revere | September 24, 2009Bats are no doubt fascinating animals. They also carry rabies. And I'll be honest with you. Rabies scares the crap out of me. Most people know that rabies is caused by a virus that is spread through the saliva of an infected animal. Because the virus attacks the nervous system, rabid animals often act aggressively and may bite, thus transmitting the disease. Fortunately vaccination against rabies is available and since the disease has a longish incubation period, there is usually ample time after being bitten by a known or suspected rabid animal to get a series of shots that will protect you…
revere | September 23, 2009People complain that ministers in the cabinet Iran's recently selected President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government will say things so outlandish no one else would even think of saying them, but Declan Butler over at the Nature blog, The Great Beyond, begs to differ. Take Iran's Science Minister, Kamran Daneshjou. Daneshjou's credentials had been questioned in an LA Times report in August, but Butler has found that a paper co-authored by Daneshjou contains genuine peer-reviewed science. The only fly in the ointment is that it doesn't seem to be Daneshjou's science:
Large chunks of text, figures…
revere | September 22, 2009There are multiple trials of swine flu vaccine in different countries and involving different subpopulations. Recent news strongly suggests that -- surprisingly -- a single dose of viral antigen (i.e., one injection) may be sufficient to raise antibody against swine flu to protective levels. There are a lot of uncertainties here, but the data have been fairly consistent. But that's for adults (over 18 years old). Since children are also had high risk, there is much apprehension whether a single dose will also work for children. Now we're getting some of the first results and the news is good…
revere | September 21, 2009One of my healthier, but alas more expensive habits, is that I walk a mile or so several times a week to my neighborhood shopping area and visit one or another bookstore. I live in a college town, so my neighborhood shopping area has some of the best bookstores anywhere. Not just a university bookstore (which, like many, is part of the Barnes and Noble College Division and not independent), but also what I consider the best independent bookstore anywhere. Since the Reveres try not to reveal any of our locations, I don't get to give it a plug except to say it has the name of a prestigious…
revere | September 20, 2009I suppose under the theory that when dog bites man it's not news but when man bites dog it is, CDC's publication Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports (MMWR) recently ran an outbreak report about people getting baked by brownies:
On April 8, 2009, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) notified officials from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (DPH) in California about a group of preschool teachers with nausea, dizziness, headache, and numbness and tingling of fingertips after consumption of brownies purchased 3 days before from a sidewalk vendor.
[snip]
On the morning of…
revere | September 20, 2009A few weeks ago we posted about a bunch of crazy rabbis flying over Israel and blowing horns to save their countrymen (and the women, as long as they stayed segregated) from swine flu. We got a few comments, mostly respectful but with the common theme that we were being culturally insensitive, if not intolerant. As someone brought up as a Jew, I recognized the syndrome. It may be crazy, but it's our craziness. Hands off. It put me in mind of a really fine piece by Natalie Angier, one of our best science reporters (and New York Times Pulitzer Prize winner), author of The Canon: A Whirligig…
revere | September 19, 2009It's a virus that kills someone every 20 minutes in this world, usually a child. A vaccine is on the way but isn't here yet. The good news is that what usually requires multiple doses may only require a single dose. It's big news. It's also not about swine flu vaccine:
A replication-deficient rabies virus vaccine that lacks a key gene called the matrix (M) gene induced a rapid and efficient anti-rabies immune response in mice and non-human primates, according to James McGettigan, Ph.D., assistant professor of Microbiology and Immunology at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson…
revere | September 18, 2009Most people are either indifferent to swine flu or fearful, but the makers of Purell hand sanitizer and Chlorox are happy. It's been a boon to the business of sanitizing everything in sight as a way to ward off swine flu. Here's a story about Chlorox (bleach):
The company has secured additional suppliers and will increase production if needed, says Benno Dorer, senior vice president- general manager of Clorox’s cleaning division. Some retailers have already asked for more bleach, he said in a Sept. 4 telephone interview, declining to name specific companies.
An outbreak of the flu may add 2…
revere | September 17, 2009It's been a hard year or two. First Miriam Makeba. Then Odetta. Now we've lost another one, Mary Travers, the Mary of Peter, Paul and Mary. Mary died Wednesday of leukemia in Connecticut. Even before Mary, Paul Stookey and Peter Yarrow formed one of the iconic sixties folk groups in 1961, Mary sang back up for Pete Seeger. And for half a century, Peter, Paul and Mary we're there when we needed them. Every major demonstration or event. Always. They were there.
