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Posts by this author
June 8, 2007
We've written here about China's failure to share viral isolates, but we hope we've also made clear that many Chinese scientists have been forthcoming in sharing much other scientific information with colleagues in other countries about their experience with bird flu. A good example of interesting…
June 7, 2007
We need to celebrate our victories, small as some are. I learned from my SciBling, Grrl, over at Living the Scientific Life that Elsevier is abandoning their ill gotten gains as enablers of international arms merchants, a role we and many others posted on. Her summary is excellent. Here's some…
June 7, 2007
A survey of doctors specializing in the infectious diseases of children attending a conference showed over half weren't very worried about a bird flu pandemic. I guess they know something I don't. Or maybe I've been reading the wrong things. Things like this:
The H5N1 bird flu virus in Indonesia…
June 6, 2007
I don't usually do movie reviews here, much less reviews of movie reviews. But since I was pretty hard on Marc Siegel a year or two ago (I won't link to the posts since that would be just criticizing him all over again; they are on the old site), I'll take the time to say his movie review of…
June 6, 2007
Last November a WHO study "stated" there was evidence a genetic factor was at work in the susceptibility to H5N1 because it appeared an abnormally high number of reported clusters involved only blood relatives. At the time I expressed some polite skepticism (Not All in Our Genes). Whether the…
June 5, 2007
Many observers have known that politics has become an increasingly important part of CDC world. Now even the conventional media are noticing. From ABC News:.
The nation's first line of defense against these assaults, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is once again in the spotlight and…
June 5, 2007
I'm just about done with the TB incident. I've said what I had to say (here, here, here and here) about the incident itself and TB on a plane in general. The one thing left is the significance for pandemic flu prevention.
I don't think there is any significance for pandemic prevention because at…
June 4, 2007
This really gripes me.
A Michigan man has been fined $400 and given 40 hours of community service for accessing an open wireless Internet connection outside a coffee shop.
Under a little known state law against computer hackers, Sam Peterson II, of Cedar Springs, Mich., faced a felony charge after…
June 4, 2007
Most influenza subtypes are said to be diseases of birds, so it is somewhat surprising there hasn't been more study of poultry workers or veterinarians exposed to infected birds in the course of their work. A study by Gregory Gray and his team at , an epidemiologist at the Center for Emerging…
June 3, 2007
Pediatric Grand Rounds, a form of blog carnival for medical and health blogging, is now up over at Awesome Mom's site. Lots of good stuff and even something from EM linked there. If you are interested in children's health or pediatrics or just science in service of the community, stop by. Here's…
June 3, 2007
What do we know about transmission of tuberculosis on an airplane? Not much, apparently. There is very little literature on it and not a single case of active TB has ever been traced to an airplane contact. On the other hand, it isn't very easy to estimate the risks. The only way you can do it is…
June 3, 2007
The Economist, a right of center journal of news and opinion I find quite interesting (as do many other lefties), has noticed that atheism is big in the book market. Comparing Hitchen's book, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything with Francis Collins's The Language of God: A Scientist…
June 2, 2007
I'm going to defend the poor guy who flew on a commercial airliner against CDC advice. The one now in the National Jewish Hospital in Denver being treated for XDR-TB. Someone has to, so it might as well be me. He made a big mistake and the consequences are catastrophic for him and his family.…
June 1, 2007
The world's five decade influenza surveillance system can be added as more collateral damage to George W. Bush's Global War on Everybody he Doesn't Like:
Anti-US sentiment contributed to Indonesia's success in leading developing countries to push the U.N. health body into agreeing to change a 50-…
June 1, 2007
We know that the burden of mortality of seasonal influenza falls mainly on the older population but also can kill children and infants. In 2004 CDC started the Influenza-Associated Pediatric Mortality Surveillance System, itself part of a larger notifiable disease system. Its aim was to find out…
May 31, 2007
I'm not a lawyer and I don't play one on TV. But I think I know the difference between quarantine and isolation, and the widespread media reports that the Georgia resident with XDR-TB was the first person "quarantined" by the US government since 1963 didn't make sense. Quarantine means to segregate…
May 31, 2007
Readers here who try to get their neighbors to prep and run into a stone wall aren't alone.
