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The autism "Holocaust"? Why antivaccine advocates are not autism advocates

A typical response to a charge of being antivaccine coming from someone whose rhetoric is definitely antivaccine is to clutch her pearls mightily and retort, "I'm not 'anti-vaccine.' I'm pro-vaccine safety." Similarly, a common retort of antivaccinationists who believe that vaccines cause autism, particularly those who believe that vaccines caused their children's autism, is to declare themselves "autism advocates." Indeed, the bloggers at one of the most wretched hives of scum and antivaccine quackery on the whole Internet, Age of Autism, routinely declare themselves an autism advocacy…

Medicine and Evolution, Part 9: What was that about evolution having "nothing to do" with antimicrobial resistance?

In my last couple of posts on the risks and benefits of ever more sensitive screening tests for various cancers, and in particular breast cancer, I marveled at a a bit of serendipity that had pointed me to a particular old article a mere few days before multiple new papers about breast cancer screening with mammography and MRI were released. It turns out that that's not the only serendipity that's been going on lately, as far as blogging goes. For example, there's been Dr. Michael Egnor, the creationist professor of neurosurgery who's become the Discovery Institute's seemingly favorite "…

Be a smart dick

Is PZ Myers over the top? Is Phil Plait too nice? Is Chris Mooney right about framing? If I meet a Creationist, should I throw a fossil over his head? A while back, I did a radio show with a skeptic who happened to be a musician. One of the main topics was whether or not being mean to people who did not agree with you was OK. I was on the side that it was often OK, certainly not the only way to do it, but that the entire conversation about being mean vs. nice had become too uni-dimensional and counter productive, that there were times and places for being stern and firm, and times and…

The "decline" of science? Not so much

I've on occasion been asked why I even bother responding to the brain--and I do use the term loosely--droppings of Mike Adams, the purveyor of one of the largest repositories of quackery on the entire Internet. Good question. Sometimes I wonder that myself. After all, Adams is so far out there, so beyond the realm of rational thought, so full of bizarre conspiracy theories and defenses of quackery that anyone the least bit rational and science-based should be able to see through his nonsense. Applying a heapin' helpin' of not-so-Respectful Insolence to someone as reality-challenged as Mike…

Bravo! Homeopathy deconstructed by the CBC

Something amazing happened on Friday. Unfortunately, I didn't get to blog it as soon as I would have liked because (1) it happened on Canadian TV and the video wasn't available to anyone outside of Canada until it showed up on YouTube and (2) Craig Willougby's changing his mind about Andrew Wakefield really did gobsmack me to the point that I had to blog about it, so rare is it for someone who used to accept pseudoscience to have the courage and intellectual honesty to admit publicly that he is changing his mind. Still, even though it's three days later, I didn't want to let this pass,…

On the "individualization" of treatments in alternative medicine

One of the claims most frequently made by "alternative medicine" advocates regarding why alt-med is supposedly superior (or at least equal) to "conventional" medicine and should not be dismissed, regardless of how scientifically improbably any individual alt-med modality may be, is that the treatments are highly "individualized." In other words, the "entire patient" is taken into account with what is frequently referred to as a "holistic approach" that looks at "every aspect" of the patient, with the result that every patient requires a different treatment, sometimes even for the same disease…

Biologie Totale: The quackery of German New Medicine on steroids

OK, I give up. I hadn't planned on blogging about this because I thought I had already taken care of this woo before. Well, not exactly this woo, but a related woo of which this new issue is just a warmed over more woo-ified version. Indeed, I had even considered it as a candidate to be the first "victim" of a new, improved, resurrected version of Your Friday Dose of Woo (yes, I still do intend to resurrect it but haven't managed to find the time to give it the justice it deserves), but decided against using this particular form of woo because, well, it's quackery that kills. And that's a…

My Take on the Scientific Method (Basic Concepts)

This is my meager contribution to the "Basic Concepts" series that is going on around here. (I hope to do more later, but for right now I want to start with this one.) I've written about this before at my blog's old location, but I'm writing this now without looking back at that; we can compare later to see how consistent I am. I also expect other scientists to have a slightly different take on this. In three words, my view is that the scientific method is nothing more than Applied Common Sense. Now, "Common Sense" has at least three meanings. The first meaning is "the title of a tract…

