infectious diseases
sb admin | August 31, 2007by Susan F. Wood, PhDÂ
Todayâs Washington Post writes about one more instance where womenâs health and childrenâs health were a lower priority than the interests of a powerful group. In this case, it was breastfeeding vs. the formula industry.
Marc Kaufman and Christopher Lee write:
In an attempt to raise the nation's historically low rate of breast-feeding, federal health officials commissioned an attention-grabbing advertising campaign a few years ago to convince mothers that their babies faced real health risks if they did not breast-feed. It featured striking photos of insulin…
sb admin | July 30, 2007By Liz Borkowski
After former U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona testified that White House officials tried to weaken or suppress important health reports for political purposes, Washington Post reporters Christopher Lee and Marc Kaufman followed up on the case of a 2006 surgeon generalâs report on global health (draft here) whose publication was blocked.
Carmonaâs report described the global nature of diseases and the many factors involved (including food and nutrition, water and air, and violence), and concluded with a call for international collaboration to improve overall global health…
terrasig | July 24, 2007I woke this morning to BBC reporting that the six Bulgarian nurses and doctor charged erroneously with transmitting HIV to over 400 Libyan children have been released and are safely home in Bulgaria.
Orac and Revere here at ScienceBlogs covered the upholding of death sentences against the six that opened the procedural door to their release.
It appears that the wife of new French prime minister Nicolas Sarkozy, Cecilia, played an important role over the last 48 hrs in negotiating the terms of release together with other EU officials. The terms are only just beginning to emerge, but it…
sb admin | July 18, 2007Yesterday the Libyan Supreme Council commuted the death sentences of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian-Bulgarian doctor to life in prison. The Tripoli 6 became a cause célèbre in the scientific and diplomatic communities when Libyan courts, after holding them in prison for eight years, refused to hear solid scientific evidence exonerating them from a charge they deliberately infected over 400 children in the Al-Fateh Hospital in Benghazi. in 1998 (for more background, see here). Poor hospital hygiene is the presumed source of the tragic infections which so far have claimed the lives…
sb admin | June 1, 2007When a man with extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) is told not to board a plane and then does so anyway, you have to expect the public health bloggers to come out in force. Tara C. Smith at Aetiology has been on top of this from the start, first laying out the story, then explaining its implications, and finally letting readers know why indignation is necessary for responding to a case like this. Revere at Effect Measure explores the legal angle of isolation and quarantine, and provides details about air circulation in aircraft cabins; that blog also features a post about XDR-…
terrasig | May 23, 2007The 2 May issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute has an interesting news article on the advancing use of arsenic trioxide against a variety of human malignanices, mostly cancers of the blood.
The medical uses of arsenic reach back more than 2,000 years, but only recently has Western medicine embraced its surprising rise from folk cure-all to proven cancer treatment.
The January announcement of positive results in a 6-year NCI-sponsored phase III clinical trial to treat a rare form of leukemia is merely the latest in a series of kudos for arsenic's medicinal prowess. The latest…
terrasig | May 18, 2007Actually, sharks do get cancer but a 15-year-old book by William Lane led people to think otherwise, launching investigation of shark cartilage as a source of antiangiogenic, anticancer compounds. While there is one promising shark cartilage extract (Neovastat) in clinical trials for multiple myeloma, most oral preparations on health food store shelves aren't stabilized and characterized well-enough to guarantee stability of antiangiogenic compounds.
But it gets worse with this news today from FDA's MedWatch program that illustrates once again the safety problems of some dietary supplements…
sb admin | March 30, 2007U.S. environmental regulations were on several bloggersâ minds this week. Frank OâDonnell at Blog for Clean Air explains that EPAâs new rule on particle soot is terrible, while Mike Dunford at The Questionable Authority warns that Bush administration is about to release a set of administrative rules changes that would completely eviscerate the Endangered Species Act. At least The Olive Ridley Crawl has some good news: the National Marine Fisheries Service is proposing stronger regulations to reduce sea turtle bycatch.
Infectious diseases were a hot topic, too. Tara C. Smith at Aetiology…
sb admin | March 6, 2007by Revere, cross-posted from Effect Measure
While finishing drafting a series of posts on how Tamiflu resistant virus might spread as a result of intense use for influenza control, Melanie at Just a Bump in the Beltway posted this to remind us that drug resistant organisms spread for reasons much less useful than trying to stop people from dying. Like treating cows so they can be killed later and we can eat them and make money for agribusiness:
The government is on track to approve a new antibiotic to treat a pneumonia-like disease in cattle, despite warnings from health groups and a majority…
sb admin | February 1, 2007By Liz BorkowskiÂ
Last week, Revere at Effect Measure used extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR TB) as an example of why the world needs a resilient and robust public health infrastructure (and just a few days later, an article on an XDR outbreak in South Africa made it to the New York Timesâ list of the 10 most e-mailed articles). Earlier this month, Laurie Garrett, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, published an article in Foreign Affairs (subscription only) in which she listed TB as one of the diseases thatâs been getting more money and…
sb admin | December 21, 2006By David Michaels
It came as no surprise to some observers that VaxGen (a biotech company in Brisbane, California) failed to meet the specifications of its contract to provide the US government with 75 million doses of a new anthrax vaccine. VaxGen has been playing fast and loose for quite some time â most notably with a famous instance of data dredging in the analysis of the clinical trials for AIDSVAX, its failed AIDS vaccine. Iâll come back to that below.
On Tuesday, the Department of Health and Human Services announced was ending its sole-supplier contract with VaxGen, which would have…
sb admin | December 19, 2006by Revere, cross-posted on Effect Measure
On December 11, The Institute of Medicine, one of the four constituent parts of the National Academies of Science, released a "letter report" reviewing the scant information on effects from non-drug measures to slow or contain spread of an influenza pandemic (available as a free download here). The report was produced after a special workshop on October 25 in which the panel participants heard from a variety of experts, with subsequent deliberations that produced the summary letter report and its recommendations.
"Letter Reports" are mini-versions of…
terrasig | December 14, 2006Tara at Aetiology just posted a few minutes ago that today's New England Journal of Medicine has published a free-access, Perspective article on the case of the Tripoli Six, who awaiting their 19 December sentencing.
sb admin | November 30, 2006By Laura H. Kahn
The medical community is devoting a lot of effort to researching bioterrorism agents and diseases that could become human pandemics. But in many cases, theyâre overlooking a potentially critical resource: veterinarians.
Zoonoses are diseases of animals that can be transmitted to humans. These diseases include: SARS, West Nile virus, HIV/AIDS, and recently avian influenza (H5N1). Many of the agents of bioterrorism are zoonotic in origin such as anthrax, tularemia, and plague. Veterinarians have long recognized the interconnectedness between human and animal health and gave it…
terrasig | June 15, 2006So, as a Sb newbie, I'm just figuring out the scheduling around here and saw that tomorrow's new 'Ask A ScienceBlogger' question has already been posted. Hence, I figured I should probably answer last week's question:
Assuming that time and money were not obstacles, what area of scientific research, outside of your own discipline, would you most like to explore? Why?
My SiBlings all took different approaches on this one, with some finding it a poor question because we already probably put a lot of thought into what we're working on now and stay in that area because we love it so much.
I took…