Medicine
terrasig | November 13, 2006Both Dr. RW and Orac have great posts this week on the dichotomy of critical thinking skills espoused by the American Medical Students Association (AMSA), a US national medical student association. Most interesting is their support this week of a PharmFree Day on 16 November whose nobel goal is to minimize the influence of the pharmaceutical industry on medical students, residents, and fellows.
However, Dr. RW points out the hypocrisy of one segment of the organization that states; "we [The AMSA Humanistic Medicine Action Committee] advocate for Complementary and Alternative Medicine…
tfk | November 13, 2006SurveyUSA polled 500 Kansans on behalf of KWCH. Asked "Based on what you know today, do you support or oppose embryonic stem cell research?" the research had 60% support, 32% opposition.
The poll follows suggestions that Kansas pass an amendment like the MIssouri stem cell amendment. The Wichita Eagle's blog points out that such an amendment isn't going to move because it requires 2/3 support in the legislature, which it won't get.
What's interesting is that these poll results are lower than a poll a year ago commissioned by the Kansas Coalition for Lifesaving Cures. That poll asked a…
j7uy5 | November 13, 2006I noticed this a few days ago and meant to comment on it.
Then, I noticed
href="http://scienceblogs.com/drcharles/2006/11/attention_paging_dr_google_1.php#more">Dr.
Charles beat me to it. He even gave some examples
in actual use. If you've already read his, skip the excerpt
and go directly to the few thoughts I've added at the end.
href="http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/547620">Web-Based
Search Engines Help Diagnose Difficult Cases
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) Nov 10 - Using Google to conduct web-based
searches on the internet can assist in the diagnosis of difficult
cases,…
purepedantry | November 8, 2006I meant to post this early, but the Neurophilosopher has an excellent history of Alois Alzheimer, for whom the disease is named:
On November 25th, 1901, a 51-year-old woman named Auguste Deter (below right) was admitted to the hospital, and was examined by Alzheimer. Deter at first presented with impaired memory, aphasia, disorientation and psychosocial incompetence (which was, at that time, the legal definition of 'dementia'); her condition gradually worsened, and she started losing other cognitive functions and experiencing hallucinations. Because of her age, Deter was diagnosed with…
revere | November 7, 2006Nothing says more about the routinely nasty depths American politics than this story.
In Houston, the city health department got money from the Robert Wood Johnson and Amerigroup Foundations, two charities much involved in health care, to provide free flu shots near polling places in medically underserved areas. This isn't uncommon. Some twenty other cities, in several states, are said to have similar "vote and vaccinate" programs (see for example, here). The idea is to go where the people who need the services are.
Nothing is simple anymore. Not even free flu shots for the poor. The right…
sporte | November 6, 2006How does biomedical research impact you? Have you (or has someone in your family) benefited from vaccinations, pharmaceutical drugs, medical devices, surgery, or transplants? How does biomedical research affect the health of your dog, cat, or other pet? How might biomedical research touch your life in the future?
Do you know any middle school students who are interested in the life sciences? If they can write an essay, they might be able to win a prize.
If you know any middle school students or teachers in Washington, Idaho, Montana, or Oregon, let them know about the NWABR middle school…
purepedantry | November 6, 2006Eugene Volokh has written an article in the Harvard Law Review arguing that abortion is constitutional. This is not shocking. The Supreme Court has made clear that abortion is constitutional. However, he is arguing -- rather than from the point of view of right to privacy -- abortion to save a woman's life is constitution because of the right to self-defense:
Three women lie in adjoining hospital rooms. A fourth lives a block away. All are in deadly peril.
Alice is seven months pregnant, and the pregnancy threatens her life. Her fetus has long been viable, so she no longer has the Roe/…
terrasig | November 3, 2006Another Wine Escapade: Valle du Lot
by Erleichda
Sweetpea and I enjoy hiking as a platform for vacationing (when we're not partaking of some beach spot). We've managed to attract a few likeminded fellow hikers, and are now able to customize our adventurers to suit our collective preferences. One of my only preferences has been that we visit a place that is known for their wines. In early May, we and three other couples set forth for the Lot Valley of SW France.
Not as well known as nearby Bordeaux, or Provence, at least not by Americans, the Valle du Lot has been a thriving…
terrasig | November 2, 2006Many thanks to my oncology colleague and ScienceBlogs.com SciBling, Orac, for his repeated referrals to my posts as of late. He's been one of my blogging mentors from the genesis of my blogosphere presence and generally ranks #1 or #2 as the source of my referral traffic.
So, in return, let me direct Terra Sig readers to two of Orac's best posts this past week, one of which I consider among his best of the year.
First, is Orac's discussion of Institutional Review Boards, or IRBs, the entities convened to ensure human subjects protection in clinical research trials. Orac points our that, as…
stcynic | November 2, 2006Ted Baehr, Christian movie reviewer and propagandist, has an essay at the Worldview Weekend site where he rather brazenly accuses MIchael J. Fox and "liberal elites" of lying about stem cell research. In the process, he tells some whoppers himself.
When is a lie not a lie?
