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The virus sharing puzzle

If a rogue H5N1 virus easiy tansmissible between people is to develop, the most plausible spot for it to happen is Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous with a vast reservoir of infected poultry (and who knows what else) and more human cases (113) and more deaths (91) than any other country. But Indonesia still refuses to share its human H5N1 isolates, contending they get nothing tangible from an arrangement which is likely to lead to vaccines they won't be able to afford. Under the current system, which allows intellectual property rights to cover vaccines developed from WHO supplied…

MSHA urged (again) to end black lung disease

 Earlier this month, the Appalachian Citizens' Law Center (ACLC)  sent a petition to the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) urging the agency to revise its regulations on respirable coal mine dust to better protect mine workers from pneumoconiosis and other disabling respiratory ailments.   The ACLC's motto is "Working for Justice in the Appalachian Coalfields."    The ACLC's petition is just the latest in a long list of calls on MSHA to put an end to black lung and silicosis---diseases that are 100% preventable.   I personally believe there should be no higher regulatory…

Food safety proposal: throw the bums out

by revere, cross posted at Effect Measure As the tomato Salmonella outbreak heads past the 800 case level, it's time to ask some questions about why we don't know the source of what is the largest produce associated disease outbreak on record. CDC has its own explanation, namely, that figuring out where tomatoes come from and where they go is much harder than they thought. Said another way, the experts in foodborne disease outbreaks at CDC and FDA didn't know much about the industry. Since tomatoes have been a frequent cause of Salmonella outbreaks, that seems odd, except that my experience…

Tribute to Kathryn R. Mahaffey, PhD

It is with deep sadness we inform you of the sudden passing of Kathyrn R Mahaffey, PhD.   Kate had an exceptional and diverse career, with appointments at FDA, NIOSH, NIEHS and EPA.   Most recently, Kate served as a Professorial Lecturer at the George Washington University School of Public Health. Her husband, David Jacobs offers the following remembrance and tribute to her significant contributions to the public's health.   Information about a memorial service appears at the end of this post. Kathryn R. Mahaffey passed away peacefully in her sleep June 2, 2009 after decades of…

Huffington Post is a denialist website

How else can you describe a site that regularly publishes David Kirby's anti-vaccination denialism, Jennifer McCarthy's insanity, and conspiracy theories from the like of Diedre Imus? The latest this weekend is the goalpost-moving from David Kirby, which based on the egregious misinterpretation of the Hannah Poling case, represents the new front of anti-vaccination denialists in their war on reason. In the never-ending quest to pin autism on vaccines no matter what the evidence, the anti-vaccine denialists now are trying to make autism a mitochondrial disorder in order to fit their latest…

The microbiology of zombies, part IV: hidden infections

(As previously, spoilers abound) So on this week's Walking Dead soap opera, we find that Daryl/Michonne's group is still out and about searching for medical supplies. Back at the prison, the food situation is dire (apparently all the food stores were in the cell block where the infection broke out), so Rick and Carol head out to look for both medicines and food from the local 'burbs. During their outing, discussion ensues of Carol's attempt to stop the prison's apparent influenza outbreak by killing two people who, at that point, were the only ones showing symptoms of disease. Rick decides he…

Marburg hits Europe once again

Marburg is a filovirus; a cousin of Ebola. Both cause hemorrhagic fever; both have been recently discovered in fruit bats; both have hit Africa in a small number of human outbreaks. Both also remain largely mysterious; we know very little about their ecology in the wild; how frequently they really infect humans (and other animal species; Ebola especially has taken a toll on great apes); and their mode of transmission from their wild reservoir to primate hosts. These enormous gaps in our knowledge remain despite recently passing the 40-year mark since the discovery of filoviruses in a lab…

Cambodia: now with dibamids!

Dibamids are a weird and very neat group of fossorial, near-limbless squamates that I've long planned to cover at Tet Zoo. Little is known about them and how they might relate to other squamates has long been the subject of debate (they might be close to amphisbaenians, but links with gekkotans, skinks and snakes have all been suggested in the past). I'm going to avoid saying much about them here: I just want to point to the fact that a newly named species - Dibamus dalaiensis Neang et al., 2011 [shown here; image Thy Neang/Flora & Fauna International] - extends their distribution to…