Superbrains will not come out of a test tube

Stephen Hsu thinks super intelligent humans are coming. He thinks this because he's very impressed with genetic engineering (he's a physicist), and believes that the way to make people more intelligent is to adjust their genes, and therefore, more gene tweaking will lead to more intelligent people, inevitably. And not just intelligent, but super-intelligent, with IQs about 1000, even though he has no idea what that means, or for that matter, even though no one really knows what an IQ of 100 means. We're going to figure out all the genes that are involved in intelligence, and then we'll just…

Blowing the antivaccine dog whistle again

You remember Dr. Bob, don't you? I'm referring, of course, to Robert "Dr. Bob" Sears, the Capistrano Beach, CA pediatrician who's arguably the most famous of the antivaccine pediatricians who have been spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) about vaccines. (Sorry, Dr. Jay, but, regardless of your being Jenny McCarthy's son's pediatrician, I'd bet that more people have heard of Dr. Bob than have heard of you.) Dr. Bob has achieved this fame/notoriety based on his book, The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Decision for your Child, which is chock full of exaggerations about the dangers of…

A private letter to Salty Current

Nobody read this. Salty, my friend. I wrote the following after seeing your blog post. Salty, it is certainly true that you are not an antisemite. I never said you were, and I never insinuated you were. I made a statement in which I suggested that some of the thing you had been saying in comments could easily look to an outsider like antisemitic comments (because of their overall form or other features). I took pains to make sure that in that statement to give clear indication (in two separate phrases) that I was talking about appearance, and that I personally did not think this.…

Lyme disease---who is credible?

I recently had a pleasant, brief email exchange with Kris Newby, the producer of the latest medical advocacy pic, Under Our Skin. There's been a number of similar movies lately, mostly about quacky cancer therapies. This one is apparently much better made, and follows the controversy regarding "chronic" Lyme disease. I'd heard an interview about the movie on Diane Rehm, and was rather unnerved by it. It sounded like a typical I-drank-the-Kool-Aid-now-I'm-gonna-make-a-movie kind of thing. Still, I haven't written about it, because I haven't seen the movie. That's going to change. Kris…

Release the Kraken! (I mean antivaccine "Thinkers.")

Oh, dear. I didn't think I'd be writing about that wretched hive of Dunning-Kruger scum and quackery, the most inaptly named website and blog of all time, The Thinking Moms' Revolution (TMR), after having written about it just earlier this week. When last we visited this klatsch of smugly arrogant moms, one of them was bragging about how, if your pediatrician "fires" you because you won't do the responsible thing and vaccinate your children, you should be proud because it means that you've arrived as a "Thinker." And, yes, they do capitalize the word "Thinker" and its variants, such as "…

Here we go again: The vile tactic of blaming shaken baby syndrome on vaccines

About ten or twelve years ago, back when I was in essence, a newly minted skeptic and public supporter of science-based medicine, I was so naive. There I was, having just discovered the Usenet newsgroup misc.health.alternative and confronting the original wretched hive of scum, quackery, and pseudoscience, and I thought I had seen everything. Yes, I realize these days that, even a decade on I haven't seen everything and will never see everything, but back then I couldn't believe that, having learned for the first time about coffee enemas, various forms of cancer quackery, each seemingly more…

"Integrative medicine" quackery infiltrates Kentucky

Yesterday, I expressed my dismay at learning that what used to be a bastion of science-based medicine, the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, is now peddling the quackery known as acupuncture to children, or, as I put it, "integrating" nonsense with science. Sadly, as I've written about all too often because I keep seeing it again and again, it's an all too common trend. Hospitals are increasingly embracing pseudoscience and quackery, laboring under the misguided belief that by doing so they are somehow "cutting edge"; that the patients really, really want it; and as a marketing tool. Although I…

A "personal case" for homeopathy?

The holidays are now upon us, but I can't resist having a bit of fun before I disappear for this year's Christmas weekend to visit family and catch a rare bit of relaxation. Nothing too heavy, but, equally important, nothing too fluffy either. One topic that fits the bill is anything to do with homeopathy, and in this case I have a doozy of a "teachable moment relevant to homeopathy. It appeared a couple of days ago in what I like to refer to as that wretched hive of scum and quackery or Arianna's happy home for quacks. Yes, I'm referring to The Huffington Post, or, as a lot of people…

Despite the massive measles outbreak in the Minnesota Somali community, antivaxers double down

I've written several posts about a tragic phenomenon in Minnesota. Specifically, there's been a major measles outbreak among the Somali immigrant community in the Minneapolis area, the largest group of Somali immigrants in the country. Actually, this outbreak is not the first outbreak among this community. There was another, smaller one in 2012. Both involved primarily children in the Somali immigrant community who were not vaccinated. The last recorded case of measles in Minnesota was on July 13 in a white child who was also unvaccinated, but officials need to wait at least 42 days (two full…

President Trump appears poised to betray the antivaccine movement again. Suckers.

