revere | February 1, 2009Forget about climate change. We're not going to make it that far. December 21, 2012 is earth's final day. If you'd like to know the details you can buy the exciting video teaching from Drs. Jack and Rexella Van Impe, December 21st 2012: History's Final Day. Everyone seems agreed on the date. Everyone, in this case, being ancient Romans, ancient Mayans, the Chinese I Ching, and a 16th century English prophetess named Mother Shipton.
This is not parody. The Reverend Jack van Impe and his wife, are among the world's most experienced at predicting the End of the World and selling videos about it…
revere | January 31, 2009The detritus of the Bush era continues to wash ashore, but some of it has decomposed sufficiently that it isn't as noxious as when first dumped into the sea. One example is what was left of a Federal lawsuit filed by a creationist post doc against the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution alleging he was fired for his religious views. Those views were of the Creationist variety, and the job he was fired from was research involving development in zebra fish, specifically involving evolutionary processes. His views, per se, had nothing to do with it, of course. It was that his views prevented…
revere | January 30, 2009CIDRAP News carried a short piece about the new CDC Acting Director, Dr. Richard Besser. We don't learn a lot new beyond the official facts. The Bush CDC Director, Dr. Julie Gerberding, resigned as the Obama Presidency began. The CDC Director is a non-career appointment, which means that it is made by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. But there is as yet only a nominee for that post, Tom Daschle. The Besser appointment was thus made by the acting secretary of DHHS, Charles Johnson. Besser is a pediatrician and former Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) officer whose last position…
revere | January 29, 2009A powerful Editorial in today's Nature (the world's premier science publication) shines a strong light on a tragic violation of human rights in Iran involving two leading AIDS physicians, brothers Arash and Kamiar Alaei. We've posted about it twice (here and here). Declan Butler, a senior correspondent at Nature summarizes the story over at his blog:
Iran has sentenced two of the country’s HIV researchers to prison for communicating with an “enemy government” and plotting to overthrow the state. Arash and Kamiar Alaei, who are brothers, underwent a half-day trial on 31 December in Tehran’s…
revere | January 29, 2009Getting a good night's sleep is supposed to boost your resistance so you don't get sick as easily. Or put another way, not getting enough sleep puts you at risk of colds and other nuisance infectious diseases. Is this just an old wives' tale? Apparently not. Or at least, now we can say there's some evidence to back it up:.
BACKGROUND: Sleep quality is thought to be an important predictor of immunity and, in turn, susceptibility to the common cold. This article examines whether sleep duration and efficiency in the weeks preceding viral exposure are associated with cold susceptibility. METHODS…
revere | January 28, 2009Even as the the peanut cum salmonella recall spreads (sorry, couldn't resist), we learn that the Peanut Corporation of America plant in Blakely, Georgia thought to be its source has a history of "problems":
The plant in Georgia that produced peanut butter tainted by salmonella has a history of sanitation lapses and was cited repeatedly in 2006 and 2007 for having dirty surfaces and grease residue and dirt buildup throughout the plant, according to health inspection reports. Inspection reports from 2008 found the plant repeatedly in violation of cleanliness standards.
Inspections of the plant…
revere | January 27, 2009On Sunday my friend and colleague from Fluwiki, DemFromCT, did me the honor of interviewing me on the front page of DailyKos. That's a pretty tall platform, being the most visited blog in the known universe (and beyond), so it's best to be absolutely clear when saying things there. I"m not sure I quite met that standard, but I'll let you judge for yourself, as I am cross-posting the interview below the fold. But this also gives me an opportunity to clarify one point that drew some justified comment. Here's something I said in the interview:
In the past I downplayed individual prepping for a…
revere | January 26, 2009The peanut butter/peanut paste ingredient based salmonella outbreak has been in the news lately and we've discussed it here (and here, here, here, here, here). There are now about 500 reported cases and six deaths. That's a case fatality ratio of just over 1%. So what if there were a disease outbreak of 100,000 cases with a case fatality ratio of 20%? I think we'd be pretty alarmed. But it happened in 2005. And it happened in 2006 and 2007 and last year, 2008 And it's happening, now, too. It isn't salmonella or or even HIV/AIDS, although it is estimated to kill more people in the US than both…
revere | January 25, 2009From a colleague who knows I am interested in prophylactics for flu:
Miss Beatrice, the church organist, was in her eighties and had never been married. She was admired for her sweetness and kindness to all.
One afternoon the pastor came to call on her and she showed him into her quaint sitting room.
She invited him to have a seat while she prepared tea. As he sat facing her old Hammond organ, the young minister noticed a cut-glass bowl sitting on top of it. The bowl was filled with water, and in the water floated, of all things, a condom! When she returned with tea and scones, they began…
revere | January 25, 2009Our weekly feature:
So we had a joyous inauguration, although the obligatory religious bookends were a bit hard to take. The Invocation by Pastor Rick (Warren) was a real piece of work, typically self-righteous and obnoxiously exclusionary. It goes without saying he alienated atheists, but then he went on to do the same for non-Christians (invoking Jesus as his Lord and Saviour) and then Catholics (by reciting the Protestant version of the Our Father). Obama, at least, had the courtesy to include non-believers in a short list of religious affiliations. I agree with PZ that it was a small…
revere | January 24, 2009Writing a pseudonymous blog day after day can be wearing, especially as you get no personal recognition for it. That's the point of a pseudonym, after all. But sometimes things happen that are even better than personal recognition. On January 6, 2009, Vintage Books published the trade paperback original of THE NATION GUIDE TO THE NATION, edited by Richard Lingeman and Scienceblogs.com is recognized in it and Effect Measure gets a special mention. Here's a promotional description:.
