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Free Books For My Readers

Everyone loves free books, right? Well, I know I do, and since I've got a huge stack of books in my apartment that are seeking a loving home, I want to share them with you. These books are duplicates of review copies, advance reading copies and uncorrected proofs as well as some books that I purchased or somehow obtained. All books are in excellent (like new) shape, unless otherwise noted. I am offering them to you several times per week for the next few months, free of charge, although I will ask you to pay the cost of the shipping envelope and postage for mailing each book to you. Below the…

When a soldier dies

We've talked a lot about the terrible effects of the war in Iraq on this site. In this country the emphasis, quite naturally, is on the American victims, so we have tended to discuss the Iraqi victims. But a victim is a victim and war has too many of them. Our fellow ScienceBlogger Mike Dunford at The Questionable Authority know this only too well. His wife Nicole is serving in Iraq now. Many of you know Mike as the blogger here who put up the detailed guide to how we can be heard on behalf of The Tripoli 6. Now Mike is asking for our help for another worthy cause, the families of service…

A pandemic could be bad (in case you hadn't heard)

Part of raising awareness about the potential problems we would have in an influenza pandemic is saying the same thing over and over again, sometimes in different ways and sometimes just repeating it. So we're going to do it again. From the Globe and Mail (Toronto): Severe restrictions that allowed only emergency patients to be admitted to hospitals during the 2003 SARS outbreak in Toronto would not be enough to handle the flood of patients expected during even a mild flu pandemic, a new study has found. [snip] "The [various governments' pandemic flu] plans are quite comprehensive, but the…

Nerdiest ScienceBlogger: me

Back in September Janet at Adventures in Ethics and Science challenged Sciencebloggers to a nerd-off. I didn't take part because I have an inherent sense of fairness. Professionals shouldn't compete with amateurs. So I let it go. But now I want to claim my rightful crown from the usurper. In that competition Orac at Respectful Insolence declared himself the übernerd on the basis of a long list of supposedly nerdish things, like the kind of tchotchkies in his home office (a 12" model of the Incredible Hulk, a replica two-handed sword, etc.) and that he learned to program in Fortran, not…

Statins for H5N1. The road not taken. Why?

Some drugs that seem to have remarkable abilities to affect a wide range of biological systems in useful ways. The classic case is aspirin, used for pain relief, anti-inflammatory effects, anti-clotting abilities, and much else. Now another drug seems to be in this category, the family of statin drugs. The statins are a group of drugs that are comptetitive inhibitors of an enzyme, 3 hydroxy 3 methylglutaryl coenzyme A reductase (HMG-CoA reductase). They are commonly used to treat high cholesterol, but they have a wide variety of other pharmacologic effects, including anti-inflammatory and…

Perception of political bias on campus

No surprise that the American public is more concerned about how to pay for higher education than they are about the ideology of its purveyors. If I had to pay for it today (and were still paying my kids' freight), that would be my number one concern, too. I'd still worry about what they were learning, too, and from whom. My highschool education in the 1950s was a daily diet of rightwing ideology we all thought was "normal." College at the turn of the sixties wasn't much better, and I went to a university with a notorious lefty reputation (I'm proud to say). It's no surprise that the public…

Visualization at the Crossroads

Michelle Borkin is astute in recognizing the manner in which information visualization can collapse the distinction between disciplines. Borkin notes that reading visual representations of star formation and human disease are not unlike exercises as MRI and telescope data are similar in terms of "format, size and noise." Similar overlaps occur in representing other fields and visualization is not necessarily tied to the standard operating procedure associated with a specific domain. To the visualization jockey, a network diagram is a network diagram - at least at a schematic level. If the…

Welcome! [The Thoughtful Animal]

Welcome to the new home for The Thoughtful Animal! Welcome especially to new readers! To the old readers, I hope you'll enjoy the new place. Nothing big will change; but now I've got better technical support, a family of Sciblings (go check out their blogs!), a more powerful interface, and hopefully a more pleasant experience for you! Take a few minutes to check out the site. You can read a little about me, and if you'd like you can peruse the old blog. I shall miss the old place, but am very excited to be joining the Borg Scienceblogs, and all my new Sciblings. Special thanks go to Dr. Isis…

Coturnix of A Blog Around the Clock Says... [The Rightful Place Project]