As I mentioned yesterday, at NECSS I gave a talk, Whither the antivaccine movement in the Age of Trump? At the time, I only knew the identity of one of the most important public health figures appointed by President Donald Trump, and that's Scott Gottleib, the man appointed to be FDA Commissioner. As I noted when his name first came up as a candidate for this position, antivaxers weren't going to like it. Why? One reason is because Gottlieb is the ultimate pharma shill, if such a thing exists. Another reason is that he is very pro-vaccine. This amuses me when I consider the high hopes…

Why some physicians embrace quackery

And now for something completely different. Yes, it's about time for that, isn't it? I've probably beat the Tribeca Film Festival story into the ground, even for me, having spent the last week blogging about it. Scratch that. There's no "probably" about it. I frequently write at length about the quackery that is homeopathy. One reason I do this is because it is one of the most perfect forms fo quackery there is. There is about as close to no chance that it could work as there can be, and the only reason I don't call homeopathy completely impossible is because I have a hard time calling…

The economics of menstruation and the short-sighted reductionism of capitalism

In science, there's data, and there's interpretation. It's really easy to collect data (usually), but interpretation is the hard part — it requires an understanding of context and theory, and an appreciation of the real complexity of the problem. It's tempting to simplify all your models — the spherical cow problem — but you also have to justify the reduction in complexity to show that it is reasonable. And that's where some papers blow a hole in their foot. This is particularly a problem when the interpretation of the science is used to argue for policy changes. Here's a paper that's a…

The Surprises Never Eend: The Ulam Spiral of Primes

One of the things that's endlessly fascinating to me about math and science is the way that, no matter how much we know, we're constantly discovering more things that we don't know. Even in simple, fundamental areas, there's always a surprise waiting just around the corner. A great example of this is something called the Ulam spiral, named after Stanislaw Ulam, who first noticed it. Take a sheet of graph paper. Put "1" in some square. Then, spiral out from there, putting one number in each square. Then circle each of the prime numbers. Like the following: If you do that for a while - and…

Moronic Probability and Stupid Physics

Via the Bad Astronomer comes one of the most pathetic abuses of probability that I've ever seen. I'm simply amazed that this idiot was willing to go on television and say this. cellspacing='0' width='360' height='353'> The Daily Show With Jon Stewart M - Th 11p / 10c Large Hadron Collider thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis First 100 Days The crank in question is Walter Wagner, the moron who tried to use a lawsuit to stop the LHC from being activated. (Just that much, already, is amazingly silly; he sued in Hawaii, but the LHC is in Geneva,…

A New Friday Feature: Random Recipes

Since the friday pathological programming died out, I've been looking for something else to do for special friday posts. A while back, I posted a bunch of recipes for a mutant meme, and it seemed a lot of people really liked it. So I've decided to do an off-topic friday thing: friday random recipes. For today, a special chinese dish: braised salmon in meat sauce. This dish would traditionally be done using pork for the meat in the sauce, but since I don't eat pork, I use ground chicken thighs. Whatever meet you use, you need to make sure it's not too lean - the sauce does need a bit of fat…

Ann Coulter Calls for the Spiritual Annihilation of American Jewry

We likes Ann Coulter!!! Professional provocateur Ann Coulter in an interview on MSNBC advocated the conversion of the Jews (italics mine): During the October 8 edition of CNBC's The Big Idea, host Donny Deutsch asked right-wing pundit Ann Coulter: "If you had your way ... and your dreams, which are genuine, came true ... what would this country look like?" Coulter responded, "It would look like New York City during the [2004] Republican National Convention. In fact, that's what I think heaven is going to look like." She described the convention as follows: "People were happy. They're…

Bush, Cheney, and the Rest: Greatest Generation?