New and Exciting in PLoS ONE

There are 11 new articles in PLoS ONE this week. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites: Flowering Time Diversification and Dispersal in Central Eurasian Wild Wheat Aegilops tauschii Coss.: Genealogical and Ecological Framework: Timing of flowering is a reproductive trait that has significant impact on fitness in plants. In contrast to recent advances in understanding the molecular basis of floral transition, few empirical studies have…

Squirrels Wave Hot Tails to Communicate with Rattlesnakes

tags: researchblogging.org, evolution, squirrels, rattlesnakes, tail-flagging, behavior, biology A mother squirrel rapidly waves her tail to warn off a rattlesnake in a confrontation staged by researchers in May 1987. Adult squirrels are immune to rattlesnake venom, but their offspring are vulnerable. New infrared research found that heat from the mother's tail sends an alarming signal to the slithery predators. Image: Donald H. Owings, UC Davis. Researchers have long been mystified by the defensive behaviors exhibited by California ground squirrels, Spermophilus beecheyi, when they are…

Do mosquitoes get the mumps?, part III

Part III. Serendipity strikes when we Blink In which we find an unexpected result when we Blink while looking at the mumps polymerase. This is the third in a five part series on an unexpected discovery of a paramyxovirus in mosquitoes. And yes, this is where the discovery happens. I. The back story from the genome record II. What do the mumps proteins do? And how do we find out? III. Serendipity strikes when we Blink. IV. Assembling the details of the case for a mosquito paramyxovirus V. A general method for finding interesting things in GenBank To paraphrase Louis Pasteur,…

Researchers challenge Labor Dept to fix its annual count of injuries, misses 70% of work-related burns

It's not the first time that Kenneth Rosenman, MD has provided scientific evidence on the deficiencies in the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) annual survey of occupational injuries and illnesses, and it won't be the last.  His latest study, written with Joanna Kica, MPA, with Michigan State University's (MSU) Department of Medicine ,reports that the Labor Department's methods for estimating work-related burns misses about 70% of them.  Their analysis focused on cases occurring in the State of Michigan in 2009.   The MSU researchers used data from the State's 134 acute-care hospital, which…

Mourning writer Lizzie Grossman: The Pump Handle readers will miss her

Our colleague Lizzie Grossman, a contributing writer at The Pump Handle, died earlier this month from ovarian cancer.  She was a long-time freelance writer who specialized in environmental health topics. Her books included Chasing Molecules: Poisonous Products, Human Health, and the Promise of Green Chemistry (2011) and High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health (2006). Lizzie began blogging at The Pump Handle in May 2010. She traveled to the Gulf coast to report on the experiences of workers who were cleaning up the disaster left by the Deepwater Horizon oil rig…

US researchers find bacteria resistant to last-resort drug

Back in November, researchers from China reported finding a gene that confers resistance to the last-resort antibiotic colistin in several E. coli isolates, and warned that pan-drug resistant Enterobacteriaceae -- a family of bacteria that includes common foodborne illness culprits E. coli and Salmonella -- "is inevitable and will ultimately become global." As researchers in other countries began examining stored isolates for the gene, MCR-1, they found it. STAT's Helen Branswell reports it "has been found in many European countries, parts of Asia, North Africa, South America, and North…

Moncktons curious take on the SPM

Lord Monckton seems to have decided that he is an expert on climate change, and has released his own review of the SPM. Such fun. He starts: FIGURES in the final draft of the UN's fourth five-year report on climate change show that the previous report, in 2001, had overestimated the human influence on the climate since the Industrial Revolution by at least one-third. Also, the UN, in its 2007 report, has more than halved its high-end best estimate of the rise in sea level by 2100 from 3 feet to just 17 inches. Interesting if true... but is it true? Oddly enough, no. The first he amplifies as…

So long, and thanks for all the fish

Or, A child's garden of wikipedia, part 2. I've been banned from WUWT, after exposing too many of his errors. Although naturally AW doesn't phrase it quite like that. Also, he didn't much like me not showing the adoration that he gets from his fanbois either. Indeed, presumably in an effort to pretend that there is no censorship, AW can't even bring himself to say "banned": instead preferring the Orwellian you have been dis-invited from further commentary here. Even that may disappear if it becomes too inconvenient, so you can see a webcited version here. The cause of all this (dismissing as…

What Real Science Looks Like

Following up on yesterday's post, the July 21 issue of Science also contained this review article, entitled “Evolution of the Molecular Machines for Protein Import into Mitochondria.” The authors write: Here we look at how protein import pathways were established to create mitochondria. The protein import pathway is driven by a set of molecular machines, and these machines are of modular design. Each machine has a core module that seems to be common to all eukaryotes. Additional modules have been added to each machine over time, with these add-ons being common only to particular…

This is the Universe... but is it art?