What is science's rightful place? In our heads, of course. All of our heads. But Seed is asking, so let me elaborate briefly. As I said before, science is not just active participation in research. Science is a mindset. We are all born scientists, exploring the world around us and experimenting with it. When we grow up, we continue being scientists in our day-to-day lives. If you walk into a room and flip a switch and the light does not come on, what do you do? I doubt that you throw yourself on the floor in fear, speaking in tongues, praying, blaming the Aliens or asking the Government to…

Mice on Camera

Take a bunch of peculiar individuals, put them all together in one setting; film their every move, every second of the day. Sound familiar? Dr. Tali Kimchi is explicit about the resemblance of her experiments to a well-known reality TV show. The difference, of course, is that Kimchi’s subjects are mice. She places large groups of animals in a common pen in her lab, which is fitted out with video cameras, infrared lighting for nighttime filming and electronics to continuously record information from the ID chips implanted in each mouse. And while no one can deny that our enjoyment at seeing…

From the Archives: Follies of science: 20th century visions of our fantastic future by Eric & Jonathan Dregni

I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here. This one, of Follies of Science: 20th Century Visions of Our Fantastic Future, is from April 26, 2007. ======= I don't have to much to say of a deep or profound nature to say about this book. It's one of those "Whatever…

From the Archives: Countdown: A history of space flight by T.A. Heppenheimer

I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here. This one, of Countdown: A History of Space Flight, is from November 14, 2006. ======= The decision to read this book was certainly not rocket science, even if it is a book about rocket science. An engaging and fascinating read,…

Sex!....Made You Look!

A while back, I wrote what some might call a fairly provocative article on the promiscuity of famous physicists entitled Getting Physical. Besides getting picked up by a porn site or two and this possibly NSFW link (So what if you've been on Slashdot? How many science articles can claim this distinction, huh?), I received quite a few responses from some rather aghast SEED lovers questioning the veracity of my claims. Let me just say this: I am equally SHOCKED. You fell into that tired stereotype that scientists are all asexual freezy pops? Sorry people, don't want to ruin your next…

The Trump War on Science: EPA budget cuts, More on climate change, The war on wildlife and other recent stories

Another couple of weeks' worth of stories about how science is faring under the Donald Trump regime. If I'm missing anything important, please let me know either in the comments or at my email jdupuis at yorku dot ca. If you want to use a non-work email for me, it's dupuisj at gmail dot com. The selections are by no means meant to represent a comprehensive account of everything written about science over the last couple of weeks. I'm aiming for something representative rather than complete or comprehensive. For example, there are probably hundreds of articles written about the Paris Climate…

The Donald Trump War on Science: Week 1: How bad could it be?

How bad could it be? On so may fronts, the first week or so of the Donald Trump administration was the shit show to end all shit shows. But we're only going to talk about the science stuff here. As the more astute observers among my readership will observe, I still haven't updated the Pre-Inauguration Edition of this post. Nor should this post really be considered a true beginning to tracking the post-inauguration devastation that the Trump administration will wreck on science, technology, the environment and public health. I'm hitting the high lights here with a more complete accounting to…

Some Thoughts on a Mechanism for Cell Suicide

You might not think of cell suicide as a sexy subject - but it is actually quite hot. Cells off themselves for any number of reasons: In embryonic development, cell suicide helps shape the growing organism. In adults, suicide is the last resort of a cell whose DNA is too damaged to repair, and its death prevents cancer, among other things. You can think of cell suicide as a prerequisite for the existence of multicellular life. Prof. Atan Gross has, for the past several years, been focusing on a pair of cell suicide proteins - BID and ATM. The more Gross studies these proteins, the more…

Is Climate Change an Easier Problem to Solve than Western Water?

We’ve entered a new era: politicians can now talk loud and clear about the reality of human-induced climate change and the growing threats to humanity. With strong, unambiguous statements by President Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, and a growing chorus of other top-level voices, the wholesale denial of climate science is increasingly relegated to a tiny group of industry-funded voices and their followers (directly mirroring the tobacco story decades ago); confused or ignorant politicians; and those who hope to avoid the difficult policy discussions by…

The Importance of Information and Transparency in Water Policy

In the 20th century, water policy seemed easy: figure out another source of water to satisfy some projected demand, and find the money to build it. The money was almost always federal “pork barrel” funding for big water projects, or occasionally state bond financing. The vast number of dams built in the United States (see the figure) is an indication of how extensively this approach was used. But the leveling off of the curve below also shows that traditional dam construction can no longer be considered the only solution to our water problems. Moreover, most major water projects were designed…

So, if she weighs the same as a duck ...

