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December 13, 2006
Trying to explain steroid hormones as transcription factors to someone, and just don't have the words? According to a student at the Max Plank Institute of Experimental Medicine, who drew the figure below,"The results of this mechanism could you easily have studied entering puberty." Or you could…
December 12, 2006
By Dick Clapp
On December 1, NPRâs Living on Earth aired a segment on conflicts of interest in medical research. Host Bruce Gellerman interviewed Dr. Lennart Hardell, lead author of a recent article on conflicts of interest in cancer research published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine…
December 11, 2006
by PotomacFeverishÂ
In the first of what may be numerous resignations, Scott Gottlieb, MD has announced that he will leave his post as Deputy Commissioner at the Food and Drug Administration. He has been at the center of the political science practiced at the FDA as noted by Time last year:…
December 11, 2006
By David Michaels
This morningâs AP wire brings news of yet another E. Coli outbreak, this one resulting in 14 hospitalizations (so far) among customers of a âTaco Johnâsâ restaurant in Cedar Falls, Iowa.
This follows the Taco Bell E. Coli outbreak, with more than 60 cases in 5 states.
Which…
December 8, 2006
Health and environmental bloggers have covered a wide array of topics this week. Some highlights:
Steve at Omni Brain (don't click the link while eating) displays graphic warnings from Belgian and Thai cigarette packs
Merrill Goozner at GoonzNews posts an excerpt from his just-published article (…
December 7, 2006
Earlier this year, President Bush nominated Susan E. Dudley of the Mercatus Center to replace John Graham, PhD, as the head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). The office oversees all of the Administrationâs regulatory policies, including public health and environmental rules,…
December 7, 2006
By David Michaels
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal published last December (by Peter Waldman, 12/23/05), product defense experts at ChemRisk pulled off a particularly audacious scam on behalf of Pacific Gas and Electric, the California utility that was being sued for contaminating…
December 7, 2006
By David Michaels
In 1993, the US Supreme Court ruled in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. that judges must act as âgatekeepersâ in the courtroom, determining if the scientific evidence introduced is relevant and reliable. The Daubert decision has had tremedous impact on how science is…
December 6, 2006
by Revere and cross-posted at Effect Measure
We are asking the scienceblogging community once again to rally on behalf of our colleagues on trial for their lives in Libya. They have been accused of infecting over 400 children with HIV (see previous posts, here, here, here, here, here and here).…
December 5, 2006
By David Michaels
In my post Monday, I wrote that breathing diacetyl, the chemical in artificial butter flavor, is killing and crippling workers around the country. It is now more than six years since the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) was first notified that workers in a…
December 5, 2006
While Indiaâs population has been growing, its rice harvests have been declining. Two of the culprits, reports the BBC (citing a study from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), are particulate and greenhouse-gas pollution.
South Asia suffers from a particularly nasty âbrown cloudâ â…
December 4, 2006
by PotomacFeverishÂ
The Washington Post announced what we already knew. That the lame duck sessions of Congress (one already past, one this week) will not accomplish much. So what, you say? They hadnât accomplished much for the last year, why should we care now?
Jonathan Weisman reports:…
December 4, 2006
By David Michaels
Every year, Marion Ohio (nickname: âpopcorn capital of the worldâ) hosts the largest popcorn festival in the world, with 250,000 attendees. The Orville Redenbacher Parade is one of the festivalsâ highlights. Redenbacher, who developed the hybrid corn strain that pops so uniformly…
December 1, 2006
Today is World AIDS Day, and thereâs no shortage of coverage in the blogosphere. Christy Hardin Smith at Firedoglake combines links to news stories with her own reflections, and Izzy at Unbossed remembers 1982, before they called it AIDS. Michael Bernstein and Nandini Oomman of Global Health Policy…
December 1, 2006
by OSHAL
It is worthwhile reading the Government Accountability Office (GAO) report (report PDF here; Jordan Barabâs take here) that recommends a review of the effectiveness of current strategies for workplace safety and health. Of particular interest to me is the attitude and direction of this…
December 1, 2006
by Susan F. WoodÂ
After the recent post here on KETEK, both the Wall Street Journal and Senator Grassley are on the move. The WSJ reports today on another antibiotic Cubicin which has been seeking approval for use in endocarditis and discusses the competing issues of data quality and high…
December 1, 2006
By David Michaels
The Bush Administration is manufacturing uncertainty about global warming, even as its allies in the carbon producing industries are abandoning it.