“At the last dim horizon, we search among ghostly errors of observations for landmarks that are scarcely more substantial. The search will continue. The urge is older than history. It is not satisfied and it will not be oppressed.” -Edwin Hubble While new discoveries are made about the Universe, a new explorer finds its way on a foreign world, and the world bids farewell to a legend, my old favorite -- the Hubble Space Telescope -- keeps amazing us all. Image credit: NASA / STS-125, Space Shuttle Atlantis, Ruffnax (Crew of STS-125). Now more than 22 years into its continuing mission, this…

Harbour of the Sheaf Kings

I've spent the day metal-detecting for a project called Vasakungarnas Djurhamn, that is, "Animal Harbour of the Sheaf Kings". This name may not make much sense to you, Dear Reader, so let me explain. In the 1520s Gustaf Eriksson, the most successful of many ambitious young noblemen at the time who tended to end up decapitated, wrested Swedish royal power from the Danes with the aid of Lubeck. He soon implemented Reformation and used the riches of the church and monasteries to repay his debts and reorganise Sweden from the bottom up. A very good 2002 biography of the man has the subtitle "…

When Good Scientists Go Bad: How Kooks are Made

During last weeks Battle of the Titans, I got several comments and emails from readers with the same question: Where do these kooks come from? How do you go from being a PhD, or MD, or DDS, and turn into a complete whackjob? Well, I cant say what Horowitzs deal is. That is the job of a mental health professional. And it would be rather pretentious of me to talk about the sociological/educational/cultural forces behind HIV Denialism in Africa/homosexual community/society at large. I could guess, but thats not my specialty either. What I can comment on is how science/scientists operate, and…

McAdams on Parenting and Morality

John McAdams is a Marquette University professor who has commented here from time to time. We probably don't agree on a whole lot, but I've always found him to be a reasonable guy. But I came across this post on his blog and I must object. He's responding to an ad he saw for a clinic that provides egg donors and surrogates for gays who want to have children. He writes: We understand the desire of people, gay or straight, to have children, and even to have children who are their biological offspring. But should children really be thought of as just another consumer purchase? But I don't see…

Ulysses Solar-Polar Spacecraft Put To Sleep

A press release from NASA: Ulysses, a joint NASA and European Space Agency mission, officially ceased operations today, after receiving commands from ground controllers to do so. The spacecraft, which operated for more than 18 years, charted the unexplored regions of space above the poles of the sun. As planned via commands beamed to the spacecraft earlier in the day, Ulysses switched to its low- gain antenna at 1:09 p.m. PDT (4:09 p.m. EDT, or 2009 UTC). As a result, ground controllers were no longer able to pick up a signal from Ulysses, which had also been commanded to switch off…

Zoonosis: Behe is an IDiot.

MUUUGH. Someone tell Behe to shut up about viruses. SOMEONE. From Lous notes on a recent presentation: New Dude: HIV, someone in the family died this week. Evolutionary Biology, according to evolutionary biology says that HIV comes from some predecessor. That provided a research program. Let's look at the closest relative. Cousin doesn't kill chimpanzees. So I question this, this is an example that Darwinian evolution producing a research program to help people. What's ID done? Behe: big sigh, I want to stress, but the talk goes quickly, but ID doesn't say that Darwinian evolution can't do…

The 15 Most Interesting Force-Carrying Bosons

It's gradually becoming clear to me that this blogging thing is old hat. It's a Web 4.0 world now, and we're all just Tmblng through it. So, I need to get with modernity, and start posting the listicles that are the bread and butter of the new social media order. Thus, I give you a web-friendly list of The 15 Most Interesting Force-Carrying Bosons. The 15 Most Interesting Force-Carrying Bosons 1) The Photon CGI photon from Physics World (http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2012/aug/10/photon-shape-could… ) (Image source: This Physics World article) The photon is the carrier of the…

The Football Positioning System

It's NFL playoff time, which means that sports fans will be treated to the sight of the most high-stakes farce in sports, namely the ritual of "bringing out the chains" to determine whether a team has gained enough yards for a first down. We've all seen this: the play is whistled dead, a referee un-stacks the pile of players, picks up the ball, and puts it down more or less where the player was stopped. Then he tosses the ball into the middle of the field, to a second referee, who tries to replicate the spot closer to the center of the field. Then a guy on the sideline carrying a big stick (…

Is a virus responsible for the disappearing bees?

