revere | June 2, 2008In a typically well informed and thoughtful commentary over at the mega-blog, DailyKos, DemFromCT reminds everyone that just because the media aren't talking about bird flu and pandemics and just because the candidates are arguing about the economy, the war and whose pastor is worse doesn't mean that anything has changed. All the elements that alarmed the public health community as far back as 1997 when the first human cases of H5N1 appeared are still there. In some respects we should be more alarmed because so much of what we thought about flu then we now know isn't the case at all. Learning…
revere | June 1, 2008Republicans are supposed to be the tight fisted fiscal conservatives and Democrats the ones who think that problems can be solved by throwing federal money at it. In reality it is just the opposite, a triumph for Republican image makers but a disaster for the rest of us who have lived through a decade of Republican Congressional and then Bush administration profligacy, with nothing to show for it but a widening gap between the favored plutocrats and everyone else. One sees it everywhere, most spectacularly in the Iraq debacle, which has enriched Bush - Cheny cronies while wreaking violence on…
revere | June 1, 2008Most people are religious by default. Religion is a social custom inherited from their parents, like being Italian or Sudanese. Some people turn to religion for comfort or to help them cope with troubles. I'm not sure how this is different than using alcohol or drugs or Transcendental Meditation to cope. I'll let you answer that. Some people use religion to control others. Make up your own examples.
And some people hope religion will answer their questions:
revere | May 31, 2008Many years ago -- about 40 to be exact -- I was working as the only medical doctor in a bioengineering research laboratory in a famous technological university. A lot of what was done there involved speech synthesis (one of the first reading machines for the blind using text to speech recognition) and also some digital image processing. One of my interests was in radiology (the medical specialty of reading x-rays) and I was doing some research in that area. X-rays of the chest were usually taken in threes: the "posterior-anterior" (PA) view (back to front), the lateral (through the side) and…
revere | May 30, 2008The big climate change news isn't that there is now a consensus that humans are mostly likely driving it. That's not news at all, at least to anyone who isn't paying attention or isn't just mouthing Bush administration talking points. The big news is that the denier group just got significantly smaller because the Bush administration has now acknowledged the obvious:
Burning fossil fuels in power plants and automobiles is most likely responsible for global warming, according to a Bush administration report that confirms climate risks already accepted by most of the world's scientists.
Carbon…
revere | May 29, 2008Earlier in the month there was a hilarious piece on Fox News (where else?) by hack lawyer turned hack commentator Steven Milloy trying to counter the extremely bad publicity one of his closest friends was getting. This close friend was a chemical, bisphenol A (BPA; see here and here) which just got panned by the Canadian government, the US National Toxicology Program, Walmart, Nalgene (maker of BPA containing water bottles) and even the Washington Post. Here's Milloy turning away from the scientific evidence and standing on his head, a contortion guaranteed to bring you face to face with an…
revere | May 28, 2008Stories on the wires this weekend highlight a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) suggesting that some bird flu viruses are adapting to the human respiratory tract, thought to be a prelude to increased transmissibility and possibly ushering in a pandemic of influenza in humans. We need to sort out a number of things here, beginning with the idea that "avian influenza viruses" are mutating in a way woy to make humans more vulnerable. Let's take it apart.
First, influenza. Influenza can either be a syndrome (a package of clinical symptoms and signs…
revere | May 27, 2008IEDs, or Improvised Explosive Devices are killing American soldiers in Iraq. In Massachusetts people are dying from more prosaic things: auto accidents, heart attacks, homicides and suicides. IEDs aren't on Death's Menu in Massachusetts. So naturally the Bush-Chertoff Department of Homeland Security wants to protect Massachusetts citizens against IEDs:
Juliette N. Kayyem, the Massachusetts homeland security adviser, was in her office in early February when an aide brought her startling news. To qualify for its full allotment of federal money, Massachusetts had to come up with a plan to…
revere | May 26, 2008The fifth Memorial Day of the Iraq War. I have no words. I'll give you this instead:
Priscilla Herdman is singing this 1971 song by Eric Bogle.
I feel like weeping.
