public health
tsmith | December 12, 2006 I've written previously about how it's a bad idea to import exotic pets, after "exotic" African species of small animals were imported into the United States and housed alongside prairie dogs that were also to be sold as pets. The African animals brought along with them their own diseases, including monkeypox, which then spread to the prairie dogs and onto humans, causing at least 80 cases of monkeypox in the U.S.
Think this is a rare event, unlikely to re-occur? Think again. The Baltimore Sun has a story on how "exotic" pets like these African rodents enter the U.S. by the millions…
tsmith | December 8, 2006As I've been busy this week, other Sciencebloggers (with Revere leading the fray and more posts here) have updated everyone on the newest developments in the case of the Tripoli Six (previous update here), the six medical workers on trial for their lives in Libya, accused of spreading HIV to more than 400 children in a hospital there. Nature's Declan Bulter broke news on a new Nature paper showing, using molecular phylogenetics, that the strains of HIV which infected the children were already circulating in the hospital prior to the medics' arrival--again, showing that these workers are…
mikethemadbiologist | December 7, 2006...find anything the government does that works and break it. I really never thought that we would be debating lead standards:
The Bush administration is considering doing away with health standards that cut lead from gasoline, widely regarded as one of the nation's biggest clean-air accomplishments.
Battery makers, lead smelters, refiners all have lobbied the administration to do away with the Clean Air Act limits.
A preliminary staff review released by the Environmental Protection Agency this week acknowledged the possibility of dropping the health standards for lead air pollution. The…
mikethemadbiologist | December 5, 2006In Las Vegas, the SEIU nurses were recently locked out during contract negotiations (they're back to work now). The nurses don't want pay increases or better benefits, but a lower patient-to-nurse ratio. Universal Health Services, the for-profit hospital chain, claims the nurses are trying to expand the union membership. The nurses claim that they simply want to improve patient care. Regardless of the motives involved, there is one indisputable fact: having fewer patients per nurse decreases the likelihood that a patient will become infected while in the hospital.
I've blogged about…
mikethemadbiologist | December 5, 2006I've posted before about the possible approval of cefquinome in agriculture, and why this is a stupid thing to even consider. So some colleagues and I got cranky and wrote a letter to the FDA.
Here's the letter:
Andrew C. von Eschenbach, M.D.
Acting Commissioner
U.S. Food and Drug Administration
5600 Fishers Lane,
Rockville MD 20857-000
Dear Acting Commissioner von Eschenbach,
We are writing to support the recommendation of the VMAC to reject and not approve the use of cefquinome, a fourth-generation cephalosporin antibiotic, for use in animal agriculture. One area that is critical in…
mikethemadbiologist | December 4, 2006Massachusetts' Gov. Mitt Romney's ongoing effort to turn Massachusetts into Mississippi has entered a new phase: embryonic stem cell research. In Romney's last-ditch desperate attempt to buff up his Republican credentials, he has appointed a budget planner to be executive director of a board overseeing state funding for stem cell research. From the AP:
Aaron D'Elia, a 35-year-old assistant secretary in the Executive Office of Administration and Finance, was approved Thursday by the board by a 4-1 margin to head the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center. The post pays $125,000 annually.…
mikethemadbiologist | December 4, 2006The story about Kenyan religious leaders who are attempting to stifle evolutionary biology at the Kenyan National Museum is making the rounds of the progressive political blogs (interesting, how the right-wing blogs aren't covering this...). Within this story, there is a real tragedy: Kenya has a serious problem in treating certain types of bacterial dysentery due to the evolution of antibiotic resistance.
tsmith | December 4, 2006In the comments to my Republicans want to legislate when fetuses feel pain" post, David notes:
What really gets me is if they were interested in preventing abortion, the most effective way seems to be by providing people with the tools and education to not get pregnant in the first place. If they are not willing to help prevent unwanted pregnancy, they have no moral ground to stand on when it comes to abortion, because as far as I'm concerned, they are the ones responsible for many of the unwanted pregnancies and abortions.
What good timing: Evil Monkey at Neurotopia has a post up…
tsmith | December 1, 2006Revere over at Effect Measure has an excellent post linking together the current bird flu situation with John Snow's investigations of 19th century cholera outbreaks. It's an interesting take on the situation--check it out.
mikethemadbiologist | December 1, 2006One of the constant refrains I always hear is that diarrheal diseases, such as shigellosis, cholera, and other bacterial dysenteries, could be easily solved if there were adequate potable water and sanitation. That's completely correct. It's also completely unrealistic, as a recent editorial by Lorenz von Seidlein in Tropical Medicine & International Health argues.