This article is reposted from the old Wordpress incarnation of Not Exactly Rocket Science. There's been more work on CCD since, but I'm reposting this mainly because of some interesting follow-up research that will I will post about tomorrow. In 2006, American and European beekeepers started noticing a strange and worrying trend - their bees were disappearing. Their hives, usually abuzz with activity, were emptying. There were no traces of the workers or their corpses either in or around the ghost hives, which still contained larvae and plentiful stores of food. It seemed that entire…

Icebergs are hotspots for life

Say the word iceberg, and most people are likely to free-associate it with 'Titanic'. Thanks to James Cameron (and, well, history too), the iceberg now has a reputation as an cold murderous force of nature, sinking both ships and Leonardo DiCaprio. But a new study shows that icebergs are not harbingers of death but hotspots of life. In the late 1980s, about 200,000 icebergs roamed across the Southern Ocean. They range in size from puny 'growlers', less than a metre long, to massive blocks of ice, larger than some small countries. They may be inert frozen lumps, but icebergs are secretly…

WiFi and Radiation

I note an interesting short piece by James Hrynyshyn about a bit of a local controversy in Nova Scotia about the installation of a tower to provide wireless internet to the area. Leading the opposition is a guy worried about the health effects: "I think over a period of time it will change the DNA of the garlic because it shakes up the molecules," he said Tuesday. EastLink uses microwave transmission to provide high-speed internet access to rural areas outside its wired network. Levine said he moved to the country to get away from pollution, and he sees the radiation from the towers as…

How we perceive others influences our sense of touch

The way we perceive other people has a big influence on how we interact with them. For example, attractive people are more likely to be perceived as talented than less attractive people, and this so-called "halo effect" is often reflected in our behaviour towards them. Similarly, we tend to favour people perceived to be like us over people who are perceived to be different ("in-group bias"). It turns out that the way we perceive others can also influence our own sense of touch. In a new study published in the open access journal PLoS One, researchers from the University of Bologna report that…

Experimental Biology - Tuesday

Today's symposia included a session on "Integrative Cardiovascular and Respiratory Physiology of Non-model Organisms" as well as the August Krogh Distinguished Lecture. This year's Krogh lecture was given by Dr. Stan Lindstedt from Northern Arizona University. Dr. Lindstedt is arguably best known for publishing work showing that the metabolic rate of an animal is negatively correlated with body mass. In other words, smaller animals have a higher metabolic rate than larger animals. Knowing that relationship could have saved Tusko the elephant from a whopping dose of LSD (1962, prior to the…

From the Archives: Like prices and hemlines, why do impact factors always go up?

It's that time again: the 2008 Journal Citation Reports are out from Thomson Reuters. It's started already, too, the e-mails to listservs and press releases. So I'm re-posting one of my posts from my old blog for those of you who might not have seen it. Like prices and hemlines, why do impact factors always go up? Ever notice that certain time of year when every journal publisher announces how the impact factors of their journals is up? When the Journal Citation Report (JCR) comes out... the press releases follow. The impact factor is a measure of how important the journal is - if it is…

Does test-taking help students learn?

During my brief tenure as a high school teacher, one common suggestion I got from supportive colleagues was to "make your tests teaching tools." "That's often the only time you've really got your students' attention," they suggested, "so don't neglect the opportunity to teach them something." What they meant is that you shouldn't use misleading or false information in tests as a "trick" to make sure they grasp the material: your test might be the only thing students remember from a unit. But there's another reason testing is important for learning. For decades researchers have known that more…

Mystery hominin turns into mystery hominoid

Fossil teeth can be tricky things. In 1922 paleontologist H.F. Osborn believed that he had found the first evidence of an extinct fossil ape from North America on the basis of a worn molar from Nebraska, but it later turned out to be the tooth of a prehistoric peccary. Four years later, by contrast, Davidson Black named a new species of ancient human on the basis of a handful of teeth recovered from Dragon Bone Hill in China. These turned out to belong to Homo erectus. Both paleontologists made bold steps on the basis of sparingly little evidence, but with entirely different outcomes. Last…

