revere
Posts by this author
March 22, 2007
AP is carrying a distressing story that CDC is working with General Motors' OnStar service to speed provision of emergency responders to serious car accidents. What's distressing about it? My immediate reaction, which I believe is irrational but was natural and spontaneous: Now they'll know where…
March 22, 2007
[A series of posts explaining a paper on the mathematical modeling of the spread of antiviral resistance. Links to other posts in the series by clicking tags, "Math model series" or "Antiviral model series" under Categories, left sidebar. Preliminary post here. Table of contents at end of this post…
March 21, 2007
Indonesia has still to provide the WHO flu surveillance program with any H5N1 viral isolates since the first of the year. The issue is access to what will certainly be a scarce vaccine supply if a pandemic would start in the next five or or even ten years. The leading candidate for a pandemic…
March 21, 2007
[A series of posts explaining a paper on the mathematical modeling of the spread of antiviral resistance. Links to other posts in the series by clicking tags, "Math model series" or "Antiviral model series" under Categories, left sidebar. Preliminary post here. Table of contents at end of this post…
March 20, 2007
This is definitely a good news public health story. So why do I have that nagging feeling that in a year or two or a five we might be reporting it as one with unintended consequences?
I hope not. Here it is:
Mosquitoes genetically engineered to resist infection with a malaria parasite outbreed…
March 20, 2007
Tomorrow we begin a blog experiment, one we already judge has failed. In January Marc Lipsitch and his team at the Harvard School of Public Health published a splendid paper using a mathematical model to investigate the spread of antiviral resistance in the control of pandemic influenza. When we…
March 19, 2007
In the old days doctors traded clinical pearls and experience face to face at medical meetings. With the internet and online publication we sometimes forget how important those personal information exchanges can be and often still are. Canadian Press's Helen Branswell (still the world's best flu…
March 19, 2007
Anniversaries may be artificial milestones marking a distance on a road from the past, but they also remind us of where we are now: enmired in the fifth year of a hideous and vicious war, a war whose disastrous consequences were foreseen by many but disregarded by a compliant press and credulous…
March 18, 2007
Vaccine reactions are almost inevitable, and even when rare, if you are vaccinating hundreds of thousands or millions or tens of millions, you get them. Some are worse than others, and generalized vaccinia from a smallpox vaccination is one of the worst. Vaccinia is cowpox, not smallpox, but since…
March 18, 2007
The big news in the world of atheism this week is the admission by northern California congressman Pete Stark that he was a nontheist. In officially making his declaration of non faith, Stark has breached what many think of as the last religious taboo in American politics.
Mr Stark, who has served…
March 17, 2007
The UK's Health Protection Agency has a follow-up on their monitoring of people and places potentially contaminated with the extremely dangerous alpha-emitter, Polonium-210, the weapon used to kill Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko (see our posts here and here about Polonium-210, and here and…
March 16, 2007
Even Republican jerks like Texas's Senator John ("I never met a surge I didn't like") Cornyn can get it right sometimes. Law of Averages? I don't know, but I certainly approve of his promise to re-introduce the Federal Research Public Access Act (S.2695) which would require tax-payer funded…
March 16, 2007
In a paper in the Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry [JAAS] (in case you haven't read your latest issue), I learned that bird migration patterns in Europe are still kind of hazy, despite the long standing and often intense interest on the part of birders and conservationists. It's just not…
March 15, 2007
You probably don't know what PDUFA is (pronounced pah-doofah) but it's about to expire. Which is good. If they let expire. "They" are our friends in congress. PDUFA stands for the Prescription Drug User-Fee Act and it is an integral part of the FDA drug safety program. You know. The one that…
March 15, 2007
