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November 12, 2007
A year ago we posted this on November 11. We can't think of another way to say the same thing, so we'll just say it again the same way we did last year.
Alas:
Today is called Veterans Day in the United States, but everywhere else it is Remembrance Day. When we were young it celebrated the end of…
November 11, 2007
Time to return to a theme we have sounded on numerous occasions in the past three years. In a recent post we called for a renewed investment in our public health and social service infrastructure as the best strategy. The object is to harden local communities and make them more resilient to all…
November 11, 2007
With the Kentucky general election a day away, the administration of Governor Ernie Fletcher wasted not time getting the Ten Commandments posted on state property in the wake of a judge's ruling allowing it as part of a display of donated "historical documents" that included the Magna Carta and the…
November 10, 2007
CDC has just released current smoking prevalence data showing that about 21% of Americans smoke daily or some days on a regular basis. This number has not changed in three years, so we seem to have plateaued. Since everyone knows what a deadly habit smoking is, this is disturbing. The operative…
November 9, 2007
I'm seeing all sorts of ways to refer to Members of Congress (meaning mostly Representatives, although Senators are also Members of Congress). Congressman and Congresswoman are not gender neutral and are disappearing from the language. Congressperson? Ugh. Liberal blogs will often use "…
November 9, 2007
Influenza A/H5N1 (bird flu) bubbles away this year much as in past years and public health professionals continue to wait with bated breath for the other shoe to drop. It could happen this year, next year or not at all. That's the way the world is. Betting on "not at all" isn't considered prudent…
November 8, 2007
Suppose US agribusiness food animals were being fed a poison that killed a few tens of thousands of Americans a year. Would we want them to stop? Maybe we weren't sure but had more than ample grounds for suspicion. Would we want scientists and the government to be looking into it and maybe even…
November 8, 2007
Via the Clinician's Biosecurity Network Report we learn of a new study from the Webster St. Jude laboratory in Memphis showing that H5N1 can mutate to oseltamivir (Tamiflu) resistance without any loss in genetic fitness. Tamiflu resistance has been seen but infrequent and there was considerable…
November 7, 2007
I know there are readers here who will say this is the "price of freedom" or some such nonsense. But give me a break. The father-in-law of a Swede didn't want him to travel, so he dropped a dime on him to the FBI, saying he had links to al Qaeda:
When the husband refused to stay home, his father-in…
November 7, 2007
A pig and a hen are strolling along and they see a sign in a luncheonette window: Ham and Eggs, 99 cents. The hen says, wistfully, "Isn't it great the contribution we are making to the community?" The pig replies, "For you it's a contribution. For me it's total commitment." Now the pig may be…
November 6, 2007
We dwell a lot on the many unknowns about the bird flu H5N1 virus. What could make it easily transmissible between people? What determines what host it infects? What makes it so virulent? With the threat of a pandemic looming it can sometimes seem the virus is an especially, maybe even uniquely,…
November 6, 2007
When the emergency room gets a huge influx of cases in a disaster it's time for triage, the separation of the those most likely to need and benefit from immediate emergency care from those that can wait or can't be helped. In a mass casualty disaster the assumption is that triage should start…
November 5, 2007
If all mice look alike to you, it's probably because you're not a mouse (if you are, I'm surprised you are reading this blog). But how do mice recognize each other? It appears the lady tells the gent to piss off:
Scientists at the University of Liverpool have discovered that mice rely on a special…
November 5, 2007
I don't like to be a curmudgeon and I'm pretty tolerant when students write research papers that don't quite make professional grade. Writing papers may look easy -- you just have to report your results, right? -- but it isn't. Nor is designing a study or collecting the data. It takes time and…
November 4, 2007
Australia has a National Health System and, according to some of its doctors, it is crumbling. Aha, say the foes of American Universal Health Care, "I told you so." And I'll have to admit, they did. Fair is fair. So where is Australia's health system heading?