OK. Taking on logical flaws in Wall Street Journal op-ed items is about as difficult as shooting fish in a barrel, but I can't let Matt Ridley's latest affront to common sense pass without firing off a few rounds for practice if nothing else. Under a staggeringly unimaginative headline of "Inconvenient Truths About 'Renewable' Energy," Ridley argues that renewable energy isn't really renewable, or at least no more renewable that fossil fuels. How does he go about this without shattering his backbone? By pointing out that Haitians are destroying their half of their island home by cutting down…

The fuss over the Photoshopped polar bear ...

... is actually good news for those holding down the scientific fort. Last week, Science published a letter from 255 members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences pleading for "an end to McCarthy-like threats of criminal prosecution against our colleagues" in the climatology community. The letter laid bare (not bear) the scientific basis for the theory of anthropogenic climate change, a theory the authors said belongs in the same category as the theories of evolution and the Big Bang. So far so good. It was accompanied by a collage image of polar bear isolated on a single ice floe (at…

Hot enough for you?

Most of the alarmism generated by climate predictions deals with sea level rise, drought, and biodiversity loss. But what happens to waterfront property, farms and polar bears could be the least of our worries if temperatures rise much more than a few degrees. A new paper in PNAS, "An adaptability limit to climate change due to heat stress," paints a much more dire future for much of the larger mammals on the planet, including humans. In the paper, Steven Sherwood of the University of New South Wales and Matthew Huber of Purdue University try to estimate how warm the Earth can get before…

Food 2.0: Feeding a Hungry World

The World Science Festival, is a five day-long extravaganza of science in New York City that is coming up this year on June 2-6. The World Science Festival (now in it's third year) is not only for adults interested in science society- it is for kids, too. That why I will bring my 9 year old daughter with me. She is clamouring for high heels to wear to the opening night gala honoring Stephen Hawking. On Sunday, the heels will come off for some fun at the Festival Street Fair, featuring Discovery Theater and Author's Alley. On Friday evening, I will participate in a panel called Food 2.0:…

The Power of Genetics

The latest comments on my new blog reflect ample confusion about whether or not plant genetics can help poor farmers in India. To demonstrate the power of genetics, I have posted a time-lapse video (4 months) showing the performance of a genetically improved rice in a flooded field plot at the International Rice Research Institute. This video, shot by Gene Hettle, shows survival of the submergence tolerance (Sub1) rice, developed by our team, after a 17 day flood. The Sub1 rice yielded about 3 fold more in these field trials. The IRRI team has also introduced the Sub1 gene into rice…

Science Buddies Joins the Festival as a Major Sponsor!

You've heard the saying: Science is truly all around us. Get ready to discover how accurate this maxim really is as Science Buddies, an award-winning, non-profit resource in STEM for students, joins the USA Science & Engineering Festival as a major sponsor. Moreover, don't miss Science Buddies' exciting, hands-on exhibits for kids at the Festival Expo, which include delving into the physics of catapult launching and how to build your own robot "bugs" that follow light! It's a natural fit for us at Science Buddies to join with the Festival in sharing projects that encourage kids to keep…

What This Life-Saving Innovation in Mathematics and Economics Can Teach Students About STEM

By Larry Bock  Co-Founder of USA Science Science & Engineering Festival    Like many who follow research developments in high technology, I am constantly amazed at the power of science, engineering, technology and mathematics (STEM) to solve real-life problems -- especially problems across diverse venues and disciplines. Take for example the research of mathematician Lloyd Shapley and economist Alvin Roth, two Americans who shared the 2012 Nobel Prize in Economic Science for their work in market design and matching theory -- a fascinating mathematical framework which is shedding light on…

The USA Science & Engineering Festival Revolutionizing STEM Education Through Groundbreaking Nifty Fifty Program

By F. Mark Modzelewski The USA Science & Engineering Festival, supported by presenting host sponsor Lockheed Martin, is pleased to announce the launch of the 2013/14 school year “Nifty Fifty,” an innovative program that brings over 150 noted science and engineering professionals to schools across New York, California and the Washington, D.C. metro area to speak about their work, careers, and discoveries. Featuring some of the most inspiring role models in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), this signature program of the Festival presents students with the latest…

Women Who Changed the World Through Science & Engineering: Irène Joliot-Curie

PLEASE SHARE IF YOU ARE INSPIRED Irène Joliot-Curie -- Chemist and physicist Shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with her husband Frédéric Joliot for discovering that radioactivity could be artificially produced. You've heard of the achievements of Nobel Prize-winning scientists Marie and Pierre Curie. Now discover their brilliant scientist-daughter Irène Joliot-Curie who would also later earn the Nobel Prize based on groundbreaking research in radioactivity!  Born in 1897 in Paris, Irène, always a intellectually sharp and curious child,  began working as her mother’s assistant in the Radium…

Meet the Remaining Top 20 Finalists for the Kavli Video Contest!

The Kavli Science Video Contest has wrapped up with over 260 entries! Now it's time for the People's Choice Vote, in advance of the awards ceremony on April 29, in Washington, DC, as part of the USA Science & Engineering Festival. Voting is easy, just view the videos on YouTube and click 'like" for your favorites. Click here to view the videos. We have been highlighting the Top 20 Finalists on our blog for the past two weeks. In today's blog get to know the remaining Top 20 Finalists: SPOTLIGHT ON KAVLI VIDEO CONTEST: TOP 20 FINALISTS Entrant: Jenna Mason, 17 Entry: Ubiquitous…

Open Science: Good for Research and Researchers [Bora Zivkovic's Presentation at Columbia]

Thursday, February 19 ScienceBlogger Bora Zivkovic from A Blog Around the Clock gave a presentation on open science as part of a panel discussion at Columbia University in New York City. The event, titled "Open Science: Good for Research, Good for Researchers?" was organized by the Scholarly Communication Program and also featured presentations by Jean-Claude Bradley of Drexel University, and Barry Canton of Gingko BioWorks and OpenWetWare. For those who have read Bora's many posts here on ScienceBlogs promoting the open science movement, it was obvious before he even uttered a word that…

What's New on ScienceBlogs.de, April 10-16

A forgotten Soviet spaceship finds a permanent home in a German museum, Researchblogging.org opens a European branch, portraits of Nobel Laureates come to ScienceBlogs.de, and a blogger reasons about the causes for soaring global food prices. It's this week's top stories from our partner site, ScienceBlogs.de: Final Home for a Space Shuttle The Speyer Museum of Technology in the town of Speyer, Germany, has purchased a spectacular exhibit: the Buran, a disused Russian launch vehicle and twin sister of the US space shuttle. The Buran had been decaying behind a warehouse in Bahrain, and was…

An Interview with Chris Mooney

This time around, Page 3.14 interviews the ever-moving Chris Mooney, Seed Washington Correspondent and blogger at The Intersection and Speaking Science 2.0. Mooney's new book about hurricanes and global warming, Storm World, hit bookstore shelves on Sunday. What's your name? Christopher Cole Mooney. Aka Chris Mooney. What do you do when you're not blogging? If my blog is dormant, it usually means I'm traveling. If you mean hobbies when I'm at home, I'm a hanging out kinda guy. I like to go out to long dinners and bars. And I exercise a lot. My specialty is watching Star Wars movies while…

Societies Participate in USA Science & Engineering Festival

Thanks Soil Science Society of America for presenting at the Expo. Here is information for their booth. ASA, CSSA, and SSSA will each have a booth at the Expo, with fun activities for kids and kids-at-heart The American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America (ASA, CSSA, and SSSA) are proud to be Official Partners of the inaugural USA Science & Engineering Festival. The Festival, which will be the country's first national science festival, is a collaboration of over 500 of the country's leading science and engineering organizations and…

Let's watch that again in slow motion, shall we?

I wrote earlier about videos of lab protocols and the benefit these could bring to people who are trying to learn new techniques or perhaps troubleshoot their own. Unfortunately, I suspect that the people who would benefit the most from movies of others doing lab procedures correctly are those who are already pretty observant. Nevertheless, I have some ideas for improvements to these kinds of movies, ala acting and editing, that could benefit the truly-technically-impaired. We need lab movies of people doing things wrong. Last night we watched the episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus,…

A day at the Biotech Expo

No one in a life science-related industry or research lab, in Western Washington, is safe at this time of year. Surely, you're joking! No, seriously, there are teachers and science enthusiasts everywhere looking to sign you up! And don't call me "Shirley." Sign me up? That's right, it's time to prepare for the BIOTECH EXPO This is the Western Washington version of the science Olympics! Those science enthusiasts are out scouting for anyone who does something related to science or a life-science industry to act as an advisor (sort a mentor with a lower committment level) to high school…

Spoiler Alert: Ender's Game

This movie was already spoiled for me because I read the book many years ago.  But the movie can't help but spoil itself.  It's a great film and one of the best adaptations of a novel to ever appear onscreen, but if you really know nothing about Ender's Game, and can read at a 9th grade level, honestly go read the book first.  If you have time. The problem is that by the time of Ender's "final exam," it's hard to imagine anyone in the audience sympathizing with Ender's shock that he hasn't really been playing a video game; he and his tween friends have been controlling actual spaceships…

Don't Talk to Strangers? Stephen Hawking, Active SETI and Hostile Aliens

Stephen Hawking may have been the only person to play himself on Star Trek, but that doesn't mean he's ready to sign Earth up for the United Federation of Planets. The world's most famous living scientist recently reiterated his warning that the search for intelligent life on other worlds could lead to a scenario not unlike the one found in a less optimistic sci-fi staple: Independence Day. The fear--resource-hungry ETs will find us easy pickings--is far from an alien concept; Hawking says his rationale is rooted in human history. Needless to say, there's been some disagreement about Hawking'…

The Dirty Thirty Meme

Who is going to blog serious stuff over the holidays? It's time to eat and drink and be merry. So, a silly meme is in order. Seen on Cyberspace Rendezvous (and a couple of other science blogs) (under the fold): 1. In two words, explain what ended your last relationship? I moved 13000 miles away. 2. When was the last time you shaved your legs? Never. 3. What were you doing this morning at 8am? Sleeping 4. What were you doing 15 minutes ago? Writing a blog post and eating brownies. 5. Are you any good at math? Used to be, 15 years ago. 6. Your prom night? It is different in Yugoslavia, but…

Antioxidants

I missed answering AskTheScienceBlogger question for a few weeks now, so let me take a quick stab at the latest one: What's an antioxidant, and why are they healthful? I thought oxygen was supposed to be good for you! Not that I know too much about this but I should, as the molecule central to my area of research is melatonin which is one of the most powerful antioxidants normally produced in our bodies. I do mention antioxidants when I teach the Intro Bio lab, so I know the very basic, textbook stuff, as I wrote here: Then I explained in quite a lot of detail what happens in the…

Naked anaspids

This strange fish is Euphanerops longaevus, which is one of two species of 370 million year old jawless fishes (the other is Endeiolepis aneri, and the paper suggests that they may actually represent differently preserved members of the same species). These are soft-bodied animals that are usually poorly preserved, and are of interest because they seem to have some properties in common with both the lampreys and the gnathostomes, or jawed fishes. Their exact position in the vertebrate family tree is problematic, and the experts go back and forth on it; sometimes they are grouped with the…

Do biologists need to learn programming?

I get asked this question often enough and now that's it's come up again, it seems that I might as well answer it once and for all and get it over with. First, I want to change the question. Of course they don't need to learn programming. A better question is would it benefit biologists to learn programming? My flip half-way serious answer is yes, if they want to change careers. You see, programming is really seductive when you've been a wet-bench biologist. It's like heroin. (At least I suspect it is, I know about programming, I don't have any experience with the other beyond reading…

Teaching with the new BLAST

BLAST is a collection of programs that are used to compare sequences (DNA, RNA, or protein) to larger collections of sequences that are stored in databases. I've used BLAST as a teaching tool for many years, partly because it's become a standard tool for biological work and partly because it's very good at illustrating evolutionary relationships on a molecular level. A few months ago, the NCBI changed the web interface for doing BLAST searches at their site. I wrote earlier about changes that I made to our animated tutorial in response to the new BLAST. Now, I want to mention some of the…

There's no place like "ome"

In which I present a quick guide for the omically challenged and a defense of 'arth and "ome." Other SciBloggers have shared their thoughts on the use of ome here and here. Sometimes I get frustrated too, with the way language is abused and tweaked by those around me. So many word pairs that once made phrases—;log in, data set, file name, set up, and pick up—;have been condensed into single words, that I've had to start using Google to double-check my editing. Perhaps it's surprising then, that I like "ome," "omics," and even Sydney Brenner's chief phrase-to-hate, "systems biology." I…

Eating your fruits and vegetables

We all know we should eat lots of fruits and vegetables. I do it because I happen to like fruits and vegetables, but there are good health reasons, too. But my father always said that with diet as with life, "Everything in moderation." A whole lot of fruit and vegetables is not necessarily a whole lot better than just enough. It may not be better at all, and if they take the place of other sources of essential nutrients, maybe worse. First a disclaimer. I'm a physician. By definition that means I know practically nothing about nutrition or diet and don't even know what I don't know. But I do…

US health care: waiting for Godot

You can't count on defenders of US health care for much, but you can always count on them to allege that in Canada and other "socialized health care" systems there are long waits for elective surgery. Wait times for a hip replacement in Canada have been alleged as long as 6 months, although I don't know if that is generally true or not. Whatever the wait times, most Canadians seem satisfied. From Statistics Canada: The results for 2005 indicate that waiting for care remains the number one barrier for those having difficulties accessing care. Median waiting times for all specialized services…

Freethinker Sunday Sermonette: another Baptist John that's no saint

The story of North Carolina uber Christian Coy Privette, arrested on charges of aiding and abetting prostitution (being a "john") is, on its surface, just another tale of hypocrisy, one among many: Privette, the president of the Christian Action League in North Carolina, was charged July 19 with six counts of aiding and abetting prostitution. According to arrest documents secured by the Biblical Recorder, Privette's alleged actions took place in a Rowan County hotel between May 4 and June 25. Tiffany Denise Summers, 32, of Salisbury, N.C., was charged with six counts of prostitution in…

Afghanistan was wrong, II

I hope the Democrats are successful in stopping the Iraq atrocity. Out of Iraq. Now. But I must once again disagree -- strongly disagree -- with the notion that Iraq has distracted us from the "real" war against terrorism, the one in Afghanistan. This is a talking point of virtually all the Democratic presidential hopefuls and a distressingly large proportion of the progressive blogosphere. I must say again: Afghanistan was wrong, too. That was the title of a post I put up in December 2005 at a time when Iraq looked less like the colossal screw up many of us knew it was. It was also a time…

New drugs for flu. But what about some old ones?

The prospect of a influenza pandemic has concentrated the minds of vaccine makers. There has been a lot of new research and development on newer, faster and cheaper ways to make flu vaccines. The antiviral field hasn't been quite as active, although now things seem to be picking up. Until now the antivirals (all four of them!) have been in two main classes, the old M2 inhibitors (adamantanes) and the newer neuraminidase inhibitors (oseltamivir, zanamivir; and waiting in the wings, peramivir). Now we are hearing about new drug targets: One of the promising things about the work is that the…

China, Taiwan and very small minds

"China" was one of the founding members of the United Nations. Whatever you mean by "China," anyway. When the UN was formed in 1945 there was only one China. After the Revolution of 1949 the losing side retreated to Taiwan and claimed the title of Republic of China. The US and its allies stupidly continued to recognize them as "China" to keep another communist country from the Security Council, but by 1971 the absurdity of denying mot Chinese a seat in the UN was patently obvious and the People's Republic of China took the place of the ROC. At the time I was strongly in favor of this and I…

The free market in Tamiflu

It was inevitable. Roche is now planning to cut production of its antiviral Tamiflu because, they say, supply is exceeding demand: Swiss pharmaceutical group Roche said Thursday it would trim production of the frontline bird flu drug Tamiflu unless demand picked up, but warned that the world was still not ready for a pandemic. Manufacturing capacity for the antiviral treatment has reached 400 million treatment courses a year and is outstripping demand, William Burns, the chief executive of the group's pharmaceuticals division told journalists. Roche has received orders for 215 million…

RAND on emergency preparedness: not much help

The RAND corporation is one of the country's foremost non-profit consulting companies. Their Reports carry weight. So I was interested to see the announcement of a new Rand panel report on key components of public health emergency preparedness. Emergency preparedness means many things to many people, and immediately after 9/11 it meant responding to a terrorist attack. These days we think more in terms of hurricanes and pandemics. I think that's progress. But I have to say the RAND report didn't seem to advance the ball much. Here are the three broad categories they believe communities should…