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April 18, 2008
Pork plant in illness probe wins worker safety award
Safety award to Massey mine where two miners were killed Â
First, I thought these were bad April Fools' jokes or maybe an article from the ONION.  But no, these headlines are no joke. A pork packing house in Austin, MN, a…
April 18, 2008
I don't normally blog on religion, but there has been an jump in foolish writing coming from the wacky end of the religious spectrum. On the top of the list are folks like Vox Day and Geisler and Turek (I Don't Have Enough FAITH to Be an ATHEIST). For some Christians, faith isn't enough,…
April 18, 2008
Bloggers approach food issues from a variety of angles:
At Gristmill, Aimee Witteman and Tom Philpott discuss the prospects for the Farm Bill and Sharon Astyk looks at the many costs of food.
Andrew Schneider at Secret Ingredients shares the frightening things he learned at a food safety…
April 18, 2008
This was a really crappy season. The system for developing flu viruses is the best we've got, but it's imperfect. This year, we had significant mismatch between the vaccine and the circulating strains.
According to the CDC, this season peaked in mid-February, and was "moderately severe"---and…
April 17, 2008
There has been a terribly pedantic interesting debate going on around here about the nature of authority in science.
I won't bore you with the origins of this debate. OK, maybe I will a little, but I'll try to make this foray into meta-blogging interesting.
First, blogging is not scientific…
April 17, 2008
A new patient came to see me a few months back. She is in her 60's or 70's and not in the best health. She is very nice. And simple---very simple. I spoke to her brother before the appointment. He told me that she was a normal, happy kid until the age of seven.
Then she got sick. At first…
April 17, 2008
Last month, five fishermen died when their boat, the Alaska Ranger, went down off Unalaska Island. They joined the more than 400 killed since 1999, when a Coast Guard panel warned Congress that weak regulations allow unseaworthy boats to continue fishing. Congress has failed to solve the problem, …
April 17, 2008
Doubt is Their Product is the focus of the second piece in a three-part series by Slateâs Daniel Engber on âradical skepticism and the rise of conspiratorial thinking about science.â After describing the strategy of manufacturing doubt, from its tobacco-industry roots to its use by energy and drug…
April 16, 2008
There are a few news items worth mentioning.
The daughter of a Norwegian politician killed herself after taking a "personality test" at a Scientology cult office near her dormitory. Given the cult's history, I can see why folks would like to draw a causal connection here, but there aren't many…
April 16, 2008
Today the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and other news sources report that the National Toxicology Program has issued a draft brief stating concerns about the effects of low levels of bispehnol A on fetusus and children. Exposure to bisphenol A can interfere with the development of children's…
April 16, 2008
Southeast Michigan's Genesee county is experiencing an outbreak of syphilis. The largest city in the county is Flint, made (in)famous in Michael Moore's film Roger and Me.
Syphilis is a nasty sexually transmitted disease with an interesting history. It may have originated in the New World. It…
April 16, 2008
The story barely received a blurb in the U.S. press (Thurs, 4/10/08). Inside a refrigerated truck designed to transport seafood, a group of 121 Burmese women, men and children were suffocating inside, just hoping to make it to their destination---work--a job--in the resort towns on the…
April 15, 2008
Most of us probably take our tap water for granted, but recent events remind us that we shouldnât. Salmonella contamination of the water supply in Alamosa, Colorado sickened over 300 people and left residents avoiding showers and drinking bottled water for a week. Abel Pharmboy explains that the…
April 14, 2008
If you haven't been keeping up, let me give you a quick heads up about this whole Expelled brouhaha.
A bunch of lying Creationist cultists decided to make a film whining about how oppressed Creationist "scientists" are. Ben Stein got involved somehow. They hoodwinked a bunch of real scientists…
April 14, 2008
It's all the buzz around here, so it's my turn to share some interesting verse with you. Death and dying is a common topic of discussion with my patients and colleagues.
Some of these are well-known to all, some of them aren't, but I enjoy all of them.
