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Pulling for a one-dose vaccine

It'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…

Kansas: what a great place to put a lab full of incredibly infectious cattle virus

When the Bush Administration awarded a construction grant to put a Level 4 laboratory in Galveston, Texas to work on the most dangerous biological agents, a lot of people, including we here at Effect Measure, thought it was pretty stupid siting. Isn't Galveston open to Gulf hurricanes? Wasn't it the site of one of the most devastating storm floods in US history? Then came Hurricane Ike. It didn't seem that a hazardous agents lab could be more stupidly sited than Galveston (see here and here). That was an error in judgement on our part. The thing about a lot of agents used in Level 4 labs is…

The BPA cabal's toxic memo

We were among the first to bring you the full text of the leaked minutes of the secret meeting of the bisphenol-A (BPA) cabal at a posh private club in Washington, DC on May 28. It turns out those minutes may be almost as toxic to the cabal as their endocrine disrupting chemical is to humans. I guess I am exaggerating. It would have to pretty toxic for that. But it is at least producing some unpleasant fall out (see also here). You may remember one element (besides describing as the "holy grail" finding a “pregnant young mother who would be willing to speak around the country about the…

News flash: economy is bad (Harvard endowment in the crapper)

Given the size of the kinds of Federal bail-outs being discussed these days, Harvard University's endowment, almost $37 billion, by far the largest of any university in the world, sounds like chump change. But it is a staggeringly large endowment for a university and the interest alone accounted for 35% of the Harvard's annual operating budget. The previous statement is not quite accurate, we find out now. The endowment stood at $36.9 billion four months ago, the biggest decline in modern history of the institution. In the time since it has lost at least 22% of its value ($8 billion). The…

Annals of McCain - Palin, XXIII: Not just old and angry. Unbalanced.

John McCain's white hot anger is legendary among those who know him and among his colleagues (the real reason he won't win the Miss Congeniality Award), but the public still hasn't seen it boil over. So it's useful to have the accounts of those who have. Yesterday in HuffPo Nico Pitney pointed us to a piece by Michael Kinsley, recounting a gambling trip McCain took with Jeff Dearth, former publisher of the New Republic (now an investment banker!). McCain and Dearth were at a magazine industry junket (not clear who paid for it) in Puerto Rico in 2005 and here's what transpired (according to…

Director of NIH resigns

Like a lot of other research scientists supported by NIH I got an email yesterday from NIH Director Elias Zerhouni announcing his intention to leave his position "to devote much of my attention to writing." At least it wasn't the hackneyed "to spend more time with my family." While Zerhouni won't actually leave until the end of next month, the federal health research establishment is essentially leaderless, awaiting the next administration. The main public health institute within the NIH system, the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) has been under "Acting" (although…

The biodefense boondoggle

Republicans 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…

Bush administration admits humans are driving climate change (really!)

The 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…

Masters of War

Until 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…

New Relenza warning

First Tamiflu (oseltamivir), now Relenza (zanamivir): Health officials [in Canada] are investigating whether Relenza - a drug provinces have stockpiled in case of a pandemic flu outbreak - can be linked to fatal reactions or abnormal behaviour in children. [snip] The investigation is a response to recently updated safety warnings issued by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or Relenza. In March, pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline updated Relenza's safety labels after children in Japan were reported to suffer from delirium, hallucinations. Some died after injuring themselves. A…

Another clue to the identity of the Anti-Christ

He will be gay. But will the Antichrist be a homosexual? Having seen what the Bible says of sodomy, we have no further to look than the book of Daniel, chapter 11 to find our answer. It says, "Neither shall he [Antichrist] regard... the desire of women...." As I said at the onset, I am not the first to draw attention to this, but the verbiage is clear. … But consider this: The time is ripe for such a leader. Indeed, it should not be surprising that the one who is against everything Biblical and Christian should be a partaker of so great a sin; there is no greater way to reject the Creator…