The Washington Post has an excellent story about the WWII interrogators of high level Nazis. Unlike the minions of Little Lord Pontchartrain, they managed to gather intelligence without torture: When about two dozen veterans got together yesterday for the first time since the 1940s, many of the proud men lamented the chasm between the way they conducted interrogations during the war and the harsh measures used today in questioning terrorism suspects. Back then, they and their commanders wrestled with the morality of bugging prisoners' cells with listening devices. They felt bad about…

This Is What I Want To Hear 'People of Faith' Say

There have been several calls for Democrats to be more welcoming of 'people of faith.' Typically, these have been admonitions that Democrats need to stop acting like Democrats and more like conservative evangelicals (e.g., Mara Vanderslice; also here). However, it has never occurred to most of these 'people of faith' that perhaps they have a little house cleaning to do on their side of things. Well, one faithy person recognizes this (italics mine): Sometime after Operation Iraqi Freedom began, I made a remarkable discovery. I had gone to one of my local Christian bookstores to find a…

Where I Disagree with Orac About OHRP

First, before I make too much of the differences between, I agree with Orac that the decision by the OHRP to curtail an excellent healthcare intervention that could prevent thousands of deadly hospital-acquired infections annually is murderously stupid. Like Orac, I have had a couple of ridiculous experiences with human subjects research review boards. The most ridiculous case involved a study of human Escherichia coli. To get E. coli, erm, fresh from the source, the procedure involves poking your own feces with a sterile swab as they exit your posterior. There are legitimate human…

The Republican War on Modeling

Onward Glorious Conservatives! Don't retreat from the librul modelers!!! By now, you might have heard about the Bush Administration's massive 'editing' of the CDC testimony about the health consequences of global warming. Over at Science Progress, there is a copy of the unedited, original CDC text. At this point, no one in the Coalition of the Sane should be surprised that every single one of the specifics about what global warming would actually do was expunged--we wouldn't want the public to worry their purdy lil' heads about all of that scary stuff. What did interest me was the...…

driftglass On the Dead Center

driftglass skewers NY Times columnist David Brooks' claim that young people don't want the politics of polarization: Again, Brooks attempts to tack around the dead elephant in his Party's phone booth, so let me clarify this once again: Bobo, you people bred and perfected polarization as a means to your political ends. This condition was not created by accident. This is the world you built. The water you poisoned. The air you polluted. And you are still doing it. One GOP cadre dumps mercury into the milk, and then on-cue another begins to cry about how the milk's all done gone mysteriously…

Why Does Disney Support Eliminationist Talk Radio?

Suppose you were a very large media corporation, and you found out that some of your radio subsidiaries were espousing specific acts of violence toward other people (last I checked, that's called terrorism). You would: 1) Fire the offending parties. 2) Offer some mealymouth bullshit explanation ("If anyone was offended..."). or... 3) File a lawsuit against the blogger who posted mp3s of the offensive clips. Well, the Disney corporation picked option number three. Disney-owned California radio station KFSO, in its effort to capitalize on right-wing hate radio, gives a microphone to some…

Corruption at the WHO?

According to Time Magazine's Christine Gorman, China and Japan are trying to bribe the voters who will decide the next W.H.O. president. It's disgusting that an organization which can be critical in saving lives and combatting infectious disease can be so easily corrupted. Gorman writes: It's been an open secret for years that the race for Director-General at the World Health Organization is subject to a lot of horse-trading among the so-called member states of the United Nations. But this year's election-in which there are now 13 candidates-is shaping up to be the most unseemly to date.…

To Save America...

...the neocons had to betray it? Granted, Rolling Stone also published crap by RFK, Jr. But there are some public-domain facts to back up the Rolling Stone article's claim that several neocons tried to prevent a detente with Iran by leaking classified information to Israel (including several indictments). From the Rolling Stone: At the far end of that room, on the morning of February 12th, 2003, a small group of eavesdroppers were listening intently for evidence of a treacherous crime. At the very moment that American forces were massing for an invasion of Iraq, there were indications…

A 'Kiss-and-Tell' Medical Blog

There's a very interesting Boston Globe story about Paul Levy, the CEO of Boston's Beth-Israel Deaconess Hospital. He's not only a CEO, but also a blogger. His blog, Running a Hospital, is, well, self-explanatory--I guess you can blog about work...if you're the boss. Levy appears to have started a minor kerfuffle because he has been posting his hospital's catheter-associated ICU infection rates. Some of the other hospital heads are bothered that Levy is doing this. Personally, I think patients should be informed about infection rates when choosing a hospital, since hospital-acquired…

Lying Liars, or When Partisan Presumption Becomes Fact

At a recent National Press Club roundtable about the effect of the internet on the job of the White House correspondents, journalist Richard Wolffe had this to say about bloggers: They want us to play a role that isn't really our role. Our role is to ask questions and get information. ... It's not a chance for the opposition to take on the government and grill them to a point where they throw their hands up and surrender. ... It's not a political exercise, it's a journalistic exercise. And I think often the blogs are looking for us to be political advocates more than journalistic ones. In…

Why you might have asthma?

