medicine
grrlscientist | July 1, 2010tags: Following The Mercury Trail, health, environment, ecology, pollution, PCBs, DDT, heavy metals, red tide, human sewage pollution, Stephen Palumbi, TEDTalks, TED Talks, streaming video
There's a tight and surprising link between the ocean's health and ours, says marine biologist Stephen Palumbi. He shows how toxins at the bottom of the ocean food chain find their way into our bodies, with a shocking story of toxic contamination from a Japanese fish market. His work points a way forward for saving the oceans' health -- and humanity's.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks…
palmd | June 30, 2010
ZombiePal, thanks to Ataraxia Theatre
Scene: Harpo Studios, Chicago, IL, under heavy guard
Dramatis personae: Oprah Winfrey, talk show host; Jenny McCarthy, famous person; Erica Turner, un-dead North Sider
Oprah: Jenny, you have been such a maverick. It takes a brave person, one with great inner strength, to say things that are unpopular. How is that adorable boy of yours?
Jenny: Well, he's just great! I have him on a new diet and it's done wonders!
Oprah: That's great! I need to ask you all about it, but first, what do you say to those folks out there who say such negative things…
palmd | June 30, 2010Many of us who are involved in social media have bemoaned the sluggishness of our own professions in adopting new media. There are two notable developments in my own field that seem to be holding up.
The first is the twitter stream for the American Medical News. This is an online and print newsletter put out by the American Medical Association, but in true social media fashion, the feed is not simply a conduit for their own articles. The feed retweets frequently and tweets stories from other media outlets and blogs.
The second is a blog from my own specialty organization, the American…
clock | June 30, 2010
New podcast and forums at World Science: The Benefits and Burdens of Genetic Testing:
Listen to a story by reporter Marina Giovannelli, followed by our interview with Mayana Zatz.
Download MP3
Our guest in the Science Forum is geneticist and genetic counselor Mayana Zatz. She directs the Human Genome Research Center at the University of Sao Paolo.
Zatz has been working with patients with inherited disorders for nearly two decades. When it comes to genetic testing, Zatz advocates caution. Tests for some inherited disorders have helped people decide whether or not to have children. But in most…
oracknows | June 30, 2010First, there was the history of Andrew Wakefield and the MMR vaccine in cartoon form. Now there's the history of homeopathy (click on the image):
The cartoonist, Darryl Cunningham, says this is a first try at such a history, a beta version, if you will. It's definitely a good start, particularly the part about how homeopaths in Africa have advocated using homeopathic nostrums to prevent and treat malaria. Particularly true is the conclusion that homeopathy is not science. It is faith. I'd also add that, as I've mentioned before, it's also basically sympathetic magic.
oracknows | June 30, 2010ORAC SAYS: Please note my disclaimer.
After the events of last week, I'm a bit sensitive when it comes to matters like the one I'm about to discuss. Having the anti-vaccine cranks over at the Age of Autism weblog trying to get me fired over my blogging has a tendency to do that to me. (The details are out there if you haven't heard of it; I will say nothing more of it here.) In any case, if there's anything the events of last week drove home to me, it's that a sina qua non of anti-science cranks like the leaders of the anti-vaccine movement is that, when faced with serious scientific…
oracknows | June 29, 2010I wish it were otherwise, but not all that many reporters "get it" when it comes to science and quackery. Fortunately, Chicago Tribune reporter Trine Tsouderos does. She's shown it multiple times over the last year with stories about the autism "biomed" movement and Boyd Haley's trying to pass off an industrial chelator as a dietary supplement.
It just so happens that she's going to be taking part in a live web chat Thursday, July 1, at noon CDT (that's Chicago time). The topic is going to be alternative treatments for autism, pegged to her story last week about OSR#1 and Haley. The chat will…
oracknows | June 29, 2010With the aging of the population, one of the most feared potential manners by which more and more of us will leave this earth is through Alzheimer's disease or other forms of dementia. And it is a scary thing, too. Having valued my intelligence all my life and in particular enjoying the intellectual stimulation that I derive from my job, not to mention from blogging and contemplating science outside my realm of expertise, like many people I fear Alzheimer's disease at least as much as cancer or heart disease, possibly more. Imagining the slow decline in my faculties to the point where I can…
clock | June 29, 2010Last week I went to Philadelphia to a very interesting meeting - a Social Media Summit on Immunization. Sponsored by Immunization Action Coalition, this was a second annual meeting for health-care non-profits, organized (amazingly well, with great attention to detail) by Lisa Randall (and, I am sure, a small army of helpers).
Over a day and a half of the meeting there were two simultaneous sessions at each time slot, but I did not have much opportunity to ponder my choices as I was at the front of the room at three sessions, and participated actively in several others. The style was very '…
palmd | June 28, 2010Over a quarter century ago, a young woman was admitted to a New York hospital with fever and agitation. She never walked out. Libby Zion died while under the care of he primary care doctor and two medical residents. The exact cause of death was never identified, but the case led to a forced examination of medical residents' work hours. This was driven largely by Zion's father who felt that his daughter had been killed by inexperienced, poorly supervised, and overworked resident physicians.
