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Let me apologize in advance. This is a bit of a rant about scientific writing. It didn't start out that way, but as I hit the keyboard, Satan took control.
A new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS, or "penis" in the trade) is said to be reporting that bird flu comes…
The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) is the only one of the NIH institutes whose mission clearly has public health at its core. At least it was the only one. Now there are none, thanks to the narrow vision and autocratic management of its Bush appointed Director, Dr.…
While finishing drafting a series of posts on how Tamiflu resistant virus might spread as a result of intense use for influenza control, Melanie at Just a Bump in the Beltway posted this to remind us that drug resistant organisms spread for reasons much less useful than trying to stop people from…
The mainstream media (MSM) have covered the disgraceful treatment of US Iraq War veterans by the Army's Walter Reed Medical Center quite well and it has resulted in the firing of the medical center's commmander and the forced resignation of the Secretary of the Army, its civilian head. But before…
If the best you can say about the human bird flu vaccine made by Big Pharma's Sanofi Aventis SA is that it is "better than nothing," are you even correct about that?
The Food and Drug Administration is considering a recommendation from an outside panel of expert advisers that it approve the Sanofi…
In December some people were wondering what had happened to bird flu. In January it came back, but there was hope it wouldn't be as bad as last year and that some of the control measures were working. Now February is behind us and we are seeing resignation in some quarters that we haven't made as…
Since I am a professor I know better than most that professors can say stupid things (feel free to interpret that as self-referential paradox). My example du jour is Paul Campos, a law professor at the University of Colorado. In a nonsensical Commentary published by the Scripps Howard newspaper…
When Indonesia withdrew from the longstanding system whereby countries shared influenza virus with WHO there was widespread consternation in the public health community. The sharing system has been used for many years to determine the candidate strains for the following year's vaccine. The regular…
My SciBling Mike the Mad Biologist, who is an expert on antibiotic resistance, has an interesting post about an "epidemic" of commensal E. coli. It seems (if I understand his post correctly) that there is not the genetic range of E. coli lineages in humans as in animals. About 20% of our gut E.…
If the number of emails I've gotten about the new "market" in pandemic risk were buy orders, I'd be doing very well. A market in pandemic risk? Of course. Is this a great country, or what?
Is a bird flu pandemic coming? Health experts say there is no way to know, and especially no way to know when…
The new public health site, The Pump Handle (TPH), continues to produce top notch posts. The latest is by David Michaels, Professor and Associate Chairman in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services (and…
In the 1918 pandemic deaths occurred either from the usual secondary bacterial infections or the rapidly advancing acute respiratory distress syndrome. The latter, at least, seems also characteristic of the current human cases of H5N1, and in both the 1918 virus and the contemporary H5N1 there is…
When I started talking about this with friends and colleagues several months ago they thought I was quite crazy. But then they've thought that for a long time. It's mainly a source of amusement. I hope. Anyway. What I was talking about is using the online virtual world, Second Life, for public…
Sometimes my flu obsessed readers think no one is paying attention but it isn't true. Beneath the surface of a spasmodically and superficially interested mainstream media, various institutions are worrying and grappling with the enormity of the consequences of a pandemic. Colleges and universities…
A follow up (of sorts) to yesterday's post on the "new" strategy for preventing foodborne illness at the US Department of Agriculture. This one's about the new policy at the Food and Drug Administration:
The federal agency that's been front and center in warning the public about tainted spinach and…
The bird flu news hasn't been that good this week. New outbreaks in Afghanistan, Kuwait, Vietnam's previously quiet north, continuing infestations in Russia, and human cases in Egypt and Laos (although confusion over the Egyptian case) (see rundown in CEDRAP News here and here). How about some good…
I must really be losing it, because I just can't seem to understand the latest announcements from the the Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS), a regulatory division of the US Department of Agriculture. I've read it a bunch of times and I still don't understand it. I'm not saying it's bad (…
An official at the new Stockholm-based European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) is complaining about the flood of information about emerging diseases produced by the internet:
"A few years ago people were predicting that the internet and new technologies such as automated media…
Table top exercises are supposed to be realistic. I've taken part in them and I can tell you they are. So it's not surprising this realism, often including simulated notices and documents, can combine with the speed of information dissemination of the internet in ways that are, well, not surprising…
I've said before I quite like Christmas as a secular holiday. I might be an atheist, but I like the sense of generosity, the urging (albeit with commercial motives) to do something nice for those we care about and those we don't know, the emphasis on Peace on Earth and Goodwill towards All. Too bad…
The American Public Health Association is the organizational voice of American public health. I've been a member for almost 40 years and served on its Governing Council and on one of its top policy boards. Admittedly I've not been very active for the last number of years, especially as APHA has…
If you are attracted to leaving your body to science but still want to be buried au naturel, now you can have it both ways. Just bequeath yourself to the Anthropological Research Facility at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. There you can quietly decompose on their peaceful three acre…
In August of 2005, Dr. Oleg Kiselyov bravely predicted that a bird flu outbreak in Russia would fade away in two weeks:
A senior World Health Organization official said the bird flu epidemic in Russia will "die down completely in 10 to 15 days," and that bird flu vaccine for humans will start…
This has been going on for years but it doesn't make it more acceptable:
More than 3,000 Jewish settlement housing units are being built in the occupied West Bank where the Jewish population is growing steadily, Israel's anti-settlement watchdog Peace Now said Wednesday.
In its annual report on…
It is easy to lose track of the various outbreaks of bird flu in poultry since the first of the year, but WHO has a nice map to remind you:
Since it's a bit small in this format, I'll read it off for you: UK, Russia (various places), Hungary, Turkey, Pakistan, South Korea, Japan, Laos, Thailand,…
Here are two separate but related stories. One is about lunch boxes (h/t Melanie of Just a Bump in the Beltway fame). One is about cronyism and sucking up to business in the Bush Administration. First lunch boxes:
Story #1, lunchboxes:
In 2005, when government scientists tested 60 soft, vinyl…
Good idea, but is it new? When I read (hat tip easyhiker) that computer scientists at the University of Maryland were suggesting logging onto a social networking site as a useful adjunct to official information in the event of a pandemic, I thought this was not a new idea. The grandaddy/mama of…
Every time I post something here about those bastards at the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and their record company cronies I get a comment about how a teenie downloading music is a thief. Those poor movie producers and record companies! Mugging victims.
Look over on the left sidebar…
It is now clear someone will be punished for the bird flu debacle at Bernard Matthews turkey farm in the UK. Several hundred factory workers:
Around 130 workers at a Bernard Matthews site face being laid off in the wake of the bird flu outbreak, a union has reported.
The employees at Great…
Sarah Silverman is a comedienne on cable's Comedy Central, and although I haven't seen her new show, I've seen the trailers while watching The Daily Show. On one of them she is talking to school children and saying something like, "If they can put a man on the moon, they can put a man with AIDS on…