Holier than thou

I may have sold Francis Collins short. He may be a useful agent in the battle against creationism, but not in the way he probably intends. The Discovery Institute - the Seattle-based headquarters of the intelligent design movement - has just launched a new website, Faith and Evolution, which asks, can one be a Christian and accept evolution? The answer, as far as the Discovery Institute is concerned, is a resounding: No. The new website appears to be a response to the recent launch of the BioLogos Foundation, the brainchild of geneticist Francis Collins, former head of the Human Genome…

Tweetlinks, 10-30-09

Follow me on Twitter to get these, and more, in something closer to Real Time (all my tweets are also imported into FriendFeed where they are much more easy to search and comment on, as well as into my Facebook wall where they are seen by quite a different set of people): On science writing and journalism: Scientists can't write? and Science journalism--critical analysis, not debate and Three kinds of knowledge about science and journalism. Recommended. A new treatment for chronic wounds Open Source Science? Or Distributed Science? Pretty Greeting Cards Warble, Tweet to Readers Big-headed…

On not flying

The first time I can remember flying on a commercial airplane was in August of 1955. It was a DC3 or DC7 or something like that. Before that the family traveled by train or car. In the years following I always enjoyed air travel. I flew the Atlantic on a prop plane once (refueled in the Azores, I think), went to Europe on Icelandic Airways, then the cheapest way to get there, flew everywhere. Now I hate flying. Air travel has become just another form of mass transit, and thanks to the TSA and the airlines themselves, a monumentally unpleasant and stressful one. At least on other kinds of mass…

Flu season is winding down but still with us

To everything there is a season, including flu. We are now emerging from the other end of one of the more difficult flu seasons in recent years, although by no means out of the ordinary for the genre. Last time we commented, almost every state was experiencing widespread flu activity by the end of March only seven states reported widespread activity according to CDC: States that were still reporting widespread flu the week of Mar 22 through 29 were Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Vermont. Regional flu activity was reported in 27 states and local activity…

Comcast is CrapComtastic

There are so many hot button issues today it's not possible to pick "the" biggest one. But certainly in the top five (unfrtunately there are 100 things in the top 5) must be "net neutrality." Essentially it is whether commercial internet service providers (like Comcast or RCN) should be allowed to give preference to certain kinds of traffic over others, in effect controlling which websites we can see and which ones we can't. Net neutrality, which is in theory what we have now, would make it mandatory that service providers be neutral in how they treat traffic. Data packets are data packets,…

American science swirling down the drain

I think it's safe to say most Americans couldn't give a rat's ass about funding for physics research in the US. So even fewer will cry about a story in New Scientist that the American physics research effort is starting to buckle under the weight of budget cuts: The reality of the US budget cuts to particle physics has hit home. The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in California, US, has just announced a trio of painful consequences: the end of work on the International Linear Collider, the imminent closure of its BaBar antimatter experiment, and the layoff of 125 workers. SLAC and…

Big Pharma's blind profits compromise

We've discussed the scandal over the use of Avastin and Lucentis for wet macular degeneration several times (here, here, here). If you've missed it, here's the gist. Avastin is a drug approved to treat colon cancer. It works by choking off blood vessels to the tumor. It turns out, however, that a tiny dose of the same drug, when injected into the eye can also stop the uncontrolled growth of blood vessels behind the retina that produces a leading cause of blindness in the elderly, macular degeneration. The good news is a compounding pharmacy can take the large dose in the Avastin package and…

Health care: dangerous workplaces

It's bad enough that health care workers have to worry about getting bird flu, Ebola and SARS. But even if they aren't in contact with infected patients there are many other hazards in a health care institution. Ergonomics issues are a big deal (I worked my way through school as a "transport" worker in a radiology department and lifting patients is a good wway to hurt your back; I know). And so are dangerous chemicals: Nurses who are exposed to high levels of chemicals and drugs on the job are more likely to report having asthma, miscarriages and some cancers, according to a survey released…

