evidence exists that there is some cross-reactivity with existing seasonal vaccines (it's not clear how much if any, but it might not take much) or that previous vaccination with seasonal…
January 27, 2008
Rudolph "9/11" Giuliani is banking on the good Republicans in Florida to save his sorry ass in the primary. Given the gang of bottom feeders running in that Party's primary, you wonder how anyone could be stupid enough to vote in it, but there is ample evidence that they exist a-plenty in Florida.…
January 26, 2008
When you open a package delivered to your hotel room in the middle of the night and look inside to find the inside looking back at you it's probably time to go back to bed. After putting the contents in the fridge, of course:
A hotel guest in the Tasmanian city of Hobart was shocked when he…
January 25, 2008
The particles are smaller but the risks appear to be bigger. We're talking air pollution, here, folks. Not so long ago EPA regulations were on the basis of pretty large partiles, ten microns in size. Then a considerable body of work indicated that much smaller particulate matter, size around 2.5…
January 25, 2008
You'd think finding that there were some bird flu infections that went undetected would be bad news but it is actually good news. Not tremendous good news but better than no news, and that's unusual in the bird flu world. For some time the absence of mild or inapparent infections has been worrying…
January 24, 2008
Unlike Orac at Respectful Insolence, I'm not particularly obsessed with what he calls "woo": medical quackery and fraud. He has every reason to go bullshit over it, since it is potentially very dangerous stuff. But I have a limited supply of outrage and quackery just doesn't set me off. Usually.…
January 24, 2008
Predictable as clockwork, no sooner does the Director General of the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), M. Bernard Vallat tell us that things are looking up for bird flu then we have a massive outbreak threatening to devastate the poultry industry of India. So the poultry problem is…
January 23, 2008
This week sees the tenth anniversary of an important event in the American environmental movement, although few people know it (even some who were there had forgotten the date). In late January, 1998, a group of 32 environmental scientists, activists and scholars sat down together at the Wingspread…
January 23, 2008
In 2006 there were 115 confirmed cases (WHO case count) of H5N1 in humans with 79 deaths. In 2007 the figures are 86 cases and 59 deaths. Some have taken this as evidence H5N1 is less of a problem (latest data here). That's not how I read it, however. Seasonal flu numbers bounce around from year to…
January 22, 2008
Recently we posted on the EPA highly unusual (as in unprecedented) decision to reject Californian's new greenhouse gas regulations. Why did they do it? Good question and one the California Congressional delegation wanted an answer to. To whom did EPA talk about the regulations? Who advised them to…
January 21, 2008
A report late last night by Helen Branswell alerted me to a tabulation from a new tracking system WHO is putting into place to answer demands from a number of member states in the developing world that there be more transparency in how isolates of avian influenza (bird flu) submitted to WHO are…
January 21, 2008
We now know that Pakistan sold nuclear secrets to Libya and North Korea and who knows who else. The assumption was that the nuclear secrets were Pakistan's. AQ Khan, head of the Pakistani nuclear program gets the blame (or the credit; he is considered a national hero in Pakistan). Nuclear secrets…
January 21, 2008
We've complained enough about the unwise words of M. Vallat, Director General of the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE; see here and here). Nor was it the first time (May 2007).
What I didn't say was that whenever I hear an official like M. Vallat assure us that everything is stable, a…
January 20, 2008
The second leading cause of death in the 5 to 18 year old age group in the US is homicide. These are school aged children and the first thing that comes to mind are the big names like Columbine and Virginia Tech. But we know there are other school-related homicides that kill only one or two.…
January 20, 2008
The historical Jesus -- if there was a person of that name and generally received description -- was apparently a rich white guy. That's according to an authority, the Rev. Creflo Dollar of the World Changers Church International in College Park, Ga. He probably feels a kinship to Jesus, being a…
January 19, 2008
I saw a small news article about what seems to me a fairly silly piece in a bulletin called Communicable Diseases Intelligence:
Never mind the Tamiflu, authorities should be stockpiling thermometers in preparation for an influenza pandemic, public health specialists say.
The much-rehearsed public…
January 18, 2008
Another story about a "new" screening test, this one for prostate cancer, the most common cancer in the US. This one looks for a particular combination of variations in five genes. If a man has all five and a family history of prostate cancer then his risk of is increased by a factor of nine. The…
January 18, 2008
In 2005 the world's bird flu doctors got together and pooled their meager knowledge about the epidemiology and clinical features of this zoonotic disase that has so far infected 350 people and killed 217 of them (latest "official" figures via WHO). In March of 2007 they got together again in Turkey…
January 17, 2008
I think it's safe to say most Americans couldn't give a rat's ass about funding for physics research in the US. So even fewer will cry about a story in New Scientist that the American physics research effort is starting to buckle under the weight of budget cuts:
The reality of the US budget cuts to…
January 17, 2008
When we complained the other day about World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) Director General Bernard Vallat's ill-considered remarks about how stable H5N1 was and that earlier fears were "overblown" we were not alone. Mike Osterholm at CIDRAP issued a similar remonstrance and the latter was…
January 16, 2008
Another one of those stories about what is truly, a technological marvel: shrinking a gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer down to the size of an iPod, with the target size being that of a matchbox. Designed by MIT engineers, the device which can analyze the air for hazardous gases (and could be…
January 16, 2008
The host range of H5N1 is impressive: birds, of course; but also many mammals, including dogs, cats, stone martens, ferrets, mice, rats, humans. There are undoubtedly others. Cats are probably infected when they eat infected birds. Dogs? Not clear. Humans? Birds, other people on rare occasions.…
January 15, 2008
Today is Martin Luther King's birthday. It is a holiday in the US but has a universal meaning. Because I am powerfully moved by music I could only commemorate it with music. There are three songs in the two videos that follow. The first is the great Billie Holiday singing Strange Fruit. The "…
January 15, 2008
Most of us read the Federal Government pandemic flu plan as having two components: the first is procurement of vaccines and antivirals for stockpiles and sale to states at a discount; the second is to leave everything to the locals. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sees it differently and…
January 14, 2008
I'm a frustrated inventor. For years I've tried to market a set of wonderful ideas but can't seem to interest the Big Boys in Corporate America. Threatened, I guess. Here are a few of my inventions:
Popply seed toothpaste
The toilet bowl cleaner that turns the water yellow.
A fifteen digit…
January 14, 2008
The American Journal Constitution has a story today wondering if the notorious TB lawyer (see our posts here) that caused an international ruckus because he flew against medical advice (the evidence is a bit obscure on this point) may have been part of a CDC ploy to get increased funding for its TB…
January 13, 2008
I'm not sure who Professor David Alexander, the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, Scotland is (he's identified as an adviser to NAOA and the UK Government on pandemic flu) but I think he's got it right:
The public would put themselves at risk because they would not trust politicians to tell the…
January 13, 2008
The number of Americans who never go to a church, synogogue or mosque is at a record level -- 22%, according to a survey done for the Southern Baptist Convention. The attitude toward religion also isn't very friendly among these so-called "unchurched": 72% say the church is "full of hypocrites" and…