"You don't need kindergarten," he wrote in a New York Times op-ed piece, "to know that a resident…
palmd | June 28, 2010I frequently read about the latest medical and scientific "breakthroughs" in the mainstream media, and in modern media such as sciencedaily.com. One commonality is lack of citations. If I'm lucky, they may cite the source journal or meeting. If I'm really, really lucky, they may even give a general date (e.g., "JAMA in June"). But I never see an actual citation. That would be one simple way to improve science journalism. A standard citation would give readers the tools to evaluate the primary source. In science, we consider that pretty important.
oracknows | June 28, 2010I really hate this.
I really hate having to take a friend to task, but he leaves me little choice. You see, I actually like Chris Mooney. Back in the day, I even even hoisted a pint with him at the Toledo Lounge in D.C., round about the time of the commencement of the whole "framing" kerfuffle that has periodically flared up to engulf ScienceBlogs and the rest of the science blogosphere. We had great fun making fun of everyone's favorite creationist neurosurgeon, particularly his claim that the "design inference" has been "of great value" to medicine and has been a great boon to medical…
palmd | June 27, 2010Author Chris Mooney has a provocative piece up at the Washington Post today. He argues that scientists are misunderstanding the dynamics of science-policy debates. Because, he argues, ideology often trumps scientific fact in the minds of the public, we (scientists) need to work harder to engage the public to win their hearts before we win their minds (please forgive me, Chris, if I didn't get this quite spot on).
While I appreciate Chris's general point---that we can't just "fact" people into submission---I think some of his arguments beg for a more critical analysis. Point one,…
oracknows | June 25, 2010Many are the times when I've complained about how the press reports on science and medicine. I love it when science is reported well, but sadly such examples are far fewer than I'd like to see. In fact, there are times when I feel as though I'm living this in an alternate universe where it's not beyond the ken to see sports reported the way science seems to be reported.
oracknows | June 24, 2010Remember Boyd Haley?
He's the Professor and former Chairman of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Kentucky whose formerly respectable career tanked because he fell into pseudoscience. For whatever reason, a while back he became enamored first of dental amalgam quackery to the point where he became involved in organizations like Consumers for Dental Choice (a.k.a. "Toxic Teeth"), whose expressed raison d'etre is to "work to abolish mercury dental fillings"). From that position, he promoted the idea that mercury-containing dental amalgams are horrifically toxic, helping to spread…
sschoenbaum | June 24, 2010Steve Schoenbaum writes: "Inside the Outbreaks", Mark Pendergrast's wonderful history of the Centers for Disease Control's Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS), can be read on many levels. I confess that as a former EIS officer (1967-1969), personally familiar with most of the "elite medical detectives" of the first few decades, I tended to read it "between the lines". I found myself recalling many personal incidents, interactions with others, and themes mentioned but not necessarily fully developed in the book. I'd like to consider a couple of those here:
Early on in "Inside the Outbreaks…
palmd | June 24, 2010When you walk into a good coffee shop, you can smell it. It's a smell nothing like the smell of the old, sour coffee sitting in a carafe at the office. It's the smell of dark, dark beans, cracked open, releasing complex odors of fruit and of heat. And as much as I enjoy sitting in a coffee shop reading and writing, I don't get much time for that these days. But I can bring it home.
I love opening a new bag of beans. They have that shine to them, a shine that is lost very quickly. And when you pour those fresh beans with their volatile sheen into the grinder, they jostle and release just…
palmd | June 24, 2010Medicare is the government health care program for the elderly. For internists such as me, Medicare patients make up around half our practice. Because of historical budget tools, every year Congress goes through the motion of watching our reimbursement cut, and quickly fixing it. It's a terrible system. As a small business, my costs are pretty much fixed: rent, employee pay, health insurance, supplies, etc. Every year, a Medicare pay cut goes into effect, and then our checks are held while Congress puts together a temporary fix.
This year, the pay cut is 21%. That means that I will…
palmd | June 23, 2010When it comes to medical blogging, no one has been as consistently good, fresh, and snarky as Orac. Respectful Insolence sets the standard for all other medical blogs, and though Orac may not be a media star like some other med bloggers, his writing has had a significant impact on some important medical issues such as vaccination. The fact that he is often the target of vicious attacks by anti-vaccination activists and other quacks and wackos shows just how good a job he is doing.
Though he has been criticized for being a bit loquacious, his thoroughness is one of the traits that makes…
oracknows | June 23, 2010June is almost over. If you work in an academic medical center, as I do, that can mean only one thing.
The new interns are coming, and existing residents will soon be advancing to the next level. The joy! The excitement! The trepidation! And it's not all just the senior residents and the faculty feeling these emotions. It's the patients too. At least, it's the patients feeling the trepidation. The reason is the longstanding belief in academic medical centers, a belief that has diffused out of them and into "common wisdom," that you really, really don't want to get sick in July.
But is there…