Second hand smoke is bad for you

A week ago we defended a colleague against attacks from overzealous anti-smoking crusaders when he criticized their patently absurd claim that breathing 30 minutes of second hand smoke in a public place was equivalent heart attack risk to that of a smoker. Some interpreted this as our saying second hand smoke was not as bad as alleged. I suppose the question here is "alleged by whom," but we don't have to play those games. Second hand smoke is bad for the health of those exposed to it for any length of time, as a new study shows graphically -- literally: It's not a smoking gun, but it's…

Today is Effect Measure's third blogiversary

Today is the third blogiversary of Effect Measure. We started it on blogger as a whim in 2004 while Mrs. R. was making a Thanksgiving dinner. Since then there have been posts under the Effect Measure name by the Reveres every day, 365 days a year for three years, some 2300 in all. Since our move to Scienceblogs in early June of 2006 we have averaged a bit over 1100 unique visits a day. In the process we have accumulated an interesting, engaged and idiosyncratic community of commenters: contributors, arguers, polemicists, the outraged, sometimes the appreciative, the hyperverbose, the laconic…

Freethinker Sunday Sermonette: movies that will put your Soul in danger

So many movies. So little time. What I needed was a guide to tell me what I can safely watch without putting my immortal soul in danger. And I've found just the thing: Movieguide: A Biblical Guide to Movies, Entertainment and Culture for Families. But to my horror, I've already seen some of the movies that could damn me to eternal suffering: Ever since the critical and box office success of movies like Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine" and "Fahrenheit 9/11," the atheist, left-wing elitists in the mass media have stepped up their attacks on the patriotic, traditional and orthodox values…

My hammer, my love

I don't have fantasies involving 75 year old women. At least not yet. But I remember comedian Gary Shandling once remarking he knew he was getting old when Mrs. Beaver started to look good to him (as in Leave it to Beaver, the TV show, you knuckleheads). However there is one 75 year old that could tempt me: Mona "The Hammer" Shaw. Mona signed up for Comcast Cable's Triple Play: cable, internet and phone. But she couldn't even get to first base (excuse the mixed metaphor) and get it installed: Shaw said they failed to show up on the appointed day, Monday, Aug. 13. They came two days later but…

Bird flu: 200 deaths and counting

The war in Iraq has been going on in earnest since March of 2003, which is about how long the war on bird flu has been going on. Yes, there were some preliminary skirmishes in the bird flu war in 1997, but it wasn't until it burst out of southern China with a vengeance that full scale hostilities started. In both wars there have been a lot of innocent bystanders. In neither are seeing a lot of progress, despite claims to the contrary. The war in Iraq, at least, is susceptible to human control. The war against H5N1 doesn't seem to be. The number of human casualties in the bird flu war is…

Gene test on flu prognosis?

A recent article in TimesOnline (hat tip RobT) raises an inevitable and interesting question about how we are going to ration scarce high tech medical resources in a pandemic. The article reports on a paper by Canadian scientists on SARS patients indicating that certain patterns of protein expression offer clues to clinical prognosis. In particular, the researchers found that protein expression patterns for interferons, known to participate in the innate immune system's reaction to viral infections, seem to indicate that one of two distinct patterns predict a relatively good prognosis, the…

But HOW do they do it?

Bird Moms Manipulate Birth Order To Protect Sons: ----------------snip------------------- Since 2002, Badyaev, Oh and their colleagues have been intensively documenting the lives of a population of house finches (Carpodacus mexicanus) on the UA campus. Throughout the year, the researchers capture birds several times a week to band and measure them and to take DNA and hormone samples. During the breeding season, the researchers locate the nests, keep track of activity in the nest, follow nestling growth and development, and take DNA samples from the chicks. The researchers have also been…

TalkOrigins.org FAQs at my fingertips

You know that I am excited about my kids' great start of school this year. Today when I picked them up from school, Coturnix Jr. informed me that he needed a piece of posterboard and some glue for his debate class. Ah, he is going to be so good at that, the family he is growing in... It makes him a tough kid to raise but great fun to converse with. I bet he can get PZ to join Southern Baptists! Anyway, that was a tangent. After depositing kids at home I went to the local drugstore to get his supplies. I go there all the time, but today there was a new cashier there, a guy of about 50, I…

