revere
Posts by this author
November 26, 2007
What's the big deal about putting a few bad guys into "stressful" positions (assuming you know for sure they really are bad guys)? You call that torture? Waterboarding maybe is torture (we aren't sure about that yet; requires some study***), but stressful positions and a love tap or two? Give me a…
November 26, 2007
Indonesia's health minister, Siti Fadilah Supari, has answered the question whether the recently concluded Geneva summit on sharing of influenza viruses had produced sufficient agreement to induce that country to begin sharing again. Her answer seems to be "no":
Indonesia's health minister…
November 25, 2007
Today is the third blogiversary of Effect Measure. We started it on blogger as a whim in 2004 while Mrs. R. was making a Thanksgiving dinner. Since then there have been posts under the Effect Measure name by the Reveres every day, 365 days a year for three years, some 2300 in all. Since our move to…
November 25, 2007
The triumph of logic and the logic of Triumphalism:
November 24, 2007
As you will see from the account below the fold, the flu summit was a contentious and complicated affair. Only time will tell if it was even a qualified success, but there are reasons to be hopeful. Tip of the hat to Ed Hammond, one of the NGO participants, who provided the public health community…
November 24, 2007
Yesterday was the fourth and final day of the important Geneva summit on sharing flu virus isolates. Like premature news of Mark Twain's death, the Reuters report the meeting had failed was exaggerated. On the contrary, the summit appeared to have moved things forward. We have the latest, below.…
November 23, 2007
Rabia Balkhi Hospital (RBH) is an obstetrical hospital in Afghanistan that is one of the jewels in the crown of the US aid effort after the overthrow of the Taliban in 2002. Here's the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) website boast:
HHS activities have had an enormous impact on the…
November 23, 2007
The critical summit on sharing influenza viruses entered its third day (previous coverage here and links therein). The big media outlets covered the opening but not since. Fortunately, you can read about developments here (Day 2, here). Ed Hammond is there and is keeping us abreast of developments…
November 22, 2007
The Democrats are talking about universal health care. Good for them. Inevitably, though, their Party is accused of being big spenders. The contrast is always with the "fiscally conservative" Republicans. We all know (although some conveniently forget) that the Democrat, Clinton, left the country…
November 22, 2007
We have an on-the-ground view of the critical influenza virus sharing summit, provided by Ed Hammond in Geneva. I am promoting his comment thread notes from earlier today and a fuller account from late in the evening on Wednesday (Geneva time) sent me by email. It is clear that the atmosphere is…
November 21, 2007
Blog is short for weblog, originally a chronological set of postings about, well, about whatever. Blogs are/were journals that were published publicly but also allowed readers to comment, read, react and in some ways affect the content. How much dialog and two way communication there was depended…
November 21, 2007
The first day of the scheduled four day showdown in Geneva over sharing bird flu virus isolates is now over. What seems to have been accomplished is statements of opening positions. How moveable everyone is remains to be seen, as does whether there is an Alexander the Great around to cut the…
November 20, 2007
It's OK for storm victims to live in them, but don't let your employees enter them: FEMA. Who else?
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is barring employees from entering thousands of stored travel trailers over concerns about hazardous fumes, while more than 48,000 other trailers continue to…
November 20, 2007
If a rogue H5N1 virus easiy tansmissible between people is to develop, the most plausible spot for it to happen is Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous with a vast reservoir of infected poultry (and who knows what else) and more human cases (113) and more deaths (91) than any other country.…
November 19, 2007
Air pollution exists in two physical forms: as a gas (molecules) and as particles (usually heterogeneous agglomerations of huge numbers of molecules stuck together). Particles in the air are also called aerosols. Depending upon their size (really their aerodynamic behavior), their abundance and…
November 19, 2007
You become infected with West Nile Virus (WNV) when a mosquito vector bites you. As the mosquito sucks your blood (the protein meal makes it possible for her to ovulate), she replaces some of it with her saliva. The virus is in the saliva and if it finds a suitable cell to infect, we're off to the…
November 18, 2007
If I am going to defend a public health heretic, I'd better get my disclaimers out on the table at the outset. The tobacco habit is among the world's top public health threats and the purveyors of the deadly products that cause it have a lot to answer for. They belong in jail. As a public health…
November 18, 2007
The religious are all a-twitter these days about "the New Atheism," usually referring to polemics by the likes of Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens et al. I doubt most atheists have read these books (why should they?) and while I'd like to think they have converted many of the faithful, I rather doubt that…
November 17, 2007
I used to watch The Daily Show every night (thanks to TiVo). Now I don't because of the writers' strike. So I have to settle for this. Enjoy:
November 17, 2007
I wasn't at the Women's Health Fair and Symposium at Onandoga Community College in New York so I didn't hear all of what CDC Director Julie Gerberding said there. I just know what was reported in the Syracuse Post Standard. But I wasn't impressed:
"If I gave each of you $5,000 and said this is the…
November 16, 2007
The blogosphere is pretty crowded these days and one might think there's no need for less, not more. But in public health, that's not the case. There are a lot of Doctor/Medical blogs but not many public health blogs. So yesterday marked a significant milestone in the public health blogosphere, the…
November 16, 2007
It's been a while since we discussed the Avastin-Lucentis controversy, but the battle has been taken up by another blogger, Howard Brody at Hooked:
Quick overview--Genentech, the biotech firm, is maker of a very successful drug (brand name: Avastin) that is quite useful in colon cancer. The drug…
November 15, 2007
SciBling Bora (aka coturnix) at Blog Around the Clock has scored a major coup for Open Access publishing today. Fittingly the subject matter is a dinosaur, an apt symbol for the new nail in the coffin of traditional scientific publishing that the paper represents. Bora is the Online Community…
November 15, 2007
If you are in the "older age group" (as those of us in that group prefer to be called) you are at increased risk of dying from seasonal influenza (pandemic strains seem to target the young), but you are also less likely to be helped by a flu shot because you don't mount as fast and effective an…
November 14, 2007
Our SciBlings at The Intersection, Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum, remind us that pandemics aren't the only natural disaster. I'm kidding, of course. You knew there were others, right? Like Cyclone Sidr, practically on top of the people of Bangladesh. First story on CNN, right? I'm kidding of…
November 14, 2007
The academic world has lots of dark nooks and crannies not usually seen by the general public. One of them is the order in which authors are listed on a publication. If you have six people from two or three laboratories collaborating on an important paper, who will be the "senior author." And what…
November 14, 2007
The UK has a bird flu outbreak in turkeys. With any luck the government will do a better job of it than they did last time, although they are slashing funds for control of the problem, which doesn't make much sense. But at least we know about it and how serious it is or it isn't. We don't have to…
November 13, 2007
Being private isn't the same as being anonymous according to the Bush administration. So what does privacy mean, according to Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence?
Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguard people's private…
November 13, 2007
WalMart isn't my favorite store but they have shown one effective way to increase awareness about preparing for a pandemic or any other catastrophe that would interrupt supply chains and routine services. The store had a "free flu prep kit" lottery where entry involved filling out a survey about…
November 12, 2007
Here's a thought for "Veterans" Day: one out of nine people in the US is a veteran but one out of four homeless persons is a veteran. That's something for Americans to be proud of for sure. Support Our Troops is either just a slogan or they stop being worthy of support when they stop being cannon…