Political interference in science
terrasig | July 17, 2009
Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum have released a new book entitled, Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future. Mr Mooney and Ms Kirshenbaum also co-author the blog, The Intersection, a Discover Magazine online.
I was fortunate to receive a review copy from the publisher but must admit, sheepishly, that the book has sat unread beside my home office desk because of other responsibilities. The advance paperwork says it is to be released officially on 20 July. So, my plan is to get to it this weekend and get some magnitude of a review written.
During my relative…
terrasig | March 18, 2009I just had a chance to check in on a triad of posts by Prof Janet Stemwedel at Adventures in Ethics and Science (1, 2, 3) on the ethical issues of the conduct of studies, particularly clinical trials, supported by the US NIH's National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM).
For background, NCCAM was originally established for political, not scientific reasons, as the NIH Office of Alternative Medicine in October 1991. It received a token budget of $2 million at the time. They still only get $120-ish million; modest by NIH standards as compared, say, with the 2007 NCI…
terrasig | August 26, 2008I was surfing around the DNC site last night and came upon this nice addendum to yesterday's post: a series of videos about the Denver area narrated by a proud native and six-term Congresswoman Diana Degette (D-CO, 1st).
I was reminded while going through 5280 magazine that Rep. Degette had written a book about the war on science by the Republicans called, "Sex, Science, and Stem Cells: Inside the Right-Wing Assault on Reason." (Actually the book was "co-written" with Daniel Paisner, the amazingly prolific and self-effacing "author, ghost-writer, reasonably nice buy.").
I'm a little short…
terrasig | August 4, 2008It's a lovely crescent moon this evening up here in the Northern Hemisphere so I can't blame the latest unbelievable and irrational happenings on a full moon (which would be unscientific, of course). Okay, maybe sunspots?
First, the Bush administration was proposing draft legislation to grant medical professionals the right to withhold care, prescriptions, etc., based upon religious beliefs or other objections by reclassifying birth control pills and IUDs as "abortion." PalMD covered this among others, but reminded me of several of my old posts on my objections to pharmacists refusing to…
terrasig | May 10, 2008Effective science communication and science advocacy in the public arena has been much discussed in the science blogosphere. But is ranting on science and medical blogs the most effective way to promote science, especially in the United States?
I've had some discussions with other scientists, including blog colleague PhysioProf, who submit that the best way for scientists to advocate for science policy is to become politicians themselves. To this end, I read with great interest this morning of an AP story written last night by Seth Borenstein, "A Crash Course in True Political Science":…
terrasig | January 29, 2008. . .that's the message from Dr Bertha Madras, deputy director of the White House Office on National Drug Control Policy, to heroin and morphine users whose lives might be saved in the overdose situation by public distribution of "overdose rescue kits" comprised of a $9.50 nasal spray containing Narcan.
Narcan is the brand name for naloxone, an antagonist (blocker) of these drugs at μ opioid receptors. When an overdose of opioid drugs binds to these receptors in the respiratory control center of a primitive part of our brain, one stops breathing, a situation that pathologists say is "…
terrasig | December 10, 2007Yes! "A Call for a Presidential Debate on Science & Technology."
Imagine a presidential debate focused solely on issues of science and technology as they relate to medicine, international competitiveness, terrorism, public health, embryonic stem cell research, bioethics of genotyping and other molecular diagnostics, research policy/funding and job creation, or minimization of health disparities, among others.
Science Debate 2008 is a grassroots initiative spearheaded by a growing number of scientists and other concerned citizens. The signatories to our "Call for a Presidential Debate on…
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…
terrasig | August 24, 2006The wimpy approval of OTC status today for Plan B emergency contraception only for women 18 and older has me nonplussed.
I've been disgusted by the intrusion of politics into science and medicine on this issue for quite some time.
As some Terra Sig readers know, a major network news outlet keeps the real Dr Pharmboy on their experts list for commentary on pharmacotherapy issues but my exact comments rarely make it on-air. Perhaps these will be inflammatory enough to get a call to be on this time, and then you'll all know who I am. (No, I am not Dr Raymond Woosley, but I wish I were.)
So here…
terrasig | July 31, 2006Interesting timing: former US National Cancer Institute director and current acting FDA commish Dr Andrew von Eschenbach is about to go before the Senate tomorrow regarding his nomination for the permanent position. You know that he was going to get reamed over FDA's delay of over-the-counter approval for the Plan B emergency contraceptive, despite all scientific reasons to move forward.
Well, the Associated Press is now reporting that:
The Food and Drug Administration notified manufacturer Barr Laboratories Inc. Monday that it wanted to meet within seven days to define new steps the…
terrasig | July 26, 2006This week's 'Ask A ScienceBlogger' focuses on reports such as those in National Geographic and DailyKos that global warming is having, and will progressively have great influence, on wine grape-growing. The idea is that grapes grown for premium wine production are much more sensitive to climate than table grapes or many other agricultural products, making them an excellent living laboratory 'canary in a coalmine." A very appropriate question this week as we launched our feature, The Friday Fermentable, last week.
This issue has been bandied the wine industry over the last several years but…
terrasig | July 25, 2006If you read any sort of science blogs, you may remember when Pharma Bawd at Moment of Science burst on the scene in Feb 2006 at with her pathway of metabolism of evolution information. Reading about enzymes like Respectful Insolence Discreditase and PZ Myers' Professional Smackdownase literally had me peeing my pants (full jpg file here...of the pathway, not me peeing my pants).
So, you can imagine that her prolonged silence after her 28 Feb 2006 post on epigenetics and cancer led many of us to feel that we lost a true voice of reason in the anti-science wilderness.
Well, much to my happy…
terrasig | June 11, 2006Via Insider at Pharmagossip. This title was too good not to repost here and the story in Insider's post comes straight from a British Sunday paper.
Human papilloma virus, or HPV, is responsible for the majority of cases of cervical cancer. From the American Cancer Society website:
The disease kills more than 288,000 women worldwide each year, according to the World Health Organization. In the US, cervical cancer is expected to strike more than 9,700 women in 2006, and kill about 3,700.
Religious conservative attempts to try and deny access to the newly-approved HPV vaccine might actually…
sb admin | June 9, 2006No surprise here: a highly-regarded climatologist declares that the Bush administration is "muzzling government scientists" and covering up the facts about global warming.
Warren Washington, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, said that Bush appointees are suppressing information about climate change, restricting journalists' access to federal scientists and rewriting agency news releases to stress global warming uncertainties.
"The news media is not getting the full story, especially from government scientists," Washington told about 160 people…