Last week, the Washington Postâs Steven Mufson and Juliet Eilperin reported that âtop executives at many of the nation's largest…
November 30, 2006
By Laura H. Kahn
The medical community is devoting a lot of effort to researching bioterrorism agents and diseases that could become human pandemics. But in many cases, theyâre overlooking a potentially critical resource: veterinarians.
Zoonoses are diseases of animals that can be transmitted to…
November 30, 2006
 by PotomacFeverish
 What is on the agenda for science during the last 2 years of this Administration? Many believe that with the change in Congress, now we can relax regarding the abuse of science that we have seen in recent years. The scientific community needs to be aware that much of the…
November 30, 2006
by Susan F. Wood
Much has been written about the antibiotic drug, telithromycin, otherwise known as Ketek. It seems to combine a host of concerns all in one place (see also Matthews, AW, WSJ, May 19, 2006:B1). Critically, concerns about safety, from visual effects to fatal liver toxicity, are…
November 30, 2006
By David Michaels
In a move that recognizes the post-election climate change in Washington, the EPA has told two Democratic Senators that it is revising plans to roll-back the reporting requirements of the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI). In a post yesterday, I wrote about TRI as an important (and…
November 29, 2006
By David Michaels
Last week, public scorn forced Rupert Murdock, powerful chief executive of the News Corp, to cancel âIf I Did It,â OJ Simpsonâs book and Fox TV tie-in. While shaming has fallen out of favor in the field of criminal justice, the heaping of public scorn and anger - dating back to…
November 28, 2006
by Liz BorkowskiÂ
Parties to the Basel Conventionâthe international treaty dealing with the transport and disposal of hazardous wastesâare meeting this week in Nairobi, and e-waste is on their agenda. Each year, consumers generate 20 â 50 million tons of e-waste (waste from electrical and…
November 28, 2006
By David Michaels
Meat factories continue to be among the most dangerous places to work in America. According to a devastating article in the Dallas Morning News, âthousands of illegal immigrants gravitate toward meatpacking plants in places like Cactus, Texasâ where each year more than one out of…
November 27, 2006
There is this woman in Colorado who's being sued for displaying a peace symbol on her home—it's very weird.
A homeowners association in southwestern Colorado has threatened to fine a resident $25 a day until she removes a Christmas wreath with a peace sign that some say is an anti-Iraq war protest…
November 27, 2006
by Dick Clapp
The publication of my article on mortality among IBM workers was the culmination of a two and a half year process. I obtained the data, which included information on the deaths of nearly 32,000 former workers who had died between 1969 and 2001, when I served as an expert witness in a…
November 27, 2006
by Liz Borkowski
If you haven't read Laurie David's op-ed, "Science a la Joe Camel," in yesterday's Washington Post, I recommend clicking over to it. David was a producer of Al Gore's climate change documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," and reports that the National Science Teachers Association (…
November 26, 2006
by revere
[This is another cross-post from Effect Measure but it fits here because it lays out some of the history of the progressive public health blogosphere and welcomes The Pump Handle as its newest -- and we hope brightest -- member!]
This weekend is Effect Measure's Second Blogiversary and it…
August 20, 2006
Welcome to the new Thoughts from Kansas. I've moved a few of the posts I'm most proud of across from the old Blogger site, and I encourage you to check them out, that's probably the easiest way to get to know me, and don't be afraid to dig into all the archives back there.
By way of quick…
August 9, 2006
The mind likes a strange idea as little as the body likes a strange protein and resists it with similar energy. It would not perhaps be too fanciful to say that a new idea is the most quickly acting antigen known to science. If we watch ourselves honestly we shall often find that we have begun to…