revere | February 13, 2008If avian influenza comes to North America one likely route is through importation or smuggling of infected birds. To protect ourselves, we need good border controls and to do that the US Department of Agriculture needs to know where in the world outbreaks are occurring. A USDA Inspector General's Report says that isn't happening:
The USDA should have tested new or revised procedures that relate to pandemic planning, but the agency has not tested 14 of 26 tasks for which it was designated the lead agency, the report states. Though the federal plan does not require the USDA to test the…
revere | February 12, 2008Researchers at Purdue University's Ingestive Behavior Research Center fed two groups of otherwise similar rats yogurt with Sweet 'N Low (an artificial sweetener containing saccharin) or yogurt sweetened with glucose ( "A Role for Sweet Taste: Calorie Predictive Relations in Energy Regulation by Rats," Susan E. Swithers, PhD and Terry L. Davidson, PhD, Purdue University; Behavioral Neuroscience, Vol. 122, No. 1):
Three different experiments explored whether saccharin changed lab animals' ability to regulate their intake, using different assessments --the most obvious being caloric intake,…
revere | February 12, 2008A recently published Commentary in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) raises some interesting and serious questions about conventional efforts for pandemic flu preparedness. The author is John Middaugh of the Florida State Health Department, a long time public health professional. The last I saw him he was in Alaska, so he seems to have put quite a bit of distance between his current and former places of employment. Indeed the question of people distancing themselves from each other is a central theme of the Commentary:
Although continuing to invest in diverse aspects of…
revere | February 11, 2008In the 1960s, as the US biomedical research establishment was starting to rev its engines, bioethicists called attention to a dark side to research, the abuse of human beings as subjects of research studies. The poster child for this was the "Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male," a study to see what happens to people when you don't treat them for a treatable disease. Like many such things, it started off with reasonable intentions. At its outset syphilis treatments were toxic with many adverse side effects. It wasn't obvious patients wouldn't be better off, on average,…
revere | February 11, 2008I clipped something from AP Pakistan last week but didn't use it because of interruptions. It turns out that Crof at H5N1 noted it at the time but I have a few observations to add, even at this late date. First, here's the gist:
Federal Minister for Food, Agriculture and Livestock, Prince Esa Jan Baloch here on Wednesday asked the journalists to focus on factual, objective and positive reporting to check spread of misconceptions and misinformation regarding the outbreak of bird flu in the country.
Addressing a press conference, following the coordination meeting between Ministry of Food…
revere | February 10, 2008There is so much crap written in US media about alleged fatal flaws of the Canadian system of universal health care that it could be used to fertilize the crops of US agribusiness for a year. One apparent myth is that Canadians hate their system and that it results in long waits and unsatisfactory service. The province of British Columbia surveyed its citizens twice on how they feel about one of the most important aspects of the system, the Emergency Room (for American readers: before you read the results ask yourself how satisfied you were with your last trip to the ER):
The survey was…
revere | February 10, 2008Every preacher knows that a Sermon goes down better with a little humor before one gets to the serious stuff. I usually choose between the two. Combining them often gives me indigestion. So the question for me this week was, will it be the ridiculous or the really serious? I contemplated the really ridiculous: Mike Huckabee explaining to Bill O'Reilly [at 2:15] that while he didn't know how God did it exactly, he did believe there was an Adam and Eve and that Eve was created by clipping a rib out of Adam. But that got me thinking that I should maybe go for the really serious, so I opted for a…
revere | February 9, 2008Late yesterday afternoon, a Friday and classic time to release news you don't want anyone to read, I got the following email [excerpted] from David Schwartz, on leave as Director of the National Institute of Health Sciences (NIEHS), the main public health-oriented NIH institute and the subject of several previous posts (here, here, here, here, here):
Dear friends and colleagues,
I have decided to resign as director of the NIEHS and NTP, effective immediately. My reasons for this decision are simple. I believe that our institute would be more successful with new leadership, and that I would…
revere | February 8, 2008The President's budget was announced on Monday (see our post here), and as many people know (including us), it is Dead on Arrival. But it is still a significant for its symbolism. This is what the Bush administration wants. They know they won't get it but they are making a statement. Some statement:
revere | February 8, 2008We've discussed this already, but now CIDRAP News also has a story (which they got from AP) that this year's flu vaccine is not perfectly matched to the all the circulating viruses (of course we had it first, but hey, who's keeping track?). The data that are used to prepare vaccines for the next flu season come from predictions based on what is seen during the current season as determined by a global surveillance network (the same network at issue in the refusal of Indonesia to share H5N1 isolates, although this mismatch has nothing to do with the Indonesian situation). The circulating…
revere | February 7, 2008I'm glad the FDA has gotten serious about people knowingly importing and selling tainted food from China. They have indicted two Chinese nationals living in the US and an executive of an American company. It would be nice if they did this for foods that threaten human beings, but for the next 347 days I guess I'll have to settle for crimes against pets.
