Medicine
oracknows | February 21, 2008I've written a few posts now pointing out how, its claims that it is not "antivaccine" notwithstanding, for the mercury militia and those who think mercury in vaccines or vaccines themselves cause autism, it really is all about the vaccines, not any single ingredient, even mercury. I first noticed this nearly three years ago, and, if anything, recent events have made my observation even more obviously true. As multiple studies have exonerated the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal that was formerly found in most childhood vaccines and now only remains in trace amounts in flu vaccines…
grrlscientist | February 20, 2008tags: book review, HIV, AIDS, Africa, epidemic, public health, Helen Epstein, The Invisible Cure
"AIDS has come to haunt a world that thought it was incomplete. Some wanted children, some wanted money, some wanted property, some wanted power, but all we have ended up with is AIDS."
-- Bernadette Nabatanzi, traditional healer, Kampala, Uganda, 1994.
The occurrence of AIDS in East and southern Africa is uniquely severe: even though less than 3 percent of the world's population lives here, this region is home to more than 40 percent of all those people with HIV infections. Throughout much of the…
clock | February 20, 2008The word 'ONE' in PLoS ONE indicates that the journal publishes articles in all areas of science. This is not as easy as it sounds, of course. The majority of papers published so far have some kind of biomedical connection to them, which is not a surprise as the biomedical community was the first to embrace PLoS and as the other six PLoS journals are either specifically targeting this community (PLoS Medicine, Pathogens and Neglected Tropical Diseases) or are welcoming to such papers (PLoS Biology, Genetics and Computational Biology).
The support of patient advocate groups, PLoS openness and…
oracknows | February 18, 2008David Colquhoun, eminent scientist and maintainer of the excellent blog DC's Improbable Science, has recently returned home to the U.K. after a trip across the pond to the U.S. and Canada, where, among other things, he gave a lecture at the University of Toronto, as well as the Riker Memorial Lecture at the Oregon Health and Science University. Now that he's back, he's made some observations about the infiltration of quackademic medicine into U.S. medical schools, the same infiltration of woo that I've lamented in my Academic Woo Aggregator.
Among his commentary on several "luminaries" of the…
revere | February 17, 2008When my colleagues announced early afternoon on Friday he was headed home because he was sick, I knew the flu had finally arrived on my doorstep. It was already here, of course. The emergency rooms are jammed, clinics have long waits and hospital admissions for flu are up -- way up. The flu situation was the page one column eight story in Saturday's Boston Globe:
The flu virus is rampaging across New England, spawning waves of coughs and fevers, causing patients to flood doctors' offices, and raising questions about the effectiveness of flu shots given to tens of millions of Americans.
During…
gregladen | February 13, 2008As Raleane (Rae) Kupferschmidt lay motionless in her hospital bed, family and friends said their final goodbyes and the funeral home was called.
But just as the grieving began in her Lake Elmo home, Kupferschmidt woke up from her coma.
"There's no medical explanation for what happened to my mother,'' said Kupferschmidt's daughter, Lisa Sturm, who is a surgical technician at Regions Hospital. "It's a miracle."
I'm sure Mrs Kupferschmidt's daughter is totally correct. She has ruled out any naturalistic, medical explanation based on her years of experience in related research fields and…
terrasig | February 13, 2008
We comply with the HONcode standard for trustworthy healthinformation: verify here.
Regular readers may note that I have been diddling with the content of my left sidebar and posting a new disclaimer tab to indicate the accuracy and objectivity of the health information presented herein.
I added these details as part of my application for accreditation by the Swiss-based Health on the Net (HON) Foundation, a non-profit organization formed in 1996 to deal with the then-new issue of how a reader can determine the quality and objectivity of medical information on a website. You…
sb admin | February 13, 2008Fire suppression experts from a North Carolina firm are providing assistance in Port Wentworth, Georgia at the Imperial Sugar factory. After the devastating explosion five days ago on Thursday evening, February 7, the fire continues to burn.  Two workers remain missing in the fire and debris. Another six perished at the scene and 16 remain in critical condition. Three injured workers have been released from the hospital to continue their recovery at the Joseph M Still Burn Center (More here.) The clinic has a hopeful motto: "Though not every scar can be removed it is our …
cortex | February 13, 2008The Times Magazine had an interesting article on whether or not "preterm infants" can experience pain. "Experience" is the key word in that sentence:
In a series of clinical trials, he [Kanwaljeet Anand] demonstrated that operations performed under minimal or no anesthesia produced a "massive stress response" in newborn babies, releasing a flood of fight-or-flight hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. Potent anesthesia, he found, could significantly reduce this reaction. Babies who were put under during an operation had lower stress-hormone levels, more stable breathing and blood-sugar…
oracknows | February 12, 2008Oops, they did it again.
You think the media would learn after the last time, but no....
