public health
mikethemadbiologist | January 7, 2009Along with many of my fellow ScienceBloglings, I have doubts about Sanjay Gupta. As far as I can tell, Gupta has no experience managing an organization whatsoever.
For me, this is a serious problem. The Surgeon General isn't just a spokesman, he is also the head of the Public Health Service, a rather large organization that actually does important stuff. Contrast Gupta to Panetta, who has actually been a manager of different types of organizations, and the difference is a mile wide.
I'll leave aside my personal view that most people who make a living blabbing to a TV camera are seriously…
terrasig | January 7, 2009Just another quick note reflecting further on my 8-minute gut reaction yesterday to word that Sanjay Gupta might be nominated as Surgeon General in the Obama administration.
I still contend he's a great communicator but realize that the "both sides of the story" aspect of journalism has made some uneasy about where he'd actually stand on issues as a government leader of public health. In my post yesterday, I also neglected to consider some of the more controversial moments in Gupta's past stories as elegantly and comprehensively pointed out by my colleague and surgeon, Orac.
I was also…
sporte | January 2, 2009Mosquito-borne diseases, like Dengue and Malaria, are serious problems in many parts of the world. While some people are working on treatments for mosquito-carried disease, others are looking at ways to treat the mosquitoes.
Figure 1. Image of Aedes aegypti from the Public Health Library
tags: tropical disease, yellow fever, dengue, insect control,
malaria
Controlling insect activities by messing with their genomes isn't a new idea. In many parts of the world, screwworms are controlled by damaging their genomes on a large scale by treating the flies with X-rays and releasing the…
tsmith | December 29, 2008As the Philippines requests international assistance to investigate the finding of Ebola Reston in their pigs, another human outbreak of Ebola has been confirmed in the Democratic Republic of Congo:
The Ministry of Health (MoH) of the Democratic Republic of the Congo declared on 25 December an outbreak of Ebola haemorrhagic fever in Mweka District, Kasai Occidental province based on laboratory results from the Centre International de Recherches Médicales de Franceville (CIRMF) in Gabon. CIRMF confirmed the presence of Ebola virus in 2 samples from 2 of the patients in the outbreak by antigen…
tsmith | December 11, 2008 I've mentioned repeatedly how little we know about Ebola ecology--what the reservoir host(s) are, how it's transmitted to humans (and other species), why it causes outbreaks when it does. We know even less about the Reston subtype of Ebola, which--in contrast to the Zaire, Sudan, Ivory Coast, and Bundibugyo subtypes, originated in Asia and was first found in monkeys imported into the United States for research purposes. It also is different from the other subtypes in that it appears to be only mildly lethal to monkeys, and several asymptomatic human infections have been documented (but…
tsmith | December 5, 2008A pair of positive stories in the news today. The first involves guinea worm, a nasty parasitic disease. The worms have a complex life cycle, but contaminated water plays a key role. Worm larvae within the water are hosted by a water flea, which may be ingested by humans. In the stomach, the water flea will be digested, but the hardy larvae will travel throughout the body and eventually emerge from the body through the skin--usually in the lower extremities. This causes a very painful burning sensation, which the victim may try to relieve with water--allowing the female worm to…
purepedantry | December 2, 2008Some doctors are considering dropping vaccinations because some are vaccinating at a loss from insurance reimbursement.
About one in 10 doctors who vaccinate privately insured children are considering dropping that service largely because they are losing money when they do it, according to a new survey.
A second survey revealed startling differences between what doctors pay for vaccines and what private health insurers reimburse: For example, one in 10 doctors lost money on one recommended infant vaccine, but others made almost $40 per dose on the same shot.
The survey was revealing even to…
j7uy5 | November 26, 2008No, it is not newspapers and videos that are disrupting your endocrine
system (well, not that we know); rather, the topic
is in the media.
href="http://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/agents/endocrine/index.cfm">Endocrine
disruptors are chemicals that mimic the effects of hormones.
Perhaps the best-known example is bisphenol-A.
Others include various pharmaceuticals, dioxin and
dioxin-like compounds, polychlorinated biphenyls, DDT and other
pesticides.
Today I'm not going to review the topic; other ScienceBloggers have
done so extensively. There are too many to list.
Just use the…
purepedantry | November 23, 2008Over at the NYTimes Well blog they have a really good summary of studies about vitamins and improvements to health.
Everyone needs vitamins, which are critical for the body. But for most people, the micronutrients we get from foods usually are adequate to prevent vitamin deficiency, which is rare in the United States. That said, some extra vitamins have proven benefits, such as vitamin B12 supplements for the elderly and folic acid for women of child-bearing age. And calcium and vitamin D in women over 65 appear to protect bone health.
But many people gobble down large doses of vitamins…
sporte | November 21, 2008There's no question that the ability to work with information is one that will be required and valued for a long time to come. I think it's imperative for teachers to have students practice this skill whenever an opportunity comes about. The problem for many teachers is finding the time to identify good data sets.
