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October 26, 2007
On Monday President Bush asked for another $46 billion dollars to send down the rat hole of his Iraq and Afghanistan debacles. That makes just about $200 billion dollars for this fiscal year. Two hundred billion dollars. Congress has already ponied up almost half a trillion dollars. Half a trillion…
October 26, 2007
Two months ago Germany reported H5N1 in asymptomatic ducks and geese.
Now the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization is saying this may be
a sign that there is already a reservoir of hidden infection in
healthy domestic birds in Europe. The FAO points to a huge popuation
of chicken and waterfowl…
October 25, 2007
Gold salts have been used for a long time to treat arthritis, although how it worked or more pertinently, if it worked, was unclear. Injecting gold salts for inflamed and swollen rheumatic joints took weeks to work and often had nasty side effects: rashes, mouth ulcers, impaired kidney function and…
October 25, 2007
The "experts" have spoken to WHO and WHO has spoken to us: because of the march of science, there's been a large upswing in the estimates of how much vaccine the world could produce in a pandemic -- if such a vaccine existed and there was a way to deliver it. But if there was one and it could be…
October 24, 2007
CDC Director Julie Gerberding's draft testimony to be presented before a Senate committee was "eviscerated" by the Office of Management and Budget according to an AP story by Josef Hebert (hat tip MF). The missing pieces related to the potential health impacts of climate change:
Her testimony…
October 24, 2007
There's a line forming for the pandemic vaccine that doesn't yet exist. Sort of like a new Harry Potter book except it's not first come first served. Like a sinking ship, it's (pregnant) women and children first -- or among the first. The deployed military? Police, I understand. But deployed…
October 23, 2007
Two weeks ago we reported getting an anonymous email from within the fetid bowels of the American Chemical Society. We weren't the only ones. Apparently it was also sent to college librarians, ACS administrators and a science writing listserv. Now it is making its way onto more conventional media (…
October 23, 2007
If you have or have had small children you may be all too familiar with earaches. When our kids were small we felt as if we were single-handedly supporting the amoxicillin makers. A major cause of middle ear infection is the organism Streptococcus pneumoniae (S. pneumoniae), which sometimes it…
October 22, 2007
I like movies but I'm not a film buff. I have no reason why I find cinema's most famous scream interesting. But I do:
In case you haven't had enough, here's a Wilhelm scream compilation:
Just because.
October 22, 2007
Human infection with West Nile Virus (WNV) first made its appearance in the US in 1999 in, of all places, Queens, New York. Humans are an incidental host of the virus which circulates in small land based birds, passing between them via mosquitoes. It's hard to find a place to bite a bird if you are…
October 21, 2007
The biggest breakthrough in the treatment of tuberculosis was discovery of the antibiotic, streptomycin. It was isolated on October 19, 1943 by a graduate student, Albert Schatz, working in the laboratory of Selman Waksman. Waksman got the Nobel Prize for this in 1952. Schatz got the shaft. He sued…
October 21, 2007
Game Day. Don't pester God with petty Life and Death stuff. He's ready for some football!. And why not? Players on both sides pray to Him, credit Him with their touchdowns, sacks, interceptions. None ever blame Him for their Mistakes. It's all good stuff. What's not to like? Football's Biggest Fan…
October 20, 2007
The Erectile Dysfunction (ED) drugs already carry the required warnings we know from our misspent youth: Warning: you can go blind doing this. Okay, it says you may experience sudden loss of vision. Same thing. Now a new warning is being added: Warning: it might make you hard -- of hearing:
The…
October 19, 2007
I don't have fantasies involving 75 year old women. At least not yet. But I remember comedian Gary Shandling once remarking he knew he was getting old when Mrs. Beaver started to look good to him (as in Leave it to Beaver, the TV show, you knuckleheads). However there is one 75 year old that could…
October 19, 2007
The President vetoes health care for kids, the Congress almost overrides it but not quite, and the American Academy for Pediatrics says the next likely pandemic flu bug, influenza A/H5N1, targets children and is being overlooked as the country whistles past the pandemic graveyard:
"Right now, we…
October 18, 2007
I suppose this falls in the "It Can't Happen Here!" department. The "here" is the United States. "There" is Ireland, where the government has access to a wide range of personal financial information. Just for good purposes, you understand. Maybe as part of the Global War on Terror? Whatever. Good…
October 18, 2007
Almost everyone now seems to think the Iraq debacle was, well, a debacle. Many of us thought invading Iraq was a terrible idea to begin with. Others are silent on that issue (or approved) but think it was carried out poorly. No planning. Failure to plan, however, is a hallmark of the Bush…
October 17, 2007
There are over sixty blogs under the Scienceblogs umbrella. There is an impression we are all "progressives" (aka left-leaning) and must agree on matters social and political. While we probably are more to the left than the average (we are reality-based and rational, after all) there is a wide…
October 17, 2007
In the first part of this two parter we summarized some biology background to a new paper that appeared online ahead of print in the FASEB Journal, Yuo et al., "Avian influenza receptor expression in H5N1-infected and noninfected human tissues." The paper addresses an important gap in our knowledge…
October 16, 2007
The US bioterrorism program has claimed another victim. Not from a lab accident. Not from an attack. But from a ridiculous and mindless application of regulations meant to protect us from malefactors but which have instead punished scientists who may (or may not) have made missteps in this new…
October 15, 2007
The need for better information about the science of avian influenza is urgent. But science is a slow process, or at least slow relative to an urgent time scale, even in times of rapid advances in technology. Even so, while we are waiting for the other shoe to drop, we continue to learn and unlearn…
October 15, 2007
[Today is Blog Action Day, where bloggers of all political stripes and subject interest are encouraged to put up a post on an environmental topic. Here is the second of two.]]
The January 2005 good news press release from the DuPont company was not exactly "the gospel truth." No, not exactly.…
October 15, 2007
[Today is Blog Action Day, where bloggers of all political stripes and subject interest are encouraged to put up a post on an environmental topic. Here is the first of two.]
Maryland and its Chesapeake Bay have a water pollution problem. The size of the problem is not chickenshit, either. Or rather…
October 14, 2007
ScienceBlogs likes to take on quacks. Orac, over at Respectful Insolence, does it every Friday and does it well. It's a good project and I'm not against it. But there are a lot of quacks around that aren't called quacks. They have corporate suits and research departments. And advertising and…
October 14, 2007
It's no secret atheists have an image problem in the US. That seems to be improving. What isn't improving is the public's view of Christianity. Young folks look around them and get the message. Christianity is a religion. Just like other religions. And that isn't such a good recommendation. The…
October 13, 2007
This is a weird story. It's about a dentist who has claimed he doesn't have to file taxes because he's "Ambassador and Citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven under its King Jesus the Christ" and therefore has diplomatic immunity from federal jurisdiction. That's pretty nutty and this guy is also a…
October 12, 2007
We've written before about the disgraceful behavior of the American Chemical Society regarding its attempts to scuttle Open Access publishing in taxpayer supported science (see also here and here). To recap, taxpayers have paid for research once through research grants, usually from the National…
October 12, 2007
Interesting paper from McAuley et al. (St. Jude's) on the PB1-F2 protein produced by an alternative reading frame on the PB1 gene of the influenza A virus. Most of you know that genes encode proteins via a three letter code. If you read the sequence of three letters by starting one letter earlier…
October 11, 2007
There are a lot of medical schools in the US (126 regular and 28 osteopathic schools), and you probably thought there must be a lot of schools of public health, too. It's true there are a lot more now than there used to be, but even with recent additions there are only 39 schools accredited by the…
October 11, 2007
Most people act locally, even if their behavior has a global appearance. Like birds. Starlings are a case in point. In many locales they can be seen swarming to roosting sites, huge clouds of them wheeling an gyrating at dusk before settling into trees or on buildings. If attacked, the swarm splits…