There it was on Friday greeting me on the ABC News website: "Study: Acupuncture May Boost Pregnancy" in bold blue letters, with the title of the webpage being "Needles Help You Become Pregnant." Wow, what a claim! Naturally, I had to know more. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your point of view) The story began:
It sounds far-fetched sticking needles in women to help them become pregnant but a scientific review suggests that acupuncture might improve the odds of conceiving if done right before…
tqa | February 11, 2008
Back on January 29th, NPR aired a story that claimed that the Army had taken steps to keep Veterans Administration workers from helping soldiers with their Army disability paperwork. Since then, there have been some new revelations, including a document that indicates that the Army Surgeon General was at best ignorant of all the facts, and at worst dishonest, when he was first interviewed by NPR. After listening to the NPR stories, and (more importantly) reading the documentary evidence they presented, I think that their report clearly illuminates some serious problems with the care of…
j7uy5 | February 11, 2008I noticed while writing this, that the word
style="font-style: italic;">numb, if modified
by adding the suffix -er,
becomes an entirely different word.
style="font-style: italic;">Number does not
convey the meaning of more
numb.
According to Answers.com, number
is a adjective, with the root numb.
The thing is, it only works if spoken; if written, it is
ambiguous. Ambiguity can be useful, but usually it is just a
nuisance.
Anyway.
href="http://www.charlesbarberwriting.com/pages/author.html"
rel="tag">Charles Barber wrote a book,
href="http://www.charlesbarberwriting.…
oracknows | February 7, 2008I was perusing my newsfeeds last night looking for topics for Your Friday Dose of Woo this week when I came across what, initially at least, I considered to be primo material for my weekly bit of fun at the expense of the more far out excursions into woo. Then I thought about it some more. Early in the history of YFDoW, I admit that I did a couple of misfires. Perhaps the most notorious misfire was when I decided to take on the German New Medicine. Certainly the woo was there and it was good, but I quickly regretted taking such a lighthearted approach to this topic because it quickly became…
purepedantry | February 6, 2008My rant last Friday about Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) promoted a vigorous discussion, and I am happy about that. That ambivalence about CAM in even the scientific community is an interesting issue in and of itself.
Several commenters criticized my piece on the grounds that I was being inexact or extreme.
For example, jope had this to say:
While agree that in many cases individuals put far too much faith (and investment) in CAM, it is my opinion that you are going too far in making a blanket statement. While the majority of CAM probably does boil down to placebo effect (at…
sb admin | February 4, 2008Nearly four decades after the passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, it is difficult to find anyone who will argue that it has delivered on its promise to provide safe and healthful working conditions. In 2005 and 2006 I traveled across the country and met with people experienced in worker health and safety to share ideas about what we can do to protect workers better.
There was considerable agreement about the need to strengthen OSHAâs basic functions and use them more creatively â more inspections, stronger enforcement, renewed rulemaking, and a strategic focus on the…
clock | February 3, 2008Daytime Nap Can Benefit A Person's Memory Performance:
A brief bout of non-REM sleep (45 minutes) obtained during a daytime nap clearly benefits a person's declarative memory performance, according to a new study.
People Had More Intense Dreams After Sept. 11, 2001, Sleep Research Shows:
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, changed our lives in a number of different ways, not only socially and politically, but also in the way in which we dream, according to a new study.
Election 2008: Sleep Deprivation A Tough Opponent For Presidential Candidates:
The field of presidential contenders…
neurophilosophy | February 2, 2008John Pezaris emailed me yesterday to say:
Last spring, you were kind enough to write an article for your Neurophilosophy blog covering my research into restoring sight to the blind, following the publication of our scientific paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. Your article was one of the best ones written: I was really impressed at how accurately you summarized our work.
I'd like to bring to your attention that the project has been named one of the 10 finalists for the Saatchi and Saatchi Award for World Changing Ideas.
Congratulations to John Pezaris and…
revere | February 1, 2008I'm an environmental epidemiologist with a special interest in surveillance. So it would be nice to say that epidemiological investigations and surveillance systems were responsible for discovering most of the workplace diseases we see nowadays. But the simple truth seems to be that most environmental and occupational diseases are still discovered the old fashioned way: by astute clinicians, workers or family members. Such was the case for the recent cluster of cases of a progressive neurologic syndrome among slaughterhouse workers we posted on a while back. The Minnesota Department of Health…
oracknows | January 31, 2008I used to be somewhat of a supporter of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). I really did. This was back when I was more naïve and idealistic. Indeed, when I first read Wally Sampson's article Why NCCAM should be defunded, I thought it a bit too strident and even rather close-minded. At the time, I thought that the best way to separate the wheat from the chaff was to apply the scientific method to the various "CAM" modalities and let the chips fall where they may.
Unfortunately, two developments have made me sour on NCCAM and develop an opinion more like Dr…
chrisdrudge | January 30, 2008Santucci RA, Deng D, Carney J. Removal of metal penile foreign body with a widely available emergency-medical-services-provided air-driven grinder.
Urology. 2004 Jun;63(6):1183-4.
Dude! Remember that one time when they had to remove that barbell from my dick with an air grinder? That was so sick!
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Sandhu A, Gross M, Wylie J, Van Caeseele P, Plourde P. Pseudomonas aeruginosa necrotizing chondritis complicating high helical ear piercing case report: clinical and public health perspectives. Can J Public Health. 2007 Jan-Feb;98(1):74-7.
Y'know what debridement and removal of necrotic…