Conscientious Objector
--Edna St. Vincent…
April 14, 2008
One of the nation's top advocates for miners' health and safety, Tony Oppegard, sent a scathing letter last week to the Deputy Solicitor of Labor (SOL), Ronald G. Whiting, mincing no words about their pitiful performance. Oppegard's letter concerned a particular case involving a worker who was…
April 14, 2008
A reader of ours ran into a questionable book ad, and being a good citizen, sent it on to me. I glanced at it, and it seemed to be the usual silly book purporting to cure all that ails, but on deeper inspection, it was much uglier.
The book says that it "renders insulin and related medicines…
April 14, 2008
by Emilie Hedlund
A recent article in the New York Times ("Flooded Village Files Suit" 2/27/08 ) focuses on the Alaskan village Kivalina, which is disappearing because of flooding caused by the changing climate. The residents are accusing five oil companies, 14 electric utilities and the…
April 13, 2008
Think about your own experiences---you're at a party or a restaurant, and someone you're with says something obviously racist. You cringe, but given the setting, you can't decide how to react; after a pause, you probably decide to say something. Now imagine you're at meeting for work, and a…
April 11, 2008
Itâs been a while since I highlighted some of the great blogging on healthcare topics:
Anna Wilde Matthews at the WSJâs Health Blog reports on a new analysis that finds the U.S. wastes more than half of our health spending.
Merrill Goozner at GoozNews explains why comparative effectiveness…
April 11, 2008
The first story about the death of Mr. Ricky "Mud Puddle" Collins came on Thursday afternoon (3/27) in an AP story Massey Miner Killed in Logan County. The short news clip mentioned a miner employed at Massey Energy's Freeze Fork Surface Mine in Logan County, who we later learned was Mr. Collins,…
April 11, 2008
Weâve written before about how the beryllium industry â and Brush Wellman in particular â staved off OSHAâs attempt to revise the beryllium exposure limit (blog post here, article here). Their chief tactics were denying the validity of evidence showing the existing standard was insufficiently…
April 11, 2008
Skepchick has apparently discovered that, as of yesterday, this is World Homeopathy Awareness Week. (Yes, starts on a Thursday...they were going to start on Monday, but the succussion took a while.)
Well, I can get behind a public service like this. My contribution will be a side-to-side…
April 10, 2008
In order to bring you your daily dose of science, the Great Seed Overlords must pay the bills. Like any other medium, one of the ways this is done is by selling ad space. Internet ad engines generally have some sort of algorithm that choses ads based on the page content, thereby targeting readers…
April 10, 2008
Proposals for reforming our countryâs dysfunctional healthcare system often emphasize that prevention can save us money, but the Washington Postâs David Brown cautions that it doesnât always work out that way. He notes that some interventions, like uniform childhood immunization and colonoscopies…
April 10, 2008
The new Skeptics' Circle is up at Archeoporn. Never miss an episode!
April 9, 2008
Despite my usual cynical nature, I had a favorable brush with politics last night. I was up in my kid's bedroom, getting her bathed and ready for bed, when the phone rang. When my hands are full of soaking wet toddler I don't usually answer the phone, but for some reason I picked it up. To my…
April 9, 2008
Even though the Vanity Fair Green Issue features an excellent piece on Monsanto (which, in addition to its long history of toxic contamination, now has a reputation for ruthless legal campaigns against small farmers), we here at The Pump Handle were most excited to see this sentence on the book…
April 9, 2008
My recent post on a local "holistic" doctor brought a number of considered and interesting comments (all of whom are quite polite and patient, even when I disagree with them).
Some of the issues deserve fleshing out.
Heart disease is a major killer. Hypertension is one of the strongest risk…
April 9, 2008
A new UK law now in force should make it easier to prosecute companies accused of causing death because of negligence. BBC News explains:
Under the new offence of corporate manslaughter, employers may face large fines if it is proved they failed to take proper safety precautions.
The old law was…