sa smith

This story has been making the rounds online-- Unlicensed Acupuncturist intentionally infects patients with HIV Unlicensed Acupuncturist Charged In 16 HIV Infections In Switzerland Swiss acupuncturist charged in 16 HIV infections Swiss "healer" accused of intentionally infecting 16 people with HIV…

Ive got a fever... puppy fever... and the only cure... is MORE PUPPIES!!! My Terrible Med Student Neighbor finally moved out, and the new guy who moved in is just wonderful.  Really sweet kid, quiet, and he just adopted a homeless puppy!  The sound of puppy feet trotting around upstairs... I can…

Ive always wanted a ferret.  When I was little, because of this (1m59s): Now, because of stuff like this: Ferrets arent just super cool pets, they also have a very rare 'gift'-- While all organisms genomes are littered with pirate DNA and endogenous retroviruses, endogenous lentiviruses have only…

Paleovirology seems to work the opposite of the way the Creationist want.  The more information we have, the further back the timeline shifts, not vice versa. For example, we used to think HIV-1 started in humans ~1930, but after we found more 'old' HIV sequences, the clock got pushed back to 1902-…

NOH MAH GAWD!!! Mysterious Disease Leaves Patients With AIDS-like Symptons, But Not HIV Researchers have identified a mysterious new disease that has left scores of people in Asia and some in the United States with AIDS-like symptoms even though they are not infected with HIV. [bolding original…

The Thinking Atheist did a show last night on 'A world full of woo'-- I stopped by for a few minutes to talk about anti-vaxers, but there is a lot more to the episode, including an interview with Dr. Harriet Hall! TA is super-- Last year he recorded and produced all of the videos for FreeOK.  He…

This is beyond absurd. A young woman in Oklahoma-- her class valedictorian, going to college this fall on a full ride-- is being denied her high school diploma because of this: Nootbaar says, “Her quote was, when she first started school she wanted to be a nurse, then a veterinarian and now that…

Via Coffee Loving Skeptic-- The laziest example of peddling snake-oil I have ever seen. Revealed: Gorton church sells olive oil and blackcurrant squash as miracle 'cure' for cancer and HIV M.E.N. reporter: After just 15 minutes I was offered church's ‘miracle cure’ Pastor: We are trying to help…

Ive known for a long time that I have a defective dog. Any self respecting pup eats Proper Dog Foods like meat and... well... meat. Sometimes grass. But while Arnieman loves meat... he also loves my vegan chili, roasted vegetables, Pop-Tarts (cherry), banana bread, hell, the boy even begs for fake…

ARR! I mean, ERV! I mean, NIRV! Phylogeny, integration and expression of sigma virus-like genes in Drosophila As my blag tagline goes, 'If we are made in Gods image, God is made of gag, pol, and env', the components of retroviruses.  Our, and other organisms, genome is inhabited by lots of bits of…

Well this is a new one: This will sound radical to most of you, but the latest information available to us now could improve your health, should you decide to take this seriously. Have you ever considered why Muslims and Jews are forbidden from eating pork?  Both religions consider it unclean.  Dr…

Arnie got to meet horses for the first time last week :) It was an unexpected event (horsies were out at a neighbors when we went on a walkie), so I didnt get it on film-- but I can recreate it: Arnie: HOLY SHIT MOM!  MOOOOOM! MOOOOOOOOOOOM! WHAT ARE THOSE MONSTERS??? OH GOD THEYRE WALKING TOWARDS…

There has been a ton of hilarious drama going on with the XMRV fiasco, but I havent been writing about it because I dont actually care.  I 'cared' about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome because it was associated with a retrovirus.  Turns out it was all a mirage-- The retrovirus known as XMRV is not…

Vaccinate your pets #1 Apparently, this summer is going to be a banner year for West Nile Virus.  Im not an insect person, so I have no idea how we have mosquitoes when we have had no rain in forever and surging temperatures every day (mosquitoes can lay eggs in dust and dried up grass?), but its…

The Evolutionary Consequences of Blood-Stage Vaccination on the Rodent Malaria Plasmodium chabaudi The concept of vaccination is, superficially, simple-- Safely mimic 'infection' so your immune system learns how to fight a pathogen, without needing to get sick from the genuine pathogen.  Then if…