For the Reveres. Memorial Day, 2008.
revere | May 25, 2008Until the middle of the last century the main victims of war were combatants. Since World War II the main victims of war are innocent civilians. Not just "collateral damage" (the euphemism to hide war crimes). Now there are "weapon systems" designed to be indiscriminate in their effect. The most notorious are cluster bombs, explosive canisters that spew their own small bomblets. Like landmines, they hurt mainly civilians. Like landmines, civilized nations are trying to ban them in modern warfare, just as poison gases have been banned. But the US is not participating. In fact it is actively…
revere | May 25, 2008Whether in the name of all that's decent or in the Name of God, Bring 'em Home:
revere | May 24, 2008Bangladesh now has its first confirmed human case of avian influenza. That's news. Maybe:
Bangladesh announced its first human case of bird flu on Friday in a 16-month-old baby boy, bringing the number of countries which have recorded human infections to 15. Avian Influenza has already spread through 47 of Bangladesh's 64 districts and concerned Indian authorities say when the disease is so widespread in poultry, it is really a matter of time before humans start getting infected. (Times of India)
Specimens from the case had been sent to CDC in the US and the diagnosis confirmed by WHO. So why…
revere | May 23, 2008If you aren't in the business of figuring out if a chemical is a health hazard you might never have heard of the EPA's IRIS (Integrated Risk Information System) database but suffice it to say it is a wealth of valuable information on the topic. Considered authoritative by many states and countries, its judgements have become the basis for official standards. It's been around since the start of Reagan's second term (1985) so there is no claim it is some kind of fringe environmentalist fantasy. It's not the Last Word but it's a loud voice and taken seriously by anyone tasked with protecting the…
revere | May 22, 2008Over the years I've seen more than enough of the murderous destruction "the magic mineral, "asbestos, has caused in the lives of workers and their families. Exposure to asbestos causes a serious, often fatal, scarring of the lungs called asbestosis and also two different kinds of cancer of the respiratory tract: lung cancer and mesothelioma. Both cancers are usually fatal, but while lung cancer can be caused by other agents like cigarettes and various occupational chemicals, mesothelioma is mostly a result of exposure to asbestos. "Meso," as it is often called, is a horrific disease. It…
revere | May 21, 2008Stephen Johnson is a career professional, now the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. He is reported to be very religious and to hold prayer meetings with select staff at the start of the day. Apparently he also takes "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's" seriously. Too bad he doesn't take the US law and his sworn responsibility to protect its citizens from environmental hazards as seriously. New revelations show he is a liar, morally corrupt and intellectually dishonest. I guess prayer has its limits as a motivator of probity:
Environmental Protection Agency chief…
revere | May 20, 2008When the Religious Right made a Big Deal that SpongeBob Pants was gay or was advancing the "Gay Agenda" I didn't pay much attention. First, my kids were grown and I didn't have the faintest idea who SpongeBob Pants was (actually I still don't). Second, the whole thing was just too ridiculous for words:
xIn a new video [2005] to be distributed to 61,000 schools across the nation, homosexual activists are using popular children's TV characters such as SpongeBob SquarePants and Barney the dinosaur to surreptitiously indoctrinate young children into their lifestyle, a pro-family activist group…
revere | May 19, 2008It seems with every terrible natural disaster we have to say the same thing. Dead bodies aren't a public health risk:
Contrary to popular belief, dead bodies left from natural disasters such as the China earthquake and Myanmar cyclone are not a source of disease or a health threat to survivors, the World Health Organization said Friday.
[snip]
"There is a widespread and erroneous belief that dead bodies are a source of disease and therefore a threat to public health. This is untrue," [Arturo Pesigan, WHO's Western Pacific Region's headquarters in Manila] said.
"There has never been a…
revere | May 18, 2008Almost all stories in the news about H5N1 (bird flu) have some obligatory line in them, "It is believed that all or almost all human cases come from contact with infected poultry." This is like a mantra of many public health officials and I suspect some reporters have the requisite disclaimer as a cut and paste text they mechanically insert into their stories. But it isn't true. There are an awful lot of human cases for which no poultry source has ever been located and we have yet another example in the latest Indonesia cases:
The city's husbandry, fishery and maritime agency said Friday it…
revere | May 18, 2008A letter written by Albert Einstein to Jewish philosopher Eric Gutkind just sold at auction for $404,000. That's not the news, though. It's the contents of the letter that have surprised some, although it merely reveals what most of us already knew: he was an atheist. That's only pseudo-news, the result of a concerted effort to portray him as some kind of covert advocate of Intelligent Design. I've been reading Einstein's writings and biographical material about him for almost 60 years. I own first editions of some of his earliest published works (pre-relativity). I sent him a birthday card…
revere | May 17, 2008It contaminates the water supplies of about 11 million people in 35 states. It is suspected of interfering with iodide cycling in a way that could suppress thyroid hormone, a hormone necessary for the proper development of the fetus. Its source is military bases and aerospace companies. The health and environmental agencies of affected states have been waiting years for the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate it. A decision may come "before the end of the year" (just after the election):
Benjamin Grumbles, the EPA's assistant administrator for water, said the EPA will decide…