Effect of Variation in CHI3L1 on Serum YKL-40 Level, Risk of Asthma, and Lung Function: Background The chitinase-like protein YKL-40 is involved in inflammation and tissue remodeling. We recently showed that serum YKL-40 levels were elevated in patients with asthma and were correlated with severity, thickening of the subepithelial basement membrane, and pulmonary function. We hypothesized that single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that affect YKL-40 levels also influence asthma status and lung function. ... Results A promoter SNP (–131C→G) in CHI3L1, the chitinase 3–like 1 gene encoding…

The Structure of Evolutionary Theory blogging elsewhere

John has a post where he offers: This reminds me of one of the paradoxes about Gould. Among historians (and the public) he was believed to represent mainstream science, a belief not shared by many scientists. Among scientists (and the public) he was believed to represent mainstream history of science, a belief not shared by practicing historians. As I said elsewhere, most of the substance in Gould's work I have found in Peter J. Bowler's work. There are some issues and topics which get more limelight in The Structure of Evolutionary Theory because of the larger point of Stephen Jay Gould's…

When the 'Miracle' of Charter Schools Is Unsustainable

A couple of years ago, regarding the typical charter school model, I argued that the model of overworked, undercompensated, and under-'resourced' teachers was not sustainable: One of the things that I've long suspected about charter schools is that they're an unsustainable model: they rely on incredibly motivated teachers (who I think are a pretty motivated lot to begin with) who are willing to work even longer hours for essentially the same pay (or sometimes less). I'm not sure how to scale that up. Even if there were a significant number of teachers who fit this description, it's not clear…

Dear Left: Re. Libya, Why Do You Think Obama Will Do What You Want Done?

Because that's not been his MO so far. A long-time reader emailed and asked me why I haven't commented on Libya. Well, it's simple: as far as I can tell, the U.S. government has a long-standing policy of doing the opposite of what I want when it comes to matters of war and peace. Nonetheless, I really do hope our aimless Libyan 'kinetic military action' works out well--I really would like Juan Cole to be right. But the problem is that I'm old enough to remember when the Libyan War was only supposed to be a no-fly zone. Then it morphed into bombing armor. And now we're considering arming…

Boston Public Library To Be Closed Sundays

It sounds like the Boston Public Library will be closed year round on Sundays : Boston Public Library trustees have signed off on a $39.3 million budget that does not include branch closures or layoffs, but that does call for shuttering the Copley branch on Sundays.... The proposed library budget for fiscal 2012 budget will be included in Mayor Thomas Menino's overall city budget, due to be announced next month and needing the approval of the City Council. If the budget stays the same, funding levels fall to levels that were in place in fiscal year 2000. Finances remain tight for the cash-…

Sunday Sacrilege: The Worst Thing You Can Do to a Patriarch

There is something heretics do that I never anticipated would generate such fury in the godly — an act of heresy so profane, so vile, so revolting that it triggers legal action all across the country and expressions of outrage everywhere. Don't read through this post: the images below the fold will sear your eyeballs and invoke the wrath of God, just like opening the Ark of the Covenant did in that Indiana Jones movie. Apparently, the worst thing you can do is put up a sign somewhere that suggests that God might be superfluous. These signs incite furious letters to the editors of local…

Indigenous European paganism

Found out something interesting today. In the Russian republic of Mari El there exists an indigenous pagan tradition which is not a reconstruction. That is, the pagans of Mari El trace their practice in an unbroken line back to their ancestors, as the Christianization during the period of Ivan the Terrible (the 16th century) was only partial. Other European pagans are by necessity neo- and must reconstruct their system of beliefs and rituals from extant records and folk traditions. The Saami were pagan until the 18th century, and with that I had assumed that all pre-Christian traditions…

Biology's future as a science

Lubos Motl asked me to comment on this majestic post by a computational biologist at Stanford. This paragraph is worth quoting: I will enumerate three main points, all of which represent both a challenge and an opportunity. The first will deal with a scientific challenge of a theoretical orientation, namely the lack of a theory for biology. The second with the sociological organization of biologists and biology departments at the leading research institutions. And the third will be part science, part sociology, having to do with the focus of current experimental methods and programs on…