Part Whole Earth Catalog, part 1000 Places to See Before You Die, and part Zagat, THE NATION GUIDE TO THE NATION…
revere | January 24, 2009A reader sent me a link to The Salt Lake Tribune that made me do a double-take: Health department on chopping block:
Utah could become the only state in the country without a state health department.
Republican lawmakers are considering handing the duties of the health department -- from tracking and responding to communicable diseases and trying to reduce obesity and cancer rates to inspecting child care facilities -- to other agencies.
The proposed dismantling would save $1.7 million in administrative costs by cutting director and division director budgets. It came as a shock to David…
revere | January 23, 2009PetSmart's Grreat Choice Dog Biscuit isn't such a great choice for fido because they contain peanut paste with salmonella. It may also not be so Grreat for fido's owners:
Dr. Stephen Sundlof, a veterinarian who is the director of the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, said that the risk to animals is minimal but that people who handle contaminated treats could come in contact with the salmonella bacteria.
"It's especially important that children wash their hands after feeding treats to pets" because the bacteria could be on the surface, Sundlof said. (CNN)
PetSmart has…
revere | January 22, 2009Readers want to know what I think about the bird flu situation in China, where four human cases have been reported in the last couple of weeks. I haven't said anything about it so far, which is normal for me. I usually like to wait for more information. There are dedicated and smart flu bloggers out there who spend more time collecting scraps of information than I do. Check out fluwiki forum and CureEvents, for the latest word, all accurately reported by top rank flu bloggers like crof and Mike and a number of others (it is dangerous to start naming people because you inevitably leave out…
revere | January 21, 2009Some people noticed a remarkable thing that happened on the Washington Mall on Sunday at the Obama pre-Inaugural concert, a part of which I posted on Tuesday. The second last appearance was by Pete Seeger, his grandson Tao and Bruce Springsteen singing Woody Guthrie's This Land is Your Land. What made it remarkable is the inclusion of three verses from the original version that are rarely heard under any circumstances and never heard in the corridors of power, much less in front of a world wide audience and in the presence and in honor of someone about to ascend to the Presidency of the…
revere | January 21, 2009While we were busy with the pageant of the new administration, we are still cleaning up the messes from past administrations (not just Bush although Bush was the examplar of incompetence). Past messes like a broken food safety system. The latest example, of course, is the peanut butter and peanut paste salmonella debacle (see here, here, here), which just keeps getting worse. Bulk supplied institutional peanut butter containers were the first to be implicated and the connection was first made from nursing homes that used these. Supermarket peanut butter sold to consumers wasn't implicated.…
revere | January 20, 2009I'm glad I lived to see today. I've been a citizen of the United States for 66 years and I've never felt anything like it. Not because of the politics, since I suspect I will disagree with much of what the new President plans to do (not progressive enough for me), and not solely because the country elected a black man as President (although turning that page in our history is cause for celebration and huzzahs). It is not because Democrats beat Republicans, although I am glad for that, but Democrats have beaten Republicans before and it hasn't been like this. Nor is it because we will at last…
revere | January 19, 2009Every disease has a website, it seems, and common diseases may have many. The UK has a charity devoted to asthma that has a site, AsthmaUK.com, with an interesting feature, an "asthma trigger" section that discussed things that may bring on asthma symptoms in people with asthma. Asthma is a disease involving airway dysfunction where it becomes difficult to exhale. You can get an idea of how debilitating this can be by taking an ordinary drinking straw and while breathing in normally only breathe out through the straw. Try it. Very distressing, you'll find. So you don't want to trigger the…
revere | January 18, 2009DemFromCT has Flu and You, Part II up over at DailyKos. As with Part I, it is well worth reading. It implicitly raises an extraordinarily important issue -- the crucial value of the public health infrastructure -- and explicitly lays out a vital part of it, the public health laboratory network.
Next week Dem plans Part III, where he will interview us on this. It is an opportunity for us to get our thoughts together on a subject we have often promoted but haven't spelled out. I'll keep you posted on the plans. Meanwhile, pop over to DailyKos and have a read.
revere | January 18, 2009The four month old salmonella outbreak (here, here) that has already claimed at least five lives seems now to be an "ingredient" affair. The ingredient is peanut butter made in a Georgia plant of the Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) and sold to food distributors in bulk for use in institutions and not to consumers but also as as a peanut paste ingredient used other foods like cookies, crackers, cereal, candy, ice cream, baked goods or cooking sauces that are sold to consumers. As a result, CDC is now advising consumers to postpone eating products that contain peanut butter (such as cookies…