Circadian expression of nuclear receptors

First 'encyclopedia' of nuclear receptors reveals organisms' focus on sex, food: Organisms thrive on sex and food, and so do their cells' receptors. In creating the first "encyclopedia" of an entire superfamily of nuclear receptors - proteins that turn genes on and off throughout the body - UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers found that certain receptors form networks and interact to regulate disease states and physiology in two main areas, reproduction and nutrient metabolism. Receptor networks also have key roles in metabolism's biological clock, researchers found. The findings,…

Creating slow-wave sleep on demand

Press-release just in - Deep Sleep: Researchers Discovery How To Simulate Slow Wave Activity: ----------snip------------- During slow wave activity, which occupies about 80 percent of sleeping hours, waves of electrical activity wash across the brain, roughly once a second, 1,000 times a night. In a new paper being published in the scientific journal PNAS, Tononi and colleagues, including Marcello Massimini, also of the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, described the use of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to initiate slow waves in sleeping volunteers. The researchers…

It must be tough to be an atheist in Texas

Just ask Richard Mullens, who has not said he is an atheist, but was suspected of being one…and lost his job as a teacher for that reason. Then on January 7th, a student in my classroom in second period left my class, went to the Principal's office, and told him that there was an inappropriate discussion in my classroom. I was informed by the principal, Richard Turner, that I needed to talk to her mother because she was very upset. Her mother came to class on January 7th, came to the school January 7th, very upset. She made some threats to me in the hallway. And then on January 8th, Mr.…

Creationism spreading around the world...

Oy, vey! In Russia, a test of God vs. Darwin: ....She did not attend the first two court hearings and seems far less interested in the outcome than her father, Kirill Shraiber, who spoke to the court on her behalf, and Anton Vuima, a family friend who heads a public relations firm called Spiritual Heritage. Vuima, whose firm goes by the slogan, "We Create Sensations," believes that nothing short of society's collapse is at stake when it comes to the teaching of evolution. He, like the lawsuit, contends that Darwinism, while not a political ideology, stems from Marxist-Leninist ideology;…

Dispassionate kisses

Self medicating for mood disorders is well known. It is often quite harmful, with the chief culprits being ethyl alcohol and nicotine. But there are others. One that comes up often is chocolate as an antidote to feelings of depression. Not everyone who eats chocolate is depressed, of course. Probably most of us who do it do it because we like chocolate. When I was in elementary school I used to eat a lot of Hershey bars after school. They cam in six-packs and one memorable day I found two whole packs and one pack with a single bar missing. I ate all 17 in one sitting. Two hours later I ate…

Freethinker Sunday Sermonette: hate groups in the White House

According to some notorious hate groups, the Obama administration is meeting with hate groups: Some conservative commentators are accusing the Obama administration of inviting "hate groups" into the White House by holding a meeting with a coalition of secularist and atheist groups. Officials from the Justice and Health and Human Services departments met Friday with representatives of the Secular Coalition for America, an umbrella group that includes American Atheists and the Council for Secular Humanism. The coalition called it "the first time in history a presidential administration has met…

Fifth blogiversary

We just realized that today is our fifth blogiversary. Young if you are a human, prime of life if you are a dog, but Methuselah if you are a blog. We've not gone dark for a single day in those five years, although on many we've thought about turning off the lights permanently. But we're still here, the day before Thanksgiving. That's not a coincidence. In 2004 Thanksgiving fell on November 25. One of the original reveres (the one tapping these keys, in fact) was making a nuisance of himself in the kitchen as Mrs. R. was trying to prepare one of her virtuouso Thanksgiving dinners. She shooed…

Where the Heck Have I Been?

