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Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Robert De Niro issue a $100,000 vaccine "challenge." It's every bit as much as scam as Jock Doubleday's "vaccine challenge" was a decade ago.

I must admit, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., environmentalist and, unfortunately, antivaccine crank of the thimerosal fear mongering variety, has been rather busy lately. After having gone mostly silent on vaccine issues compared to his original flurry of misinformation and conspiracy mongering back that began back in 2005, several years past with almost nary a word from the lesser scion of a great American family on vaccines. This was a very good thing. Then, in 2014, he decided to reappear, co-authoring an antivaccine book with functional medicine quack Mark Hyman, a book with mouthful of a title…

Thanksgiving Gratitude and #NoDAPL

Today is about American tradition, and feeling grateful for all that we have been given. The first Thanksgiving represented the gratitude of American settlers towards the indigenous peoples who originally inhabited this country. It is about the men and women who came to North America on the Mayflower giving back to the men and women who helped them to survive in the 'new' world. It is about Tisquantum, a Patuxet enslaved by a Briton, sold in Spain, liberated by monks, and steeped in the English language before returning to his homeland and teaching the colonists to "catch eel and grow corn."…

From the horse's mouth

Here's the other side: Sarah Palin made some policy statements in her run for governor, so we can see what to expect. She's pro-ignorance and anti-civil rights all the way, opposing gay marriage, sex education, and reproductive rights for women. No surprise at all, I know. Here are some answers that jumped out at me: 2. Will you support the right of parents to opt out their children from curricula, books, classes, or surveys, which parents consider privacy-invading or offensive to their religion or conscience?Why or why not? SP: Yes. Parents should have the ultimate control over what their…

Sammies highlight federal employees' valuable contributions to public health

As the Trump Administration proposes slashing federal agency budgets and calls for “deconstruction of the administrative state,” it’s worth reminding ourselves of the many valuable contributions federal employees make to public health. One good way to do that is to read about the honorees of the Partnership for Public Service’s Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medals. The “Sammies” program overview explains: The Partnership is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization whose mission is to help make our government more effective, and the Sammies honorees represent the many exceptional federal…

Formaldehyde, scientists, and politics

A new commentary by CUNY School of Public Health professor Franklin Mirer is timed perfectly for this weekend's Marches for Science. Mirer writes about the ongoing interference by Members of Congress on the science behind the designation of formaldehyde as a carcinogen. His commentary, "What’s Science Got to Do with It?" appears in the current issue of April issue of the Synergist, a membership publication of the American Industrial Hygiene Association. Mirer's example concerns a rule published by EPA in December 2016 on testing formaldehyde emissions from composite wood products (e.g.,…

Coates: Donald Trump and his Supporters Are White Supremacists

A lot of people will object to the title of this post. I will be told to take the post down. I will be told to modify the title or to change what I say in the post. Nope. Ta-Nehisi Coates is correct, and his presentation is brilliant. Watch the following interview (in two parts) and read his book We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy. Chris Hayes is correct to point out that the historical source of Coates title is critically important and deeply disturbing (this is something we've talked about here in the recent past). He is incorrect, as Coates points out near the end of…

Beren and Luthien, sitting in an Ent. (New Tolkien LOTR Book)

The brand new just published (June 1) book Beren and Lúthien presents the story of the human (or should I say "Man"?) Beren Erchamion, or "The One-Handed" (AKA Beren Camlost, for "the Empty Handed") and the Elf-maiden Lúthien Tinúviel. If you read The Lord of the Rings you may recall Aragorn telling their story to Frodo. This Man and this Elf-Maiden lived over 6,000 years before the time of the Lord of the Rings, and their story is told in several places throughout the LOTR literature, in books that, frankly, most people don't read. Christopher Tolkien, heir of J.R.R. Tolkien, and…

Rwandan Gorillas Are Even More Demanding Than Elton John

The scientifically esteemed Natalie Portman (at least by Jake) led a troupe of celebs in a baby gorilla naming ceremony/fundraiser at Rwanda's Volcanoes National Park the other day, trying to raise awareness to both the conservation of the critically endangered primates and Rwanda's attempts to attract ecotourists. This part of the article caught my eye: Speaking at the ceremony, Rwandan President Paul Kagame called for strict measures to ensure the protection of mountain gorillas. But with park entrance fees at 500 dollars, gorilla-watching by high-end foreign tourists is also a key source…

Trump’s mine safety nominee defends MSHA inspectors, calls silicosis “unacceptable”

President Trump’s nominee to head the Labor Department’s Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) appeared today before a Senate committee for a confirmation hearing. David Zatezalo answered questions about the epidemic of black lung cases, an increase in mine worker fatalities, the need for safety assistance for small mine operators, and more. Zatezalo began his career in 1974 as a UMWA coal miner and most recently served as chairman of Rhino Resources. I watched the webcast of Zatezalo's confirmation hearing. The nominee noted his experience managing 39 different coal mines in the U.S.…

One more GOP “healthcare” bill that would gut Medicaid and wreck individual insurance market

Republican Senators have proposed one more bill to repeal the ACA. The Graham-Cassidy (or Cassidy-Graham) proposal would dramatically shrink the pool of federal money going to healthcare and revise how it’s distributed to states, in a way that is especially damaging to states that accepted the ACA’s Medicaid expansion. They hope to pass this destructive bill before the end of September, due to the upcoming expiration of reconciliation rules that let them pass a healthcare-related bill with votes from 50 Senators and Vice President Mike Pence. Like Republican bills from earlier in the year,…

Zika remains a serious threat. Federal funding cuts will make the problem even worse.

Last year’s emergency Zika funding is about to run out and there’s no new money in the pipeline. It’s emblematic of the kind of short-term, reactive policymaking that public health officials have been warning us about for years. Now, as we head into summer, public health again faces a dangerous, highly complex threat along with an enormous funding gap. “The Zika threat will get worse,” said Claude Jacob, chief public health officer at the Cambridge Public Health Department in Massachusetts and president of the National Association of County & City Health Officials (NACCHO). “And the…

Occupational Health News Roundup

At the Center for Public Integrity, Talia Buford and Maryam Jameel investigate federal contractors that receive billions in public funds despite committing wage violations against their workers. In analyzing Department of Labor data on more than 1,100 egregious violators, the reporters found that federal agencies modified or granted contracts totaling $18 billion to 68 contractors with proven wage violations. The Department of Defense contracted with the most wage violators. Under Obama, labor officials had attempted to address the problem with the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces rule, which…

The ACA is safe for now, but it’s still very much in danger

Yesterday, House Republicans failed to find enough votes to pass their Affordable Care Act replacement. It was a very good day for the millions of Americans projected to lose their coverage under the GOP plan. But let’s be clear: Obamacare is not safe. In a last-ditch effort to round up more votes, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., proposed an amendment that would have, beginning in 2018, allowed states to determine the kinds of essential health benefits required in insurance plans purchased with tax credits. Under Obama’s health care law, insurance plans sold via the federal health care…

A reminder that advocates for health and justice are ready to fight

Three days out from the election and many of us are still trying to adjust to this new reality. It’s been a very rough week. And assuming that we take the new president-elect at his word — that we believe the promises he made on the campaign trail — public health workers and advocates, as well as the often-vulnerable people and communities they serve, now face a very difficult four years. Fortunately, public health has plenty of practice confronting and overcoming powerfully entrenched interests for the greater good. Just ask Big Tobacco. In that vein, below are excerpts from post-election…

Rollback of Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces order is ‘opening salvo of the war on workers’

Not violating federal labor law seems like a commonsense precursor for being awarded lucrative federal contracts. House Republicans, however, disagree. Last week, majority members in the House of Representatives successfully passed a resolution to get rid of federal disclosure requirements included in President Barack Obama’s Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces Executive Order, which he originally signed in 2014. Those disclosure requirements directed businesses bidding for federal contracts of $500,000 or more to report any violations of 14 labor laws within the prior three years. Among those 14…

The Inconceivably Bogus Republican Science Committee Hearings

Last week, House Representative Lamar Smith held yet another masturbatory hearing to promote climate science denial. Smith is bought and paid for by Big Oil, so that is the most obvious reason he and his Republican colleagues would put on such a dog and pony show, complete with a chorus of three science deniers (Judith Curry, Roger Pielke Jr, and John Cristy). I don't know why they invited actual and respected climate scientist Mike Mann, because all he did was ruin everything by stating facts, dispelling alt-facts, and making well timed Princess Bride references. The hearings were called "…

Releasing his long form birth certificate: Obama caving to the birthers or putting the conspiracy theory to rest?

Among the most bizarre and risible conspiracy theories currently going around, rising to the top (or near the top) has to be notion that President Obama was not actually born in the United States and therefore is not a U.S. citizen and not eligible to be President of the United States. Indeed, ever since the heat of the 2008 election, this particular unsinkable rubber duck of a conspiracy theory keeps getting slapped down by reason and evidence, only to rise to the surface again and again and again. It's truly a wingnut paradise, because, quite frankly, the people who passionately believe it…

Another antivaccine conspiracy theory, flu vaccine edition

It's Friday, and it's been a rough week. So, after digging into an epidemiology study yesterday, I'm in the mood for something a bit less...heavy. Antivaxers sometimes call me to task when I point out what to me is a simple fact, namely that antivaxers are basically conspiracy theorists. In essence, to believe many antivax views, you have to believe that there is a vast conspiracy among big pharma, the government, and the media to hide great harm from vaccines because...well, it's never quite clear. To protect pharma profits? Really, this is no different than the cancer quacks who claim that…

Why can't American scientists be like this?

The Canadian Press has this story about Canadian scientists who have written an open letter calling on the Canadian voter to consider climate change in next week's federal election. When will their American colleagues follow suit? Here's the opening to the letter: We have been disturbed by what we perceive to be a lack of attention to the environment during this election campaign. While it's clear the public accepts that global warming is a threat, it seems people have simply no idea how serious this issue is. Global warming is without a doubt the defining issue of our time, and we cannot let…

Interesting Parallel

There is an interesting parallel between the fight over rural electrification, in 1935, and the current health insurance debate. (HT href="http://dangerousmeta.com/site/comments/newwestnet_if_you_read_nothing_else_today/">dangerousmeta) href="http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/how_fdr_enacted_his_public_option/C37/L37/"> href="http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/how_fdr_enacted_his_public_option/C37/L37/">How FDR Enacted his "Public Option" By Bob Simmons, Crosscut.com, Guest Writer, 9-13-09 ...President Roosevelt had decreed a public option in 1935, putting the federal…

Obama calls for rational, fact based debate on important issues

Donald Trump, Orly Tate, others are "side show carnival barkers" and questions by birthers, others "silliness" according to Obama, in a press conference moments ago. Following a down-and-dirty live statement to the press asking everyone to just shut. up. and get down to business on the important issues facing the nation, the press vowed to provide intensive, irrelevant and annoying coverage of the birth certificate issue all day and for the rest of the week. Presumably the story will be interleaved with coverage of some wedding going on in England. Here's a statement from the White House:…

Perverse Incentives and Global Warming

Cass Sunstein in the Washington Post offers an excellent explanation of why an international deal on global warming is so unlikely: The obstacle stems from the unusual incentives of the United States and China. As the world's leading contributors to climate change, these are the two countries that would have to bear the lion's share of the cost of greenhouse gas reductions. At the same time, they are both expected to suffer less than many other nations from climate change -- and thus are less motivated to do something about it. And while the international spotlight has rightly been on the…

I love the smell of the pharma shill gambit in the morning. It smells like...crankery.

I promised myself that I was done writing about Jenny McCarthy this week. Two posts, a lengthy one and a brief one, lamenting her being hired for a national daytime talk show was, in my view, enough. Unfortunately, something's happened that makes me want to make like Arnold Schwarzenegger in that famous scene from the 1980s action flick Commando, in which he had promised one villain that he would kill him last. Later in the film while holding this same villain over a cliff, Arnold says, "Remember when I promised I would kill you last? I lied." Except that I wasn't lying at the time. I really…

Dumb and dumber: Kent Heckenlively and Mike Adams team up to support an antivaccine WhiteHouse.gov petition

Yesterday was a busy day for a number of reasons. I thought of skipping it, but I couldn't resist taking notice of one particularly hilarious bit that I found on what is perhaps the wretchedest of all the wretched hives of scum and quackery on the Internet, NaturalNews.com. There, yesterday, on a very special day for me, I saw this headline by Mike Adams: Facebook blocks all Natural News article posts to 2.2M fans after site posts White House petition citing immunization dangers: In the latest outrageous example of total censorship against the independent media, Facebook has blocked nearly…

Protecting the Right of Conscience?

Guest Blogger Danio, sneaking a few more posts in: Remember that execrable HHS policy document that proposes an extension of the current protections for health care workers who refuse to provide or assist in treatments that they personally find morally objectionable? I did a little back-tracking on this issue, and followed the trail of HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt, who requested this regulation after a "disappointing" interaction with the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. He has since been unwavering in his support of the proposal--which he claims is not about abortion OR…

My letter to the New York Times

The New York Times Elizabeth Spayed, Public Editor Dear Elizabeth, I am writing to express my concern for the addition of Bret Stephens to the NYT team as a columnist. I don't expect a columnist who seemingly writes about everything to be wrong about nothing. But the Gray Lady should, at the very least, expect a columnist to know something about something. Stephens doesn't simply express opinions that are not popular in certain, many, circles. He attempts to support his opinions with what we now seem to be calling alt-facts. For example, his opinion about the importance of climate change is…

Is Rex Tillerson Going To Save Vladimir Kara-Murza's Life?

The State Department has been in the state of chaos over several days, between the Trump Transition Team failing to staff up the Executive Branch, high level officers leaving on their own accord, and so on. And a mere hours ago, Oil Man Rex Tillerson has been officially sworn in as Security of State. Given Tillerson's alleged and real links to Russia and Putin, his inexperience in matters of government and international affairs, his newness, and the state of the State Department, we are moved to ask the following question: Is anyone in the United States, in the State Department, going to do…

October Pieces Of My Mind #2

The New Dawn rose I've been pampering has almost outgrown its trellis. Movie: Kubo and the Two Strings. Oddly titled Japanese fantasy story with beautiful imagery and sappy moral. Grade: Pass. The UK imports roughly the same amount of tea annually as the rest of Europe combined. About the Trump campaign's response to the "just grab her" clip: me and my nerdy buddies never had those misogynistic locker-room conversations even during our lower teens. Ridiculous of him to claim "all men". In 1980 a lot of penpal ads in my kids' mag listed Jimi Hendrix as an idol. Mom and Dad's music... When I…

Harvey

My feed, as you'd expect, is full of stuff from Houston about hurricane Harvey. A typical example is How Climate Change is Making the Houston Situation Worse. Or Stefan's Storm Harvey: impacts likely worsened due to global warming. I'm sure you can fill in any gaps. But also Timmy's It’s amazing how few people Harvey has killed. And ~101 is indeed a very small number for a storm of this size. Of course there are many reasons: (government funded) warning systems; lots of planning; high quality infrastructure; a resilient civil society; and so on. So the question is: if we temporarily ignore…

Straight outta the lab, down the stairs and into the bucket of jellied eels

Sorry, I couldn't resist the memory. This is about Out of the lab and into the field? by ATTP, who as usual is far too polite about Out of the lab and into the field by Dan M. Kahan & Katherine Carpenter, Nature Climate Change 7, 309–311 (2017) doi:10.1038/nclimate3283. I convincingly demolished this as a load of toss based merely on the rather short abstract, but was uneasily aware that some kind person might mail me the article itself, and so it was. Thank you, you know who you are. Since we're on "out of", I feel I should recommend Straight outta Compton, to whose sound I wrote this…

WATN 2016

Mais où sont les neiges d'antan! Did you know that "Antan", though it now means "yesteryear" (which was itself coined to translate "antan") formerly meant "last year", as a contraction from the latin "ante annum"? Fascinating, eh. But not as fascinating as poking at the innards of dead things. Although now I come to it, most of the dead things were dead in 2015 or even 2014. Before any harsh words here is not quite neige and indeed not antan, but it is a colchique dans le pre which is pretty well the same thing. Let's start with a newish thing, Curry's Climate Etc review of 2016. Notice…

The Republican Debate

Since I didn't have any grading this time, and since Republicans are harder to listen to than Democrats (and remember, I used to spend hours at a time listening to Creationists), I couldn't bring myself to watch the entirety of the recent Republican debate. I kept flipping back and forth between it and game two of the World Series (which, as a Mets fan, was also hard to watch.) But I saw enough of it to form a few impressions. The first is that the CNBC folks absolutely disgraced themselves. They all need to go home and resign. I actually briefly cheered Ted Cruz, for heaven's sake, when…

Gay "Kiss-In" at Mormon Temple

A gay couple kiss in front of the Salt Lake City Mormon Temple / David Daniels For the second time gay activists and allies held a kiss-in at Temple Square in Salt Lake City. The action held this morning was to protest the arrest of two gay men two weeks ago who showed "inappropriate" public affection on LDS Church property. According to The Advocate: Aune, 28, and Jones, 25, told the newspaper that they were walking back to their nearby home in the evening when they crossed the plaza holding hands, then stopped to kiss on the cheek. Several security guards arrived and told the couple…

Why We Need More Evidence-Based Medicine

As mentioned here previously, the stimulus package passed in February includes funds to encourage evidence-based medicine. Some uninformed critics will claim that this is some big government conspiracy to exert socialized control over private medicine. But, truly, encouraging a firmer empirical basis in all aspects of medicine--through more studies, government guidelines, and just improved common practice--is a very desirable outcome. A post by David Newman at The New York Time's Well blog lays out a variety of examples of why this is so (with links to original studies!). Also, Hugh Pickens…

Obama "Birthers" Could be Right for the Wrong Reasons

Ko Olina Beach (author's photograph) Could Donald Trump and the Obama "birther" conspiracists be right? Some claim that President Obama is not an American because he was born outside of the U.S. Some begrudgingly acknowledge that he was born in Hawaii less than two years after becoming our 50th state but still characterize the President as somehow distinct from "real" Americans. Having just returned from my first visit to the President's jewel of a birthplace (or is it?), I see how the state of Hawaii - putting aside Kenya - could be viewed by some Americans as foreign for a host of…

Why the new Supreme Court Justice matters

James Grimmelmann considers the Supreme Court's inability to understand the difference between the pager and the e-mail: Reading about the Supreme Court oral arguments in City of Ontario v. Quon makes me sad and angry in equal measure. Why so emotional? Here are the Court's questions, in a case about whether messages on an employer-provided pager are private or the property of the employee: CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Maybe â maybe everybody else knows this, but what is the difference between the pager and the e-mail? ⦠CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: What happens, just out of curiosity, if youâre â he…

The fate of the Affordable Care Act

Recent news has highlighted just how important and popular the Affordable Care Act has been, but its fate under a Trump administration and Republican Congress is uncertain. Congressional Republicans have voted repeatedly to repeal the ACA, but now that they actually have a shot at doing that, journalists and commentators are focusing on how hard it will be to preserve the provisions voters like and politicians vow to keep – let alone the gains in insurance coverage and financial stability. Between the law’s passage in 2010 and early 2016, an estimated 20 million people gained health insurance…

The Republican Party of Donald Trump vs. science

I’ve frequently said that a tendency towards pseudoscience knows no political boundary. For example, antivaccine views, contrary to common belief, are not detectably more prevalent on the left than on the right, as I’ve discussed on more than one occasion. It’s just that for so many years, antivaccine beliefs were associated in the media with crunchy, back-to-nature lefties, and still are to some extent. (I’m talking to you Jill Stein.) However, last year the battle over SB 277, the new California law that eliminates nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates, and the Republican…

Where's GrrlScientist?

Adult plumage Ring-billed Gull, Larus delawarensis, stands on a lamp on Roosevelt Island, overlooking the East River. Manhattan Island is in the background. Image: GrrlScientist, 21 August 2008 [larger view]. I went on a little day trip to Roosevelt Island to look at birds and to learn a little about a company known as Verdant Power. Roosevelt Island (formerly Welfare Island, and before that, Blackwell's Island) is a small island that is roughly two miles long located in the middle of the East River, a tidal estuary that flows between Manhattan Island and the Borough of Queens. Verdant…

The PRIDE Study is open for enrollment: People are ‘hungry to be heard and represented’

Last week, researchers officially opened enrollment in the nation’s first decades-long study of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer health — an effort they hope will transform our understanding of the health challenges LGBTQ people face and begin narrowing a giant data gap on their physical, mental and social well-being. “Sexual and gender minorities make up between 2 and 6 percent of the population, however sexual orientation and gender identity are rarely asked about in health studies and they’re not included in fundamental metrics like the Census,” said Juno Obedin-Maliver, one…

Sunday sermon: on cultural isolation

Okay, so the Eighth Day Inventism calendar as rolled around to coincide our Holy day with one of yours. We Inventists are open minded people and often try to reach out to you heathen irreligious puppy grinding moral monsters. Because that's what you are, you know, if you don't exactly believe and do what we Inventists do. So to try to save you from your moral malaise of happy lives and families, meaningless rituals that you perform on turkeys several times a year, and other abominations that you make more or less simultaneous with the summer solstice (did I mention that Inventists use God'…

Who knew? Tightening up requirements for waivers for school vaccine requirements increases vaccine uptake! (Part two)

Well, it's finally done. The grants that have been taking up so much of my time are finally with the grants office and, hopefully, won't have too many errors flagged as they go through the validation process. So it's time to get back into that blogging thing again, even though I'm admittedly tired. So I'll start out slow. No Orac-ian epics today, just another rather satisfying bit of news mirroring a previous post that I did last week about how making it more difficult to obtain personal belief exemptions to school vaccine requirements works. In states where PBEs are difficult to obtain or…

Cothran keeps defending Holocaust denial

I've been curious how close Disco. Inst. blogger and Focus on the Family stooge Martin Cothran would get to defending Holocaust denial in the abstract, rather than defending the Holocaust denial of Pat Buchanan specifically. In comments at his blog, Cothran inches closer. I observed that: You say Buchanan "does not deny the Holocaust." I've offered the generally accepted definition of the Holocaust, and shown that Buchanan denies it. You've offered no definition of the Holocaust, and point only to the fact that Buchanan uses the word. This is like the old joke: Q:If you call a tail a leg,…

Evolution: The Utility Defense

During one of the many framing-related flare ups (kinda like zits, aren't they?), I argued that biologists have done the following things well while confronting creationism: Calling creationists fucking morons (because they are). Arguing that a better understanding of how life evolved is good in and of itself, and can imbue us with a certain sense of wonder. Refuting specific creationist claims. But this is what I thought was missing: What we rarely do is make an affirmative, positive argument for evolution (as opposed to against creationism). I proposed one particular argument: we can't do…

On academic leadership

No, the purpose of this post isn't to reveal the secrets of successful academic leadership. If I had those, believe you me I'd be writing this from my villa on the French Riviera. However, I am heading off to the Harvard Graduate School of Education's Leadership Institute for Academic Librarians in Boston next week where I hope to be a least a little more enlightened and educated along that path. Not surprisingly I've been watching the blogosphere these last few months for insightful posts and articles about academic leadership, in particular academic library leadership. I've found a few…

YouTube and pandemic flu

An influenza pandemic will have many casualties, but truthfully, it never occurred to me YouTube might be one of them: Many companies and government agencies are counting on legions of teleworkers to keep their operations running in the event of an influenza pandemic. But those plans may quickly run aground as millions of people turn to the Internet for news and even entertainment, potentially producing a bandwidth-choking surge in online traffic. Such a surge would almost certainly prompt calls to restrict or prioritize traffic, such as blocking video transmissions wherever possible,…

The Biggest Picture

I wrote this on the Edwards campaign blog on December 15, 2003 and copied it on www.jregrassroots.org a few months later, then posted it again on Science And Politics on August 23, 2004: An individual can be a President of USA for 4-8 years. Human civilization is, depending on your definition of civilization, about 5,000-20,000 years old. Human species (or something like it) has been around for about 1.000,000 years. There has been Life on Earth for about 3,600.000,000 years. Do you have the power of imagination to imagine a 100 years? How about a thousand? Ten thousand? A million years? A…

Taking Food Safety Seriously

Salmonella-tainted tomatoes have sickened at least 277, although the Seattle PIâs Andrew Schneider cites a CDC estimate of 8,600 people whoâve become ill during this outbreak. Congress has reacted to this and other food and drug safety problems by forcing additional funding on the FDA, which isnât allowed to ask for more money than the administration decides it needs. The additional $275 million is small change, though, compared to whatâs needed to shore up our overburdened food and drug safety systems. Contrast this lackluster action to what happened in South Korea when the government made a…

Family Research Council endorses Homobigot Surgeon General

Bible Belt Blogger brings us this excerpt from the Family Research Council's "Dear Praying Friends" letter: Surgeon General Nominee under Fire - Dr. James Holsinger, President Bush's nominee for Surgeon General, has been harshly condemned by pro-homosexual activists for a 1991 paper he wrote for the Methodist Church describing male gay sex as unnatural and unhealthy. Sen. Barak Obama (D-IL) attacked Holsinger and President Bush saying, "...The Surgeon General's office is no place for bigotry...that would trump sound science." But Holsinger's work catalogued the obvious. The Center for Disease…

New and Exciting in PLoS Medicine and PLoS Biology

The Evolution of Norovirus, the 'Gastric Flu' and Mechanisms of GII.4 Norovirus Persistence in Human Populations: Noroviruses are the leading cause of viral acute gastroenteritis in humans, noted for causing epidemic outbreaks in communities, the military, cruise ships, hospitals, and assisted living communities. The evolutionary mechanisms governing the persistence and emergence of new norovirus strains in human populations are unknown. Primarily organized by sequence homology into two major human genogroups defined by multiple genoclusters, the majority of norovirus outbreaks are caused by…