Elephants Were Aquatic

That elephants have an aquatic ancestry has been suspected for some time now. Moreover, the idea of elephant aquatic origins and elephant origins in general is part of a growing realization that many of the world's aquatic mammals originated in a couple of regions of Africa that were for a very long time enormous inland seas (but that is another story I won't cover here). The earlier evidence came from observation of the ontogeny of the kidneys in elephants, during which the kidneys take on the characteristics that are found in aquatic mammals generally. That research was published in 1999…

Robert Manne vs The Australian

Robert Manne's Quarterly Essay is 40,000 words on the malign influence of The Australian on public affairs in this country. You can read an extract here and watch an interview with Manne here. Also of interest is commentary on Manne's essay from Tim Dunlop who asks "why anybody continues to take The Australian seriously" and Margaret Simmons, who writes, "Manne's most powerful accusation against The Australian is lack of intellectual honesty". Manne presents several case studies of The Australian's bias and bullying and their war on science (with an acknowledgment to my blog) is one of them…

The Australian's War on Science 45

The Australian Government has set up a Coasts and Climate Change Council to plan how to adapt to increases in sea levels and cyclone intensity that global warming will most likely bring. Since its about adaption to climate change and planning for the future, in a rational world even on opponent of mitigation like The Australian would be on board, but they are not. The Australian is certain that scientists are wrong about sea level rise and they have an impeccable authority: Bondi veteran Lee Boman has swum at the beach for more than 30 years and was adamant he had seen "no change" to the…

Science & Technology

I have previously mentioned, in passing, a pet peeve of mine: when people conflate ecology with environmentalism (see here and here for examples). It's an odd pet peeve for an admitted non-ecologist, but it falls under the umbrella of distinguishing science from technology which is at the heart of the real pet peeve. It just happens that the ecology/environmentalism issue pops up more often than other science/technology issues in my daily life (I don't deal with stem researchers or people cloning whole organism). Before I get too far ahead of myself, allow me to define what I mean by science…

The Bible as Ethnography ~ 03 ~ Sometimes a Snake is Just a Snake. But not in this case....

Genesis 2 ends with Adam and Eve being naked yet not ashamed. In Genesis 3, the Serpent, who is wiser than average, tricks Eve into partaking of the forbidden fruit of one of god's two magic trees. This results in Adam and Eve recognizing their own nakedness, and compelling them to produce the first clothing. The word "naked" in the original Hebrew is either eromim or arumim. The former means naked (no clothes) and the latter means exposure as in exposing lies. The original Hebrew for the "clothing" that they put together, "chagowr" probably means "belt." The parallel (and probably…

What we have here...

Lawmakers and the public in general have no idea how the business and practice of medicine operates. None. When you read statements from many representatives, you see such simplistic, anhistoric thinking that pessimism about health care reform is the only logical response. Or so it seems from media reports. The New York Times, whose quality seems to be dropping by the femtosecond, reported this week on salaried vs. traditionally paid physicians. This could have been a terrific article, if the reporter knew anything. Let me catch you up a bit. Doctors are generally paid in one of two ways…

I get mail--chiroquacktic edition

A long while back, at the original wordpress incarnation of this blog, I wrote a piece on the reasons that chiropractic is unscientific nonsense. Because it was popular, I moved it over here. Well, a chiropractor has come to bravely defend his field and left us a comment. A study in the May 2007 issue of the Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics reports health plans that use Chiropractors as Primary Care Providers (PCPs) reduce their health care utilization costs significantly. The study covers the seven-year period from 1999 to 2005. Researchers compared costs and…

Invertebrate vs. Photosynthesis should be S3 highlight

[The Theme from Chariots of Fire playing] Craig: From 64 to 32 and now to the Sweet 16. In today's post, we follow the journeys of two strong teams, Invertebrates and Photosynthesis as they navigated the ranks of the Octopus Bracket to face off in the 3rd round of the Spring Science Showdown (S3). We turn to Peter Etnoyer, our man in the field, to discuss the rise of Team Photosynthesis. Peter: Indeed tree huggers everywhere were angered when photosynthesis was the only team from Division Plantae 1A to be selected for the tournament. Craig: As I understand it, Photosynthesis…

Archeology Influences Plant Community Ecology

Abandoned fourth century AD settlement. Photo by L. Laüt. In the June 2007 issue of Ecology, Dambrine et al. have a fascinating article demonstrating that abandoned Roman settlements still affect the local abundance of plant communities. From the abstract (italics mine): Combined archaeological and ecological investigations in a large ancient oak forest in Central France have revealed a dense network of ancient human settlements dating from the Roman period. We demonstrate a strong correlation between present-day forest plant diversity patterns and the location of Roman farm buildings.…