Apologies to everyone for the radio silence - lots of stuff going on here and the blog has been horribly neglected.  Between trying to get the final garden push done, a bunch of goat birthing (including four beautiful babies yesterday for Eric's 42nd birthday - Urania gave us Tybalt and Mercutio in the wee hours while Calendula delivered Beatrice and Benedick), a lot of legal and medical proceedings involving C. and K, our foster sons, and the end-of-school stuff (Eli is transitioning from the program for kids with autism that he's been in since kindergarten to a new program for middle school…

Steven Kopits on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve

Every time oil prices get high, the SPR becomes a central issue. I really like Kopits' analysis here - I think he may be right that the impact of the SPR might hold off an oil shock. At the same time, the question is whether we would then be able to build it up again, and whether we face greater subsequent shocks. The SPR holds 727 million barrels of crude oil, about 40 days of US consumption and 70 days of oil imports. In addition, the US has about 1.1 billion barrels of commercial crude oil inventories. All in all, the US has sufficient domestic crude oil stocks to cover about six months…

While I'm On Vacation...

Somehow this week has turned into a lovely, but incredibly overscheduled period. Besides the usual sabbath (which I can use this week), and the fact that it has finally melted off enough to clean the buck pen, move the bucks up the hill and move the chicks out of the bathtub (adorable as they are i somewhat prefer poultry not in my house), and the seed starting (going apace), well, there's more. Monday is devoted entirely to running a talk and workshop by Rabbi Shalom Kantor (the US's only Conservative Schochet) on ethical kashruth and slaughter. The talk will outline the religious and…

Cities, Books, Updates.... at Least it Isn't Monday!

I kind of wandered off on y'all - we just spent four days visiting and celebrating Thanksanukah ;-) with biological and chosen family. We didn't go to my parents' place for Thanksgiving this year, so we headed out and ate turkey and latkes together, spent four glorious days goofing off, and are home refreshed. Of course, in the meantime I realized I was *supposed* to have written my Anyway Project Update before I left (it was kind of like packing my toothbrush - somehow some things just get left behind - and there's not "Anyway Project Update Store" in Beverly MA, the way there are…

Pusherwoman...with Apologies to Curtis Mayfield

I'm your mamma, I'm your daddy I'm that farma in the alley I'm your doctor, when in need Want sweet taters? Have some nettle weed! You know me, i'm your friend Gotcher parsnips, thick and thin I'm your pusherwoman, I'm your pusherwoman. haha Ain't i clean, veggie queen Super cool, super green Feelin' good, for not the man Onion chick, here i stand Carrot stash, heavy bread Baddest bitch in your garden bed! I'm your pusherwoman I'm your pusherwoman I'm your pusherwoman Solid life, on the farm Gal of odd circumstance A victim of agrarian dreams Feed you my broccoli And i'll let you trip for a…

Waking Up and Getting Growing

There are a few snow showers still falling around here, so that means it has been snowing here continuously since Tuesday morning. We have a little less than 4 feet of snow on the ground. Which makes it hard for me to remember that spring is nearly here - in fact it has been warm through the whole storm, which makes everything heavier and wetter, but is a sign of hope (soon we'll be rid of this white stuff and get floods and six inch mud...woohoo.) In the face of this, I need some inspiring music for spring. One of my favorite goof-off games is the combining of good music on related themes…

New yearbook highlights worker health and safety research from the last year

Researchers who investigate the impact of the work environment on health contributed dozens of papers to the peer-reviewed literature over the past 12 months. Scholars and advocates with non-profit organizations also published reports on various topics related to worker rights and safety. The final section of "The Year in U.S. Occupational Health & Safety" highlights some of this important and impressive research. A particularly prominent topic in scientific journals addressed the heat-exposure experiences of farm workers. We profile two papers that report on the feasibility of using an…

And a good time was had by all

Remember when you went to the high school dance, and all the social strata of the institution were exposed? You knew who the jocks and cheerleaders were, and the stoners and the college preppies, and of course, the geeks, the A/V nerds, the chess club crowd…the ones who didn't show up very often, and when they did, everyone was wondering what they were doing there. Geek Prom wasn't anything like that—it was kind of an anti-Heathers experience, where all the distinctions were thrown away. There were some beautiful people there, and everyone liked them, but they weren't any more special than…