The problem of H5N1 contaminated food keeps coming up (see here and here). First it was, don't worry, stomach acid will kill it. Then it was, don't worry, you can't be infected through the intestinal tract. Then it was, don't worry, proper cooking kills the virus. The last of these is correct but…
March 14, 2007
It took four years, but the majority of Americans now realize the Iraq War is not winable. By roughly the same margins they want troops out of Iraq in a year or less and believe they were misled into the war. The only thing I wonder about is what took them so long. It didn't take the Prophet Daniel…
March 14, 2007
A few weeks ago an FDA advisory committee recommended approval of Sanofi-Aventis's prepandemic H5N1 vaccine, despite data that it required very large amounts of viral antigen (90 mcg) in two doses. At the time it seemed there were far better vaccines available or about to be available. What set…
March 13, 2007
Food safety again. Peanut butter, spinach, lettuce, cantaloupes, sprouts. That's just produce. There's the meat problem, too, from E. coli O157 and Salmonella to Mad Cow. Food production now involves long chains, often mixing ingredients from many sources and countries. Regulation of the food…
March 13, 2007
Be prepared, and be careful not to do
Your good deeds when there's no one watching you
If you're looking for adventure of a new and different kind
And you come across a Girl Scout who is similarly inclined
Don't be nervous, don't be flustered, don't be scared,
Be prepared
(Tom Lehrer, Be Prepared…
March 12, 2007
If anything should signal the dire shape of the US food safety problem it's FDA's announcement last week that it is extending the warning over Salmonella contaminated Peter Pan peanut butter to products bought as far back as October 2004. FDA warnings about Peter Pan peanut butter have been…
March 12, 2007
We've discussed the problem of an affordable vaccine for the developing world several times (here, here, here). We advocate ten to a dozen regional international vaccine institutes to make influenza vaccine at cost, license and patent free. Another suggestion has come from Dr. Carl Nathan from…
March 11, 2007
The CDC chief, Dr. Julie Gerberding was publicly spanked by a congressional panel this week. Not that she acknowledged it. As a good Bushie, she never admits fault. Like George W., she "understands" everybody's concern and she is concerned, too. About what? Morale at the very agency she runs, CDC.…
March 11, 2007
I don't believe in God, but I think I know how God would feel if he or she or it or they actually existed. Because we have a dog. Having a dog is like having your own small, pious believer. Unconditional love. Total dependence. True, obedience is just fair, but our dog worships us no matter how we…
March 10, 2007
Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) is in the news lately because its maker Merck is marketing a vaccine against it which they bill as the first anti-cancer vaccine. It may be effective against HPV, one of the main risk factors for cervical cancer, but it isn't the first cancer vaccine. The hepatitis…
March 9, 2007
Too much nutrient in wastewater can lead to serious water pollution. The nutrients act as food for micro-organisms and algae who use up dissolved oxygen in the water when they metabolize them. When oxygen levels go too low -- when the stream or river or pond "goes anaerobic" -- new micro-organisms…
March 9, 2007
Headlines in the last day: South Korea records seventh outbreak; Bird Flu Strikes Hanoi, Over 1,000 Chickens Culled; Bird flu erupts in Vietnam south; total 5 provinces infected; Bird flu found in 6 more areas of Afghanistan; Laos teenager dies from bird flu; Indonesian Villagers Hide Birds And…
March 8, 2007
We don't write much about quackery here. My SciBling colleagues like Orac at Respectful Insolence cover this. Sometimes I make an exception. This is one of those times. This is about magnet therapy, the belief that magnetic devices can cure you of many diseases or relieve you of symptoms. The…
March 8, 2007
The H5N1 in cats issue returns once again. We know felines, including big cats in zoos and domestic cats on city streets and backyards, can be infected with the virus. The assumption is they acquire it by eating infected birds, although we don't know the mode of transmission for sure. Now we have a…
March 7, 2007
Name brand drugs got more expensive last year. A lot more expensive.
Prices for the 200 brand-name drugs most commonly used by the U.S. elderly rose an average of 6.2 percent last year, almost twice as much as the rate of inflation, a report says.
Sanofi-Aventis SA increased the price of its…