Political songs were a mainstay but so were love songs and children's songs. So here's Mary, in later years, singing one of the group'…
revere | September 17, 2009I just got my seasonal flu shot. It was free and my medical center is encouraging everyone to get one. I wouldn't be telling the truth if I said I didn't feel it at all, but in all honesty, I hardly felt it. They must be using smaller needles these days. Anyway, given that most circulating flu virus is pandemic swine flu H1N1, for which a vaccine is not yet available (coming soon to a clinic near you, we're told), you might wonder why I -- or anyone --would bother. I'll do my best to explain my reasoning, but I'll grant at the outset I may have missed some good reasons or have reasons that…
revere | September 16, 2009There is no way to keep up with all the flu news, so we pick and choose, usually based on some kind of point we want to make. That's both the good and the bad of this blog: the news comes with a point of view. But so does most news, and we try to make ours both explicit and scientifically as accurate as we can with the information at hand. Today is a typical example. Bloomberg is reporting that any swine flu virus resistant to oseltamivir (trade name Tamiflu), the only antiviral pill effective at all for the infection, transmits less well than swine flu that's sensitive to Tamiflu. The source…
revere | September 15, 2009It was only a matter of time before the Right Wing smear machine set its sites on Obama's nominee for Director of OSHA, Dr. David Michaels. And now that time has come. David is a friend and colleague and his name is not a stranger here (and here, here, here and probably other posts as well). His name comes up not because he's my friend but because of his contributions to public health. His PhD is in occupational epidemiology and he's made important contributions in the area of popcorn workers lung (despite the humorous name, it is a deadly disease) and beryllium poisoning. He knows government…
revere | September 14, 2009This morning we reported some hopeful news about the desperately poor country of Malawi, where childhood mortality is incredibly high but being slashed. It's still too high. Way, way too high. And in response I found this very sad post from another blogger, this one a doc now in rural Canada, but once in Malawi:
Malawi in the news
The good: Malawi made a top ten list.
The bad: It was top ten child mortality, in the world.
The good: Malawi is doing something to change that.
In 2000, under five mortality was 225 per 1000. Tireless work by various groups have more than halved this number and…
revere | September 14, 2009They say starting the day with a good breakfast gives you a leg up on the rest of the day, so we thought we'd start out the week with some decent public health news. We're always bringing you bad public health news, which isn't what we want to do. We live for the news to be good. That's what we work for. So here's some good news. Well, I'd call it good news and bad news:
UNICEF today released new figures that show the rate of deaths of children under five years of age continued to decline in 2008.
The data shows a 28 per cent decline in the under-five mortality rate, from 90 deaths per 1000…
revere | September 13, 2009At the beginning of September CDC initiated a new system for monitoring influenza activity. We reported last week that the old system ended on August 30 and that we were now into the new flu season. We even titled the post, "End of Flu Season." To paraphrase Mark Twain, the reports of the death of the 2008 - 2009 season may have been exaggerated. Well, not really, but the advent of the new system caused some confusion, at least for us, and we think we should clear it up.
There are several interconnected issues here. One is that the way trends in influenza will be monitored has been changed…
revere | September 13, 2009This week we've got a substantive story and a video (also substantive). No snark in either. The first has to do with a school principal who censored the student newspaper because it ran a story that the company contracted to provide its food service was on a "mission to serve God":
Orange County High School of the Arts hired a cafeteria provider whose “mission” is to “serve God.”
You would have heard about it yesterday, too, were you a student at the school, had it not been for the intervention of the principal.
Sue Vaughn, the school’s principal, says she halted the student paper’s…
revere | September 12, 2009There's been a great deal in the news regarding the first reports on the swine flu vaccine trials, so we didn't feel the need to be the first off the mark for something you could read anywhere (and everywhere). We still don't have much to add, but since there was intense discussion and debate about vaccines here this week we thought it appropriate to take a look again now that there are some actual data to see if it changes things for us or not. The short answer (but typical for us) is: yes and no. First, let's review what we think we know at this point (this is big picture; we might have…
revere | September 11, 2009The old Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) had a fatal flaw. It's task was both to promote and to regulate nuclear power. That sounds like a bad idea, right? Conflict of interest? But in fact there are a number of government agencies that are in the same awkward position. One of them is the US Department of Agriculture, now run by Obama appointee and former ag state (Iowa) Governor, Tom Vilsack. I'll say one thing for Vilsack. He takes his responsibilities seriously. At least the promoting and protecting the ag industry part. Vilsack has had a mixed record on matters of importance to progressives…
revere | September 10, 2009Flu season is over. Before you heave a sigh of relief, I'm talking about the (official) 2008 - 2009 flu season, which ended August 30 in week 34 or the calendar year. Welcome to the new flu season, the one called 2009 - 2010. It promises to be, well, "interesting."
Not that the one just concluded wasn't interesting. Indeed before we get done analyzing the data already collected it's likely to be the most informative in flu science history, partly because we have tools we never had before, partly because we have information gathering and handling capacity we never had before. But mostly…
revere | September 9, 2009One of the most feared outcomes of infection with influenza is Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS; in less severe form it mahy be called Acute Lung Injury, ALI). For reasons we still do not understand, cells deep in the lung that are involved in gas exchange (oxygen and carbon dioxide) become so damaged that the basic work of supplying the body with enough oxygen for life and getting rid of the carbon dioxide generated by metabolism is too much for the patient and either some intervention to relieve the lungs of some of the work is made or the patient dies. ARDS is so severe that often…