COOL!!! Recombinant origin, contamination, and de-discovery of XMRV I dont know if you all have access to this paper, but here is the relevant portion: Treatment of CFS patient PBMCs with 5-azacytidine was omitted from Lombardi et al. paper   In September 2011, Abbie Smith, a graduate student and…

I know I give physicians crap sometimes on my blag, but I really do appreciate what they--along with nurses, physical and respiratory therapists, and other health professionals-- do. They interact with people when they are at their 'worst'-- a normally cheerful, charming person is sick, scared, in…

Many ERV readers are aware of 'The Berlin Patient'-- The fellow who has seemingly cleared the HIV-1 virus after receiving a bone marrow transplant to treat his lymphoma (we say 'seemingly' because we dont really know what 'cured' is with HIV yet). The Berlin Patient was a rather unique case  in…

Briefly, a lot of our vaccines and antibiotics need to be refrigerated, if not frozen, for them to maintain their usefulness. This makes it problematic to get vaccines and antibiotics to places that need them, but lack proper refrigeration (or electricity, for that matter)-- Its called the Cold…

Despite the fact that the radically religious and conservative politicians like to focus on homosexual males and IV drug use leading to HIV-1 infection, the fact of the matter is, heterosexual women are the fastest growing group of HIV-1 patients in the US (and Africa, and Asia)-- even women in…

Domesticating wild organisms-- Whether its domesticating teosinte or aurochs, bending wild organisms to our will is always a game-changing event in human history. The domestication of viruses is no exception. We now live in a world where small-pox, a virus that once wiped out entire continents, is…

The polite way to describe my opinion of the Humane Society of the United states is 'Im not a fan'. For those of you who are unaware, HSUS has absolutely nothing to do with 'the Humane Society' that rescues animals in your community. HSUS has nothing to do with rescuing animals at all-- they give…

WARBLEGARBLE!!! Fighting malaria with engineered symbiotic bacteria from vector mosquitoes. Malaria kills 1.24 million people a year.  Mostly babies under 5 years old. Malaria is becoming resistant to our drugs. We cant figure out how to make an anti-malarial vaccine. We can make GMO mosquitoes…

Look, scientists are nuts.  Virologists, on the other hand, are certifiably insane.  As Hedwig would say, virologists make the strangest things seem suddenly routine.  Yesterdays absurd future technology (GENE THERAPY!) is now something as miraculous as curing genetic diseases, and as mundane as an…

The 'debate' over the HPV vaccine has thus far has been a tug-of-war with radical religion/conservative politicians/nutbar anti-vaxers on one side, and the lives of women on the other side. The HPV vaccine has been A Female Issue. Turns out the people opposing the HPV vaccine were damning male…

Time to add another disease to the list of problems associated with wayward ERV expression: Protective Effect of Human Endogenous Retrovirus K dUTPase Variants on Psoriasis Susceptibility Repeat after me everyone: ERVs are junk DNA.  We WANT them to be junk DNA.  Yes, very rarely an ERV is…

Herd immunity-- If a lot of people are protected from a pathogen then the people who arent protected, are still protected.  The higher the percentage of 'protected' people, the better herd immunity works. Here is a simple animation of how herd immunity works. While we generally think of herd…

I used to think gene therapy was an absurd 'solution' for HIV/AIDS.  Well, 'absurd' is putting it lightly.  I thought gene therapy was a perverted solution-- Even if it 'worked', it would only be available for the richest people in the richest countries, not the millions and millions and millions…

File this under "Cool, but not the best experimental design and maybe a bad idea in humans (but maybe a good idea under some circumstances)"-- Effects of Novel Vaccines on Weight Loss in Diet-Induced-Obese (DIO) Mice, pdf: www.jasbsci.com/content/pdf/2049-1891-3-21.pdf Somatostatin is part of…

Hai guise! Because of some complaints that NatGeo is getting about the posts/comment threads at ERV, Im taking them down here and putting them up at an alternate location (lots of you have offered, havent decided where yet, will update yall when its worked out). No big whoop-- This is NatGeos…