medicine
clock | August 21, 2009Yesterday PLoS and Google unveiled PLoS Currents: Influenza, a Google Knol hosted collection of rapid communications about the swine flu.
In his blog post A new website for the rapid sharing of influenza research (also posted on the official Google blog), Dr.Harold Varmus explains:
The key goal of PLoS Currents is to accelerate scientific discovery by allowing researchers to share their latest findings and ideas immediately with the world's scientific and medical communities. Google Knol's features for community interaction, comment and discussion will enable commentary and conversations to…
palmd | August 21, 2009Last night's Daily Show was hands down the best discussion of the health care reform insanity on TV, radio, or web. What interested me the most was how McCaughey revealed some of her real agenda, and how she actually brought up some almost-right points. Even more surprising, Jon Stewart misunderstood some bits that need fleshing out, so here we go.
We've met McCaughey before as the right wing wacko pushing the death panel idea. She does a good job hiding her real agenda for a while with Stewart, insisting on her support for public health care, and for end-of-life discussions. Let's review…
oracknows | August 21, 2009Sorry, but I guess I was incorrect when I pointed to Barney Frank's blistering putdown of a woman with a picture of President Obama decorated with a Hitler mustache who likened health care reform to Nazi policies as being the "only? correct response to such vile and obvious guilt by association gambits. Here's another, from a Jew at a town hall meeting in Las Vegas, who, while talking about the national health care system in Israel, was subjected to "Heil Hitler" salutes from another clueless woman:
The crazy is strong in this woman. Clearly, the Hitler Zombie has feasted on the thin gruel…
grrlscientist | August 21, 2009tags: health care crisis, American Health Care, Jonathan Cohn, social commentary, streaming video
In this video, Jonathan Cohn, Senior Editor of The New Republic and author of Sick: The Untold Story of America's Health Care Crisis -- and the People Who Pay the Price, discusses the history of America's health care crisis.
In his book, the author convincingly argues that Medicare and universal health care in such countries as France, though not perfect, are far superior to the system most Americans face. And, as you are well aware, Americans are provided health care by for-profit insurance…
grrlscientist | August 21, 2009tags: socialized health care, Bill Maher, humor, funny, satire, fucking hilarious, social commentary, streaming video
I am one of more than 40 million Americans who cannot afford health care -- and I think America SHOULD have government-funded health care, as Bill Maher points out so eloquently in less than two minutes.
When I had surgery (to place a titanium plate into my badly fractured wrist) in Finland, my hospital gown covered everything, and it was made from real fabric, not that see-through tissue paper that is used in American hospitals. So Maher's observation has more merit than…
terrasig | August 21, 2009The other day Orac at Respectful Insolence wrote about yet another case where failure to vaccinate has caused a resurgence, in this case of measles in New Zealand.
Otherwise preventable and potentially fatal diseases are popping up in communities around the world as the importance of immunization is ignored by a generation of parents who never knew these diseases.
Well, looks as though they're beginning to find out.
I'm keeping my eye on a similar case brought to my attention by my Twitter feeds from Colorado (if I can't be there, I'll at least read about it). This report from the…
oracknows | August 20, 2009This time, the evidence comes from New Zealand:
Notified measles cases so far this year are already seven times higher than the total number of measles cases last year.
The reason? The third-lowest immunisation rate in the OECD, despite the fact immunisation is free and widely and readily available. Our immunisation rate is about 83 percent - to be effective it needs to be 95 percent.
This video goes into more detail.
Whenever vaccination rates fall below the threshold of herd immunity, the door is left open for diseases once thought vanquished to return with a vengeance, first through…
oracknows | August 20, 2009I don't normally like Barney Frank. At times, I've thought him to be a blithering idiot. However, this time around, he gets it exactly right in dealing with a woman who was carrying around a picture of President Obama with a Hitler mustache and comparing his health care reform initiative to Nazi policies.
Best quotes:
On what planet do you spend most of your time?
And:
Trying to have a conversation with you would be like arguing with a dining room table.
Indeed. I actually have a bit more respect for Barney Frank than I once did.
In other news, Rush Limbaugh has cheered on this idiot of a…
palmd | August 20, 2009Let's say you have cancer. And let's say you're really, really sick of having cancer. And let's say that you're also pretty tired of scans, chemo, radiation, hair loss, nausea. And let's say you're not really sick and tired of living, but actually pretty happy to be alive.
Finally, let's say someone says that they can get rid of your cancer, without all of those pesky side-effects. It's a win-win, no?
No.
It's easy to believe in promises that are congruent with our wishes. That's what makes human beings so easy to deceive. A case in point is the VIBE Machine, a discredited quackery…
palmd | August 20, 2009I was one of those crazy folks who loved medical school---not just the clinical years, but the pre-clinical sciences as well. The transition from pre-clinical to clinical can be rather unnerving (picture learning how to do a pelvic exam on paid models). One of my first clinical experiences was in our physical exam class. Much of this was done on each other (not the pelvics), but we were also paired with attending physicians who would take us to see---gasp!---actual patients.
The guy I was paired with was old---impossibly old. I wondered to myself if he still had a jar of leeches in his…
oracknows | August 20, 2009One of the advantages of hanging out around home on the proverbial staycation is that, instead of actually paying more attention to the news, I've paid less attention to the news. That's why I didn't notice some stories from earlier this week about what the new director of the NIH, Francis Collins, plans to do.
Regular readers probably know that, other than the occasional snarky comment on other people's blogs, I haven't (much) engaged in the blogospheric kerfuffle over Collins' religion and the (in my opinion) vastly overblown fear in some quarters that he would inject his religion into his…
palmd | August 19, 2009In his latest comment, Philip H has accelerated my reluctant discussion of health care reform. In fact, it was Philip who bullied me into writing about this topic in the first place. I've been avoiding wading into this mess, but being on the front line, it's in my face every day.
What he says in his latest comment is this:
[T]he idealogical leap PalMD is asking for is a good one, but it misses the mark. The leap we need to make is that healthcare is not a good, like Cheerios, or cars, or flatscreen tv's, that exists in anything like a free marketplace.
Commenter Donna B. makes a tangent…
oracknows | August 19, 2009Time and time again, I've had requests from readers for good resources for countering the nonsense emanating from the anti-vaccine movement. Time and time again, I've pointed out sites like Every Child By Two and The Vaccine Education Center.
Now, thanks to the efforts of some friends of mine, especially Steve Novella, there is another handy dandy resource that was just announced today:
Vaccines and Autism on Science-Based Medicine
It includes a list of SBM posts about vaccines, an overview of the question, and a list of key studies. This page is a work in progress; so we appreciate any input…
palmd | August 19, 2009So, I'm at the end of week #2. I started, fully clothed and after breakfast, at 212. Last Wednesday I was 208.
Today I'm 206.
My successes have been in maintaining sustainable eating habits. My failures have been in keeping to an exercise program. I haven't been completely sedentary, but I can do better.
oracknows | August 19, 2009As a "prominent" (as hard as I find it that anyone would apply the word to me) blogger about the anti-vaccine movement, somehow I ended up on the Every Child By Two mailing list. ECBT, as you may recall, is the organization founded by former First Lady Rosalyn Carter and former First Lady of Arkansas Betty Bumpers to promote vaccination against childhood diseases. It's a fine organization, and a much delayed counterweight to antivaccine propaganda mills like Age of Autism, Generation Rescue, the National Vaccine Information Center, and the up and coming antivaccine doctors' website Medical…
palmd | August 18, 2009Once again, I'm sucked into the discussion on health care reform. I despise this topic, because so much of what is wrong with our current system could be fixed relatively easily, if Americans could just take an ideologic leap.
Most of us have heard of "pre-existing condition (PEC)" clauses---those rules that allow insurance companies to deny payment for care based on your previous history. There's a lot of facets to this, and laws vary tremendously (your results may vary). For example, a company may simply refuse to insure you (although some companies don't have that choice, but they can…
oracknows | August 18, 2009Vacation or no vacation, something's bubbled up in the comments that I consider worth commenting about. If you remember (or even if you don't), about a week and a half ago I wrote about how Dr. Bob Sears, author of The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Choice for Your Child, has let the mask drop. I entitled the post Dr. Bob Sears: Stealth anti-vaccinationist? This time around, I was half-tempted to remove the question mark, based on the comment of a commenter by the 'nym of Science Mom, who turned me on to this post by Dr. Bob in the forums of his website entitled Weekly Disclaimer about SM and…
tqa | August 18, 2009
In his latest column, Cal Thomas takes another swing at explaining the perils of health care. Last week, you might remember, he claimed that health care proponents want to kill off the old because we're evolutionists. This week, we're Hitler:
Anyone wishing to revise America's medical system and model it after the systems in Britain and Canada ought to thoroughly examine how those health care systems function before plunging into the same pool. A reasonable conclusion is that these systems require long waits and treatments (if you can get them) that are inferior to what's available in the…
tqa | August 18, 2009
If you're poor, sick, and can't afford good - or even adequate - health care, it's your own fault for being poor, and your own problem. That's the clear message of an editorial that appeared on the National Review's website yesterday:
Defined at a high level of abstraction, rationing is inevitable in medicine. Not everything that might be in a patient's best interest can be done in a world of finite resources, and some constraint has to limit his treatment. Thus the left-wing jibe that the market features "rationing by price."
But there are many good reasons to prefer rationing by price to…
oracknows | August 18, 2009Now here's some perfect reading for a lazy stay-at-home vacation day. It's even pretty science-y. Well, math-y, at least. It may even be the best scientific paper ever. The title says it all:
When Zombies Attack: Mathematical Modeling of an Outbreak of Zombie Infection
The long version is at the link above.
The short version is that, if this ever happens, we're screwed.
The intermediate version is at Night of the Living Model.