Six Months Post-quake in Haiti

For the first few weeks after a 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti on January 12th, Haiti seemed to be on everyone's mind. Six months later, many of us think little about the quake survivors who are still struggling. In an op-ed in today's New York Times, Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive of Haiti and Bill Clinton, co-chairs of the Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission, report, "only 10 percent of the $5.3 billion pledged by governments at a United Nations conference in March has been disbursed to the Haitian government. Without reliable schedules for disbursement, the commission is unable to plan…

Developing a Zombie Vaccine

It's Zombie Day on ScienceBlogs! Scicurious at Neurotopia kicked things off, and Joseph of Ataraxia Theatre (whose other projects include the GearHead roleplaying game) provided the cool zombie illustrations. Thanks to the DC Department of Health's excellent disease surveillance system, a recent outbreak of zombies in the nation's capital was detected quickly enough to allow for capture and isolation of all cases, and no further transmission of the zombie virus has been observed. All state and local health and law enforcement departments have been alerted to the outbreak and instructed on…

Using Church for the Public's Health

By Ally Petrilla I read the Jackson Sun's (Tennessee) headline "Churches 'go green' as they as they aim to protect God's creation from more harm" and said to myself, "Finally!"  I am not that excited that my home state is catching the Go Green bug (although that's a great thing, too!); I was more excited to see that people are having enough sense to use churches as an outlet for health messages for people in the South.  For states like Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, and the Carolinas, church is as much a part of life as fried chicken.  We are people of the Word.…

Med School "Not Worth the Headaches Anymore"

Todayâs front page story in USA Today is about a shortage of surgeons at U.S. hospitals, with a focus on rural areas; the shortage threatens the health of 54 million rural Americans, reports Robert Davis. Part of the problem is that medical schools held enrollment steady for too long, rather than increasing it to account for the fact that so many doctors will be retiring at the same time that aging Boomers are needing more care. But changes in U.S. healthcare have also played a role. Med school loans spur a lot of medical students to choose a high-paying field and then go where the money…

Flu Update: Could've Been (and Still Could Be) Worse

Today, the CDC reports 403 confirmed cases of H1N1 (the flu formerly known as "swine") in the US, and the WHO reports a total of 1124 cases in 21 countries. There have been 25 deaths in Mexico and two in the US. The increase in numbers is largely due to cases that had already been reported as probable finally being laboratory confirmed. Here in the DC area, we're hearing less news about additional probable cases, and several school districts that had announced closures have now reversed themselves, as the CDC changed its stance from advising school closures when a flu case was reported to…

Risk Perceptions

by Kas Joe Biden was on NBC earlier saying, âI would tell members of my family -- and I have -- I wouldn't go anywhere in confined places now.â As examples of confined places, he mentions planes and subways. Mr. Vice President, would you ride the train to Delaware tonight?  Say it ainât so, Joe.  We know that you live in D.C. now and that your daily commute in that âconfined placeâ has been eliminated for the time being.  But, what about the rest of us?  Who uses the âconfined placesâ of public transportation the most?  Who is inside those âconfined placesâ classrooms?  And how do these…

Another Environmental Health Book Causes Controversy

Weâve written previously about Devra Davisâs The Secret History of the War on Cancer, which generated a lot of controversy. Dick Clapp, an environmental health professor at Boston Universityâ School of the Public Health (BUSPH), wrote for us about two opposing reviews of that book, and now heâs exploring the controversy surrounding another book that links environmental problems to disease. Poisoned Profits: The Toxic Assault on Our Children, by Philip Shabecoff and Alice Shabecoff, links toxic products to a rise in childhood disease and death. The journalist authors highlight polluted…

Director of NIH resigns

by revere, cross-posted at Effect Measure Like a lot of other research scientists supported by NIH I got an email yesterday from NIH Director Elias Zerhouni announcing his intention to leave his position "to devote much of my attention to writing." At least it wasn't the hackneyed "to spend more time with my family." While Zerhouni won't actually leave until the end of next month, the federal health research establishment is essentially leaderless, awaiting the next administration. The main public health institute within the NIH system, the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences…