Drugs
grrlscientist | March 30, 2009tags: politics, good citizenship, humor, America, streaming video
This streaming video provides essential educational advice to Americans on how to be good citizens -- I was especially impressed with Mary's frugal meals, but seriously, she'd spend le$$ if she stopped eating meat altogether! [10:39]
Hattip: Travelgirl.
revere | March 24, 2009When the Wall Street Journal called attention to a claim that the Journal of the American Medical Association called a whistle-blower a "nobody" and a "nothing," a claim JAMA denied, I didn't know what to think. I was inclined to give JAMA the benefit of the doubt. Whatever dealings I've had (and they are few) with JAMA's editor in chief, Dr. Catherine DeAngelis, she's been pleasant and has a reputation for being a tough and intelligent editor. It sounded as if someone had gotten a little irritated and maybe said things in a way that wasn't quite appropriate, but these things happen. But…
purepedantry | March 18, 2009The New Old Age blog at the NYTimes -- hadn't read it before, but I like it -- has a post about reversible causes of cognitive decline in the elderly. I think they make a really good point: there are reversible causes to senility. Not all mental decline in the elderly is "normal" and certainly it is not always Alzheimer's:
But according to the National Institute on Aging, missed diagnoses of reversible dementia still occur too often. "Some physical and mental changes occur with age in healthy people," the agency writes in a publication called "Forgetfulness." "However, much pain and…
purepedantry | March 16, 2009If you work in infectious diseases in a hospital -- or frankly if you work anywhere in a hospital -- the emergence of antibiotic resistant bacteria is a serious problem. You have to be constantly aware of what the right drug is to prescribe to ensure its maximum effectiveness, and -- though rare -- there are some bacterial infections for which we have no good drugs.
This is why I was very intrigued about researchers trying to design antibiotics that would not create resistant bacteria:
Vern L. Schramm, Ph.D., professor and Ruth Merns Chair of Biochemistry at Einstein and senior author of the…
edyong | March 9, 2009Pregnant women are generally advised to avoid drinking alcohol and for good reason - exposing an unborn baby to alcohol can lead to a range of physical and mental problems from hyperactivity and learning problems to stunted growth, abnormal development of the head, and mental retardation.
But alcohol also has much subtler effects on a foetus. Some scientists have suggested that people who get their first taste of alcohol through their mother's placenta are more likely to develop a taste for it in later life. This sleeper effect is a long-lasting one - exposure to alcohol in the womb has been…
purepedantry | March 9, 2009In the Economist, they have a piece in "honor" of the 100th year anniversary of the first attempts to render drugs illegal. After looking at the evidence, they take a dim view of the drug war's effectiveness:
A HUNDRED years ago a group of foreign diplomats gathered in Shanghai for the first-ever international effort to ban trade in a narcotic drug. On February 26th 1909 they agreed to set up the International Opium Commission--just a few decades after Britain had fought a war with China to assert its right to peddle the stuff. Many other bans of mood-altering drugs have followed. In 1998…
revere | March 7, 2009If we had decent substance abuse services in this country instead of criminalizing drug use, addicts like Rush Limbaugh could get treatment for their sociopathic personality disorders. In a spirit of understanding of his affliction, if not bipartisanship, I therefore gladly post John Amato's plea to leave Rush alone:
revere | March 7, 2009The Economist is a right-of-center weekly from the UK that I like quite a lot. While I'm on the other side of the political center line, the writing is extremely clear and the arguments usually cogent. Even when I don't agree, it's thought provoking and the articles are not over long. Even so, I don't have time to read it regularly. Weekly issues pile up fast (and the journals Science and Nature are ahead in the queue and often don't get read). Still, I do read it when I can and this week there is an editorial on drug policy where I find myself in complete agreement: it's (past) time to…
revere | March 4, 2009When I was in medical school it was common to get gifts from drug companies. Since many of us had very little money, the gifts were welcome. One company gave me a Littman stethoscope, at the time, the most advanced stethoscope around. The same model costs about $100 now. I was glad to get it, although I can't tell you the name of the company. I forgot the names as quickly as I pocketed their gifts. We all got lots of free samples, too, and they were often things like tranquilizers sent through the mail and left in the magazine bin in my apartment house common mailbox area. Yes, these folks…
moleculeoftheday | February 16, 2009I just read the excellent Not Rocket Science for the first time. He has a nice writeup of the propranolol story that is making the rounds. Some researchers conditioned some subjects to get stressed when they saw a picture of a spider by shocking them while viewing spider pictures. Then, everyone got more spider pictures (with no shocks), this time with loud noises! The fear response to these picture/noise combos was measured by observing the subjects' blinking.
On the second day of the experiment, everyone got a pill with their spider picture and loud noise. Some of them got a placebo, and…
edyong | February 16, 2009The wiping of unwanted memories is a common staple of science-fiction and if you believe this weekend's headlines, you might think that the prospect has just become a reality. The Press Association said that a "drug helps erase fearful memories", while the ever-hyperbolic Daily Mail talked about a "pill to erase bad memories". The comparisons to The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind were inevitable, but the actual study, while fascinating and important, isn't quite the mind-wiper these headlines might have you believe.