It's tough to convince people they need to be prepared for disasters. It's even harder when they don't believe that the scenario you envision will ever happen.
Nevertheless, local governments in Hall County…
May 30, 2007
My wiki partner and fellow blogger Melanie Mattson (Just a Bump in the Beltway) alerted me to a whole new pile of crap about Bush's new Surgeon General nominee, James Holsinger, cardiologist and master of biblical studies (Melanie took me to task for saying that's a degree in "theology." I stand…
May 30, 2007
It was only last week we posted about XDR-TB. Yesterday CDC warned passengers on two international flights -- Air France 385, Atlanta to Paris on May 12 and Czech Air 104, Prague to Canada on May 24 -- they may have been infected by another passenger who had Extensively Drug Resistant TB (XDR-TB).…
May 29, 2007
It's not as if the Surgeon General was such an important post. The SG's mission is mainly to educate the public and advise the President. No big deal, really. And in fact the past SGs might as well have been invisible. Hell, they were invisible. No use of the position as a bully pulpit to educate…
May 29, 2007
Congress passed the supplemental spending bill last week and Bush signed it immediately. It was a terrible bill, both for what it contained and what it didn't. You all know what it contained: more money for this rotten war in Iraq. What it didn't contain was the paltry $650 million for pandemic…
May 28, 2007
The thread that Indonesia pulled when it demanded certain rights to vaccines made from a seed virus isolated within its national borders is threatening to unravel the fabric of the half century seasonal influenza surveillance system. At the core of the dispute is the question of whether there is…
May 28, 2007
Memorial Day in the United States, a day to remember 'The Fallen,' those who have died in the service of their country, their community, their families. Historically and by tradition The Fallen have been soldiers. But why? There are so many more. Firefighters, police, social workers, nurses,…
May 27, 2007
Just this month three prominent members of the flu science establishment warned their colleagues that predicting an influenza pandemic was not really possible (Taubenberger, Morens and Fauci, JAMA. 2007 May 9;297(18):2025-7). Not just the time frame is unpredictable, but also the subtype. H5N1 is…
May 27, 2007
You know atheism is making headway when it starts to elicit new, and more desperate, forms of push back. It's no longer possible burn atheists at the stake, at least not in the US, but you can tar and feather them with accusations that they are as bad as -- what? As bad as the intensely religious?…
May 26, 2007
After saying yesterday morning that China has not shared any of its human viral isolates, along comes an Associated Press report that two isolates were just sent and will shortly arrive at a WHO reference lab in the US. I'd love to say this demonstrates the power of Effect Measure, but . . . Anyway…
May 25, 2007
A hundred years ago Sir William Osler described acute pneumonia as "The Captain of the Men of Death," a phrase he remembered from John Bunyan's The Life and Death of Mr. Badman (the actual phrase is "Captain Consumption, with all his men of death"). In 17th century England it was indeed "…
May 25, 2007
A couple of days ago the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) suggested we may have turned a corner in the bird flu fight. Whenever I see something like that it sends a chill down my spine, because invariably within a few days things happen to put the lie to this eternally springing hope, and…
May 24, 2007
I like bananas. But not that much. So when I buy them I usually buy little ones, called baby bananas in the market although I don't like to think of myself as eating defenseless little underage bananas so I just think of them as bananas. Yesterday Mrs. R. and I went shopping and I saw these little…
May 24, 2007
Reuters Health has a short note on a survey of 169 nurses, doctors and other health care workers (HCWs in the jargon) about whether they would report for duty during a pandemic. It was done by Dr. Charlene Irvin of St. John Hospital and Medical Center in Detroit, Michigan. I don't know where it was…