MRSA stands for Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a serious problem for hospital patients. Six of out seven people who become infected with MRSA, get it from some kind of health-care facility. In 2007, the CDC issued a report claiming that 18,000 people die every…
tsmith | November 20, 2008 Few things can take me out of blogging hibernation (especially when the next grant deadline is Monday...) However, one of those things that I'll carve out time to write about is an interesting, hot-off-the-presses Ebola paper, and especially one describing a new strain of the virus--and there just happens to be such a paper in the new edition of PLoS Pathogens. Details after the jump...
Previously, 4 types of Ebola viruses had been identified. Ebola Zaire has typically been the worst as far as fatality rates (around 80-90%), with Ebola Sudan coming in close behind (roughly 50-70%). The…
terrasig | November 12, 2008Via Robert A Guth at the Wall Street Journal, I learned yesterday of a great new feature from Google.org, the arm of the search giant dedicated to the use of information and technology for the global good.
Google Flu Trends is a joint effort with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (the "prevention" part is always lost in the acronym, CDC). There you can track the number of influenza cases in the US and in your particular state, enter your postal code to find the nearest purveyor of influenza vaccines, and even download weekly raw data on regional flu cases (more detailed…
tsmith | November 6, 2008 I know I have many promised posts, and I'll get to them one day. Alas, the family and day job come before blogging, and I've been swamped with ongoing projects, grant applications, and manuscripts. I've been so busy, in fact, that revere over at Effect Measure beat me to the punch on my own upcoming paper, looking at antibodies to Streptococcus suis in Iowa swine workers. The paper is scheduled for the December issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases, but the unedited draft is already up in their ahead of print section. As revere already has a good overview of the paper, I'll just point…
sporte | October 24, 2008I probably shouldn't find this amusing, but...
Back a few years ago, a friend of mine worked at a biotech company in Seattle that had large windows looking out onto Puget Sound. They always cheered when the Navy ships came in, 'cause they knew it meant they'd have more work.
Tom Joe has a funny post about the same topic, with a different twist. He's not talking about learning your status through any sort of laboratory test. He suggests using e-mail.
UPDATE: Since Bora pointed out the PLoS article in the comments, I thought I should add some of the pictures from the article. I love the…
mikethemadbiologist | October 14, 2008
How one views a recent article on the mortality due to antibiotic resistant infections depends on whether you're a glass half-full or half-empty type (me, I just worry about dropping the damn glass). A recent article in Clinical Infectious Diseases notes that there has been no change in the death rate due to antibiotic resistant infections in Staphylococcus aureus bloodstream infections, Pseudomonas aeruginosa pneumonias, and Escherichia coli urinary tract infections.
The authors conclude (italics mine):
We initiated this study to evaluate whether the impact of antimicrobial resistance on…
mikethemadbiologist | October 13, 2008I've said this many times before, but it's worth repeating again: whether it's an influenza pandemic, or 'just' annual influenza (which, in the U.S., kills double the number of people as HIV/AIDS), what actually does the killing is the secondary bacterial infection, not the virus.
A recent review describes the result of a large series of autoposies of victims from the 1918 pandemic (as well as later pandemics). The main finding (italics mine):
Their findings are striking in the context of modern conceptions of the 1918 pandemic; the great majority of deaths could be attributed to secondary…
tsmith | October 1, 2008Just in time for the introduction of Autism's False Prophets by Dr. Paul Offit (the current choice for Scienceblogs' book club), Jenny McCarthy comes out with yet another interview decrying vaccines, blaming autism on the greed of pharmaceutical companies, and how her son was "healed" from autism by his diet, vitamins, and "detoxing".
Embedded video from CNN Video
I'll have a review of Dr. Offit's book up later this week. In the meantime, you can read what he says about it over at the Scienceblogs' Book Club page.
terrasig | September 30, 2008This morning's post from Molecule of the Day reminds me to ask "cyanuric acid question."
With the recent adulterations with melamine of Chinese milk and milk products (like White Rabbit chocolates) and foods with other milk-derived ingredients, we wonder if we will ultimately hear that a compound from fertilizer, cyanuric acid, is part of the mix.
Melamine is a cheap chemical that gives a false positive in typical protein assays; therefore, it can be used to make food appear to contain more protein than it actually does. You'll often hear of cyanuric acid being referred to as a pool chemical…
tsmith | September 26, 2008Well, you certainly can't fault Obama for aiming high. Via satellite, Obama announced at yesterday's Clinton Global Initiative forum that he would provide support to end malaria deaths in Africa by 2015--a lofty goal, but is it even close to attainable?
Obama provided the basics of his plan here, laying out why he feels this is such an important goal:
Malaria needlessly kills 900,000 people each year. In Africa, a child dies from a mosquito bite every thirty seconds. Beyond this devastating human toll, malaria undermines the economic potential of local economies and overwhelms public…
j7uy5 | September 21, 2008The economic crisis is reported to be responsible for a recent increase
in calls for mental health services:
href="http://delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080920/BUSINESS/809200314">Economy
worries driving more people to seek help
By ROB WATERS and DAVID OLMOS
September 20, 2008
A tidal wave of anxiety is washing over America, from
Wall Street's concrete canyons to the lettuce fields of California,
propelled by the mortgage industry collapse, high gas prices, tight
credit and rising unemployment.
Operators of telephone help lines, insurers, hospital administrators…