Australia's public health system is…
November 4, 2007
So many movies. So little time. What I needed was a guide to tell me what I can safely watch without putting my immortal soul in danger. And I've found just the thing: Movieguide: A Biblical Guide to Movies, Entertainment and Culture for Families. But to my horror, I've already seen some of the…
November 3, 2007
I've been to plenty of scientific meetings sponsored by federal agencies in the last several years where we have either had to do weird back door stuff just to have coffee breaks as part of the program or if we are sponsoring it and inviting federal scientists and staff they have to go off and have…
November 2, 2007
Medical education in the US is four grueling years on top of four years of undergraduate college education. The spectrum of topics is hugely wide and the depth of coverage hugely uneven. Some things are covered in ridiculous detail and others with breathtaking superficiality. And some things hardly…
November 2, 2007
Immigrants traditionally get blamed for a country's ills and historically they have been feared for their ability to bring disease as well. The recent cases of the traveling lawyer (and here, passim)and the Mexican businessman with TB raised concerns that tuberculosis would be brought to the US or…
November 1, 2007
In an Open Letter to the American Chemical Society my Scibling Janet Stemwedel at Adventures in Ethics and Science, an ACS member, asked several pointed questions about how the Society was running its publications. One of the flagship publications is Chemical & Engineering News, whose editor in…
November 1, 2007
I've just returned from a short trip to the Emiglia Romagna region of northern Italy. The area around Bologna (site of the world's first medical school) is said by most Italians to have the second best food in all of Italy (the best is usually "Grandma's house"). It also has chikungunya, an…
October 31, 2007
Pesticides are one of the few kinds of chemicals specially designed to kill living things that we intentionally put into our environment in high volume. A large class of pesticides are the organophosphates (OPs), agents that affect the normal process of nerve impulse transmission.
What we call…
October 31, 2007
I am a strong supporter of privacy and civil liberties. But I confess I don't get the opposition to this rule, just promulgated by FDA on an expedited basis, without going through public comment:
In a public health emergency, suspected victims would no longer have to give permission before…
October 30, 2007
And today, too. So they're keeping a list, but unlike Santa Claus they're not checking it twice. Or even once. The list is the US government's terrorist watch list that today -- like yesterday and the day before and tomorrow -- grew by over 500 names. The terrorists are either being created at…
October 30, 2007
Some of the best moments in a scientist's life come when things don't go as planned. Or rather, when the world tells you something you never suspected and weren't even looking for. Ah, those lucky folks at the University of Warwick:
The researchers were exploring whether release of ATP (an…
October 29, 2007
Bruce Schneier, the security guru at Wired's Danger Room blog, reminds us of something important:
It's not true that no one worries about terrorists attacking chemical plants, it's just that our politics seem to leave us unable to deal with the threat. (Wired)
The chemical security problem is as…
October 29, 2007
If you've heard of the disease distemper it may be because you had to get your dog vaccinated against it. Dog or canine distemper is caused by a measles-like virus, Canine Distemper Virus, but it doesn't just affect dogs. It is capable of jumping to other species and wiped out about 10% of the…
October 28, 2007
Idaho Republican Senator Larry Craig continues to wage his lonely and courageous effort to clear himself from charge his "wide stance" toilet habits led to the unjust accusation he was actually engaged in soliciting sex from a man in the next stall (who turned out to be an undercover police…
October 28, 2007
A Jewish website has an interesting critique of the new popularity of
the current spate of books on atheism (I refuse to call it the New
Atheism; there's nothing new, different or unusual about it except
that a lot of people are reading it). The argument is this: the
"militancy" of the new books is…
October 27, 2007
Puffer fish are notorious. Considerable delicacy in Japan (a taste adopted by some non-Japanese Foodies), they come with a side of risk: some puffer fish have the potent lethal toxins tetrodotoxin and/or saxitoxin, neurotoxins more than 1000 times the lethal potency of cyanide:
Symptoms start…