According to America's liberal, secular elite, a lie is not a lie when it comes from the mouth of a Hollywood star with a terrible debilitating disease or injury. Or, when it comes from some other sympathetic victim, such as the left-wing parent of a dead soldier (Cindy Sheehan) or a left-leaning widow trying to push an…
oracknows | November 2, 2006Suzanne Somers annoys me.
She annoys me because, despite the fact that her statements and activities over the last 25 years reveal her to be probably no more intelligent than the character that she played on Three's Company, she still feels the need to spread misinformation about diet and medicine in several books that she has written. Indeed, my annoyance at her was manifested very early in the history of this blog, when I mentioned her in the context of testimonials for alternative medicine treatments for breast cancer. The reason? In 2001, Somers was diagnosed with breast cancer. She…
oracknows | October 31, 2006A little more than a year ago, an autistic boy named Abubakar Tariq Nadama died of a cardiac arrest due to hypocalcemia at the hands of an "alternative medicine" practitioner named Dr. Roy Kerry while chelation therapy was being administered to him intravenously. Dr. Kerry, who trained as an ENT doctor, now bills himself as an "allergist" and an alternative medicine practitioner. Tariq's tragic and unnecessary death lead to a round of posterior covering by mercury militia enabler David Kirby and a rather blithe acceptance and dismissal by some who routinely go ballistic whenever someone…
revere | October 30, 2006It sounds reasonable at first. If hospitals and clinics are going to be overwhelmed in a flu pandemic, prepare to care for sick family members at home.
But what if there's no one to care for you at home? That's the position of the one in four Americans who live alone. Even for those that have others to care for them there are serious barriers:
Almost half of those surveyed said they would run into financial problems or might run out of important drugs if health officials asked them to stay home for a week or more, said Robert Blendon, a Harvard School of Public Health policy expert who will…
cortex | October 30, 2006Men are getting less manly: our testosterone levels continue to decline. Given the Hobbesian state of the world, that might not be a bad thing. (Unfortunately, falling testosterone levels have negative medical consequences. So world peace might require a reduction in the male life span.) Over at the LA Times, the always hilarious Dan Neil - I think he's even funnier than Anthony Lane - explores the implications of falling testosterone levels from a slightly more personal angle:
My wife and I--and two dozen highly trained and generously compensated reproductive doctors, nurses and technicians…
oracknows | October 30, 2006Institutional review boards (IRBs) are the cornerstone of the protection of human subjects in modern biomedical research. Mandated by the federal government in the 1970's in the wake of research abuses of the 20th century, in particular the the horrors of the infamous Nazi biomedical experiments during World War II that were documented in during the Nuremberg trials and the Tuskegee syphilis experiment in which black men with syphilis in rural Alabama were followed without treatment in order to study the natural course of the disease, a study that lasted into the early 1970's. In the wake of…
j7uy5 | October 27, 2006Just for kicks, in case anyone cares, and is not already familiar with
these sites, here are a few that I use:
class="inset" alt=""
src="http://a248.e.akamai.net/7/248/430/20060421021059/www.merckmedicus.com/ppdocs/us/hcp/images/redesign/img_mm_logo.jpg"
align="left" border="0" height="39" width="140">
href="http://www.merckmedicus.com/pp/us/hcp/hcp_home.jsp">Merck
Medicus is a great site. I had to provide
some medical license information, so I don't think it is available to
everyone. That is annoying, but I understand why they do
that. The site provides free access to…
revere | October 27, 2006"First they came for the Socialists, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Socialist... Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak up for me." (Martin Niemoller)
The trial of the Tripoli Six is set to conclude on Tuesday, October 31, but already extraordinary events are taking place in the world of high status science.
Yesterday we posted on the letter of protest published in Science from 45 top scientists. The journals Science and Nature are arguably the two most prestigious scientific publications…
scientificactivist | October 26, 2006When you live in the wealthiest nation in the world but can still claim over 40 million people without health insurance--despite spending more than twice as much per capita on health care as any other nation--you might have a problem. Nowhere is this more apparent than in my home state, Texas, which leads the nation with 24.5% of its population uninsured.
Since the state government has done little to address the situation (often making things worse, by significantly defunding the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIPS), for example), others are taking up the slack. Yesterday's New York…
oracknows | October 26, 2006You didn't think this one would go by without my commenting on it, did you? Even though Abel and Tara have already ably commented on it, I can't help but jump in because the article echoes one of the common threads of this blog since the very beginning. Besides, as I've said before, just because everyone else has already commented on an article or issue never stopped me from jumping in before (well, almost never, anyway).
The article in question, Ignoring the failures of alternative medicine, is remarkable (to me, at least) because I can't recall any major media outlet like MSNBC daring to…
revere | October 26, 2006When it comes to vaccinations, a high degree of safety is one of the paramount issues. This is because even a small risk, like one in a million, when multiplied by tens of millions will produce tens or more of adverse events. The trade-off, of course, is the prevention of the disease the vaccine is directed against. Unlike a therapeutic drug, when a vaccine works, nothing happens. When there is a side effect, a previously well person becomes sick from the vaccine itself. This becomes a tricky problem in public health education. The recent scare in Israel with influenza vaccine illustrates…