Several companies are involved, including Suzhou Textiles, Silk, Light Industrial Products, Arts and Crafts I/E Co. LTD. (SSC), a Chinese export broker that exports products from China to the United States; and ChemNutra, Inc., a Las Vegas,…
revere | February 7, 2008Because he's too fat. Broiler chickens (the ones raised for meat) are essentially a cash crop, grown much like wheat or corn. When the chicken is ripe it's harvested. The Grim Reaper. We admit to not knowing much about poultry science and the business it supports, but because of our interest in bird flu we have been learning. There is a some well founded suspicion intensive poultry farming is one of the enabling conditions for the evolution and spread of bird flu.
These birds are raised under very difficult conditions and lead their short lives in extraordinary population densities, often…
revere | February 6, 2008There are a few issues where Progressives and Conservatives agree on and one is the importance of privacy. It's a core American value. Congress understands this and required the Bush administration to set up a Board to insure the alleged "War on Terror" wouldn't be an all purpose excuse for trampling on constitutional rights. Even Joe "I'm really a Republican" Lieberman wanted it. The result?
The Bush administration has failed to nominate any candidates to a newly empowered privacy and civil-liberties commission. This leaves the board without any members, even as Congress prepares to give the…
revere | February 6, 2008Bird flu is all over the Indian state of West Bengal and the country that borders it on the east, Bangladesh. The Ganges River flows through West Bengal, dividing in two, with one branch headed into Bangladesh. The Gangetic alluvium and delta region also has another unhappy claim to fame: it is the site of an enormous chronic poisoning from groundwater containing naturally occurring arsenic.
The mass poisoning that is occurring in West Bengal and Bangladesh is another example of the Law of Unintended Consequences. Drinking water is one of the most important resources for any community and the…
revere | February 5, 2008Today is a big day for American Presidential politics, the so-called Super Tuesday when citizens in 24 states vote or caucus with their fellows to help select the candidates of the two main political parties. I live in one of those 24 states and Mrs. R. and I vote regular as clockwork. We never miss elections, even minor, off year ones. I was saying to someone the other day, regarding the unsettled state of the race in the Democratic primary in our state, "At least this year our vote will count" (a reference to other years when the outcome was pre-ordained by the time the primary was held).…
revere | February 5, 2008Bangladesh is a country with more than its share of woes. Now there is H5N1 galloping through its poultry. Bangladesh needs all the help it can get. Which also means it needs to help others, too. How can a resource poor country like Bangladesh help other nations? They can start by sharing the genetic sequences of the viruses isolated from their poultry:
Bangladesh has refused to share the genetic details of its H5N1 bird flu virus with India. In a blow to India's efforts to find the origin of the highly pathogenic avian influenza strain that is presently wreaking havoc in West Bengal,…
revere | February 4, 2008Most Americans think the Afghanistan mistake was the Right Thing to Do. While we are on record (here and here) as of another opinion, the conventional view is that getting rid of the Taliban was Good (they were Bad, which is true) and anyway it was payback for 9/11 (even though the Afghans didn't actually commit 9/11, only were the geographic location of the planner -- thanks to US aid when bin Laden was fighting the Soviets. Now Pakistan is where the 9/11 leaders live (not to mention that the actual perpetrators, who mostly came from Saudi). You fill in the rest. Still, few agree with us.…
revere | February 4, 2008Blogging can be exhausting. A blogger who wants to be read (not all do) has a hungry mouth, a mouth best fed daily. This one gets fed twice (once on Saturday), seven days a week, 365 days a year. The Reveres have been shoveling stuff into this ravenous maw for over three years. So we sympathize and understand the plight of the excellent flu blogger Sophia Zoe who has been missing of late. She explains where she's been in A Lesson in Real Life (hat tip Avian Flu Diary). Characteristic of her excellent blogging, she also draws a pandemic preparedness lesson from it worth pondering. Here's the…
revere | February 3, 2008After our recent rant on the necessity of supporting the public health and social services infrastructure instead of cutting taxes, President Bush has replied. He is cutting the infrastructure:
President Bush's $3 trillion budget for next year slashes mental health funding and rural health care and freezes spending on medical research, among the cuts outlined in budget documents obtained by The Associated Press.
The budget for the Department of Health and Human Services would be reduced by almost 3 percent under the Bush budget plan to be released Monday. The $2 billion in HHS cuts are about…
revere | February 3, 2008It's the US Presidential election silly season and major voting to help determine who will be the candidates for the two major parties is on Tuesday. We've got one candidate assuring crowds he has worshipped Jesus in a Christian Church for the last 20 years (translation he isn't a Muslim), a Baptist preacher who campaigns with a Bible peddling movie star who's made his dough extolling interpersonal violence, and yet another saying that faith is the basis for Americanism. By the way, this last one's own faith is Mormonism. Most Americans think Mormons are only slightly less odious than…