10 questions for Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza

Over at my other blog I post 10 questions for Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza. If you are a genetics nut, what are you waiting for!?!?! Click! (unless you are the type bored by human population genetics) Now that you are back, there is one question that is relevant to the race debate that I had with John Wilkins a few months ago, and I've reposted it below, so reread it. You can make your own decision, but keep in mind that those who strongly reject race as a biological construct make a direct appeal to Cavalli-Sforza. And just to reward you loyal readers, I will tell you that we have another "…

Evolutionary logic

Over at Darwin Catholic there has been some discussion of the human influenced evolution of dogs. Seed actually has it right, it is human influenced evolution. Some of the interpretation of the paper which showed an increase in the frequency of 'deleterious' alleles spin the results as suggesting that dogs are beyond the constraints of evolution. But, as I pointed out over at DC's weblog dogs are evolved toward their own special adaptations, and the lack of these adaptations in their wild cousins is not evidence that wolves carry "deleterious" traits. For me, the most fascinating case of…

The Mad Biologist's Guide to Blogging

So, does the Mad Biologist follow the advice given by big-time bloggers? Like Farhad Manjoo, I've actually read (ok, skimmed) The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging, but Manjoo gives an electronic version of the guide, upgraded to include advice from other bloggers. Onto the advice: Set a schedule. Blog often. Yep. Daily. Don't worry if your posts suck a little. I've got this one covered: most of my posts suck a lot. Write casually but clearly. Mixed bag. My lede isn't always good, although hopefully, the post titles and the excerpt blurb make up for that. On the other hand…

Science, Gender, and 'Cleaning Up the Mess'

There's a very interesting Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences article, "Understanding current causes of women's underrepresentation in science" that's available to the public. Andrew Moseman summarizes it quite well: ...Ceci and Williams say, external and social factors--some matters of choice, some not--are the major ones hindering women in science today. Those factors include the much-discussed, such as the fact that a mother with young kids is still expected to stay on the fast tenure track, and the less-obvious, such as caring for aging parents or following a spouse who gets…

Healthcare Cost Containment Versus Privatization Uber Alles

From the NY Times editorial page comes this explanation of a government healthcare boondoggle (italics mine): Private health plans were promoted in the 1980s and 1990s in the belief that they could reduce costs and improve care through better management. And for a while they did. But policy changes that were championed by the Bush administration and a Republican-controlled Congress led to exactly the opposite outcome. These private plans -- that now cover a fifth of the total Medicare population -- receive large subsidies to deliver services that traditional Medicare provides more cheaply and…

As If an Outbreak of Teen Pregnancy Wasn't Bad Enough, Now We Have a Ninja Threat?

If the Glouchester teen pregnancy scandal isn't bad enough, now we have to deal with a ninja outbreak. Really: The librarian-in-training was a few minutes early for work at the Barnegat branch of the Ocean County Library on Wednesday morning when she saw a man dressed in what looked like black pajamas sprinting past the parking lot carrying a large sword. "I was like, "Did I really just see a ninja?' " said Shilling, 23. Turns out she did not. The man clad in all black moving stealthily along the wood line was merely a camp counselor on his way to a costume-theme orientation at a nearby…

A Cancer-Causing Virus...Protects Against Cancer?

In a Journal of Infectious Diseases commentary about this article, there's a fascinating discussion of the relationship between the HTLV-1 virus, which can cause T-cell leukemia in about one percent of those infected, and gastric cancer caused by the bacterium Helicobacter pylori. And it's not what you would expect. Here's the summary (italics mine; references removed for clarity): In this issue of the Journal, Matsumoto et al. asked whether human T lymphotropic virus type 1 (HTLV-1) antibody status is associated with the risk of developing gastric cancer. In a cohort of >5000 patients…

Streptococcus, Antibiotic Resistance, and Israelis...Oh My?!

While many laboratory experiments have shown that antibiotic resistance imposes a fitness cost on resistant bacteria, it's far less clear if this is the case in natural populations. In Europe, the phasing out of a vancomycin analogue, avoparicin, resulted in a dramatic decrease in vancomycin resistance in enterococci bacteria, from roughly seven percent to about three percent. However, the drop doesn't appear to have continued further (although the economic and health burdens of treating vancomycin resistant enterococci make this decrease a good thing). One of the problems with most studies…