Building Bridges (and knowing when not to)

Below, Margaret Turnbull answers our final question. Even in my small area of astrobiology, the design of a single mission to find habitable planets orbiting other stars requires substantial input from the studies of astrophysics, space communications, space flight technology, optics, materials science, the interplanetary space environment, Earth's atmospheric system, microbiology, geology, computing, remote sensing, and signal processing. Within each of those areas, input from many sub-disciplines is required. For example, in the "astrophysics" portion of my work I communicate from…

Building Bridges (and knowing when not to) [Revolutionary Minds Think Tank]

Below, Margaret Turnbull answers our final question. Even in my small area of astrobiology, the design of a single mission to find habitable planets orbiting other stars requires substantial input from the studies of astrophysics, space communications, space flight technology, optics, materials science, the interplanetary space environment, Earth's atmospheric system, microbiology, geology, computing, remote sensing, and signal processing. Within each of those areas, input from many sub-disciplines is required. For example, in the "astrophysics" portion of my work I communicate from…

Everything's Coming Up Blood Diamonds

More than 175 million roses are sold in the U.S. in the the days leading up to Valentine's Day. From seedling to shipping crates, a cocktail of chemicals protects those blooms. It takes a lot of lethal pesticides to say, "I Love You." Seventy percent of cut flowers sold in the U.S. are imported from countries where pesticide application is not as tightly regulated as it is on U.S. farms. A survey of 8000 workers in cut-flower plantations near Bogotá, Colombia found that workers were exposed to 127 different pesticides, 20% of which are banned in North America because they are considered…

A Booster Shot of Science

Vaccines have guarded health and life for centuries, relegating once devastating diseases to near total obscurity. But many people now take vaccines for granted, and some blame vaccines for autism and other disorders. On Respectful Insolence, Orac reports the downfall of 1998 research which first tied MMR vaccines to the occurrence of autism in children. As Orac writes, "hearing that the man whose bad science launched a thousand quackeries had finally been declared unethical and dishonest [...] brought joy to my heart, the joy that comes with seeing justice done." ERV jumps on other news…

Let's play "Serbs" and "Croats"

Belgrade blog, Neretva River and Japan Probe solved the mystery of a couple of pictures (and discovered many more from the same source) depicting Japanese people wearing Serbian and Croatian uniforms - images that greatly disturbed many Serbian and Croatian bloggers for whom the war is still fresh in memory. Read their excellent posts and comments. Even more puzzling was the fact that the uniforms were from several different periods and wars. There were Serbian and Croatian uniforms from the most recent conflicts, but also WWII-era uniforms of partisans, Chetniks and Ustasha. Apparently,…

Stein backs out

Good news, all! Ben Stein has withdrawn from the UVM commencement. I think we can thank Richard Dawkins' clout for helping with this one. Here's the letter from President Fogel. They asked Stein to speak as an authority on economics? Dear Professor Dawkins, As one who has been deeply instructed by your work and who applauds your scientific leadership, I was honored to find a personal email from you in my inbox, but very sorry indeed that the occasion was the decision to invite Ben Stein to be a Commencement speaker and honorary degree recipient. Although we have recently learned that Mr.…

Friday Blog Roundup

Given all the recent problems with contaminated food, itâs not surprising that food labeling is a hot topic these days: Revere at Effect Measure thinks itâs ridiculous that the USDA is denying a meatpacker permission to test all of its cattle for mad cow disease. Andrew Schneider at Secret Ingredients updates us on progress toward country of origin labeling. Tristan Fowler at Science Progress looks into the issue of products from cloned animals in the food supply. Elsewhere: Drug Monkey calls a win for the Science Debate effort, which succeeded in getting answers from the Obama campaign on…

Are we giving Jon Stewart a pass for his contribution to the measles outbreak?

I'm glad to see clips like this from the daily show appropriately mocking the deluded, and supposedly "educated" types that don't vaccinate. But have we forgotten this episode from 2005 when he allowed RFK Jr to basically spout his nonsense about vaccines without challenge? It's good and fine for Stewart to mock these people now. But he seems to forget he helped contribute to this problem. Is anyone aware of an apology from Stewart for allowing this crackpot to use his megaphone? Isn't it precisely members of the media like him that are to blame for failing to vet the claims made…