The drug in question is propranolol, commonly used to treat high…
purepedantry | January 29, 2009Radley Balko over at Reason summarizes the collateral damage that has been incurred in our nation's drug war. These casualties include police militarization, repeated foreign policy travesties (read: the entirety of Latin America has good reasons to hate us), the incarceration of hundred of thousands for nonviolent offences, and impediments to the use of to adequate pain control in medicine. Oh, and the cherry of top of this horrid sundae is the abdication of the rule of law.
It is a pretty sad read.
But here is the kicker:
Even if the drug war were working -- even if all the horrible…
revere | January 26, 2009The peanut butter/peanut paste ingredient based salmonella outbreak has been in the news lately and we've discussed it here (and here, here, here, here, here). There are now about 500 reported cases and six deaths. That's a case fatality ratio of just over 1%. So what if there were a disease outbreak of 100,000 cases with a case fatality ratio of 20%? I think we'd be pretty alarmed. But it happened in 2005. And it happened in 2006 and 2007 and last year, 2008 And it's happening, now, too. It isn't salmonella or or even HIV/AIDS, although it is estimated to kill more people in the US than both…
revere | January 14, 2009One of the triumphs of 19th and 20th century public health was the provision of piped water into cities and towns. With the use of modern methods of disinfection (primarily chlorination) water as a source of mass distributed poisons rapidly receded, and with it the preponderance of infectious diseases that were the scourge of urban life. Urban water supplied were an efficient means to provide a healthy required substance, water, to the whole population and once. But of course it is also an efficient means to distribute unhealthy stuff -- not just microbes but chemicals. I've worked on the…
revere | January 13, 2009I know I shouldn't, but I just have to ask. What's with the bath tubs on the Cialis ads? (in case you live in a bubble, Cialis is for "erectile dysfunction," what we used to call impotence).
The original Cialis ads were faux tasteful things (at least compared to the really toe curling "Viva Viagra" ads) that always ended up with the couple holding hands in a natural setting. The impression you got was that when you take Cialis the time is usually right when you are outdoors. Inconvenient. Then at some point it morphed into the couple each in their own bath tubs, as in the pic from their…
mikethemadbiologist | January 9, 2009In an excellent review blasting the false dichotomy of more versus less regulation (for additional commentary, see Amanda and Ezra Klein), economist Dean Baker proposes that the government get into the drug development business directly:
...the government could pay for the research upfront and make all research findings and patents fully public. It already spends $30 billion a year financing biomedical research through the National Institutes of Health, an amount almost as high as the pharmaceutical industry claims to spend on its research. NIH research is highly respected, with almost all…
amillikan | December 31, 2008Aspiring scientists who have been conducting experiments form home labs have been encountering opposition. One DIY chemist was arrested for having a lab under the premise that it could be used to make bombs or drugs. Some biotech watchdogs fear that doing science outside of a lab may lead to biological hazards. "Actually the more likely negative scenario is that these DIY labs will produce absolutely nothing," said ScienceBlogger Jake Young from Pure Pedantry.
purepedantry | December 31, 2008PhRMA -- the association of pharmaceutical companies -- has agreed to a voluntary moratorium on drug paraphernalia given to doctors:
Starting Jan. 1, the pharmaceutical industry has agreed to a voluntary moratorium on the kind of branded goodies -- Viagra pens, Zoloft soap dispensers, Lipitor mugs -- that were meant to foster good will and, some would say, encourage doctors to prescribe more of the drugs.
No longer will Merck furnish doctors with purplish adhesive bandages advertising Gardasil, a vaccine against the human papillomavirus. Banished, too, are black T-shirts from Allergan adorned…
purepedantry | December 11, 2008I caught this article on ScienceDaily about the work of Professor Bart Hoebel at Princeton who has been attempting to show that sugar is an addictive substance like a drug. He presents data at the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology meeting to suggest that sugar fulfills the criterion for substances that we traditionally define as addictive:
Professor Bart Hoebel and his team in the Department of Psychology and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute have been studying signs of sugar addiction in rats for years. Until now, the rats under study have met two of the three elements of…
chrisdrudge | December 9, 2008Pretty IA, Hall RC. Self-extraction of teeth involving gamma-hydroxybutyric acid. J Forensic Sci. 2004 Sep;49(5):1069-72.
Guy and girl are hanging out. Decide to get smashed on gamma-hydroxybutyric acid (GHB), a CNS depressant of historical medical use that is currently used as a recreational drug, as a date rape drug, and by bodybuilders looking to boost their endogenous production of human growth hormone. Bodybuilders are so weird.
At some point during their GHB-fueled escapades, eighteen of the girl's teeth are extracted from her mouth with a pair of pliers. Not one, not two, but…