The problem is that this 'ultimate' solution of massive infrastructure investment often means that foreign governments and NGOs are discouraged from effective, short-term solutions. One such solution is the oral cholera…
mikethemadbiologist | November 30, 2006A while ago, I posted about the Missouri legislative committee that claimed that abortion had led to a shortage of workers which then resulted in illegal immigration. Really. I can't make this garbage up. Now, Nehomee over at Shakespeare's Sister has observed the same thing in Georgia:
Rep. Franklin manages to muddy the fundamentalist waters even further by revealing his true intentions in Section 1, a(15): "The practice of abortion has caused the citizens of this state an inestimable amount economically, including, but not limited to, the costs and tax burden of having to care for…
mikethemadbiologist | November 24, 2006Here's some follow-up thoughts on my Salmonella-related moment of fame that I reposted yesterday
So while on vacation, I was mentioned in a NY Times article about diseases that can be caught from your fish tank. The moral of the story is when cleaning your fish tank, pretend it's toilet water, clean everything including the sink that comes in contact with the aquarium water, and you'll be fine. (Here's the Emerging and Infectious Disease article that led to the NY Times story).
I'm happy with the coverage: the issue of antibiotic resistance needs it. But one important message-that…
mikethemadbiologist | November 23, 2006Ok, so after complaining about how no one reads my posts on antibiotic resistance, one reader read this post about the FDA overriding an expert panel that advised against using cefquinome in agriculture, and then went and read the recently released minutes of the hearing (all eight gajillion pages). Here's what the director of the Center for Veterinary Medicine of the FDA said (p. 211; italics mine):
And so from the FDA standpoint, what we did was we said to the company after vetting it through the VMAC, that you will be judged -- the microbial safety of your product will be judged based on…
mikethemadbiologist | November 19, 2006One of the maddening things about the creationists is that they are rarely forthright about their agenda. Euphimisms like "teach the controversy" and "fairness" abound.
This leads to a lot of support that would not exist were their true agenda to be placed front-and-center. Amanda points out, in an excellent post on the pregnancy-as-punishment anti-abortion right, how this also applies to the abortion debate (an aside: why is evolution a 'controversy', but abortion a 'debate'? Does that mean anything?):
Liberals make the whole thing worse by being obtuse about how the anti-choice movement…
tsmith | November 17, 2006PZ and others have already blogged about this, but since it deals with public health in a big way, I thought I'd give it a mention here as well. Seems Bush has made yet another highly questionable appointment in the Department of Health and Human Services. Shocking, I know.
The Bush administration has appointed a new chief of family-planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services who worked at a Christian pregnancy-counseling organization that regards the distribution of contraceptives as "demeaning to women."
More after the jump...
Eric Keroack, medical director for A…
mikethemadbiologist | November 16, 2006A few weeks ago, an FDA expert panel by a vote of 6-4 decided against the approval of the use of the antibiotic cefquinome in cattle. Unfortunately, I've heard through the grapevine that the political appointees at the FDA plan to overrule the expert panel and approve the use of cefquinome. The chairman of the panel is under pressure to alter the panel's findings, and the FDA has not posted the minutes of the meeting, which is apparently required by law.
About the post title: cefepime, like cefquinome, is what is known as a fourth-generation cephalosporin antibiotic. While cefquinome is…
mikethemadbiologist | November 16, 2006For you younguns, in the 80s, the USDA decided to define ketchup as a serving of vegetables so it could skimp on subsidized meals for needy schoolchildren. Well, the USDA has decided to stop using the word "hunger" and replace it with "very low food security." Here's some statistics on "very low food security":
Some are not happy with the Orwellian double speak:
Anti-hunger advocates say the new words sugarcoat a national shame. "The proposal to remove the word 'hunger' from our official reports is a huge disservice to the millions of Americans who struggle daily to feed themselves and…
tsmith | November 16, 2006 I was just lecturing yesterday on streptococci, and discussing how the diseases caused by the group A streptococcus (Streptococcus pyogenes). This is the bacterium that causes diseases as varied as "strep throat," streptococcal toxic shock syndrome, and necrotizing fasciitis (aka the "flesh-eating disease.") It's also caused historical epidemics of scarlet fever, a major scourge in many countries from the mid-1800s or so until around the turn of the century, when it started to wane for no apparent reason. (The worry over this illness was captured in Margery Williams' 1923 book, "The…
tsmith | November 10, 2006Scienceblogs' coturnix is hosting this month's edition of Carnival of Pozitivities, collecting posts on HIV/AIDS from around the blogosphere. Check it out for a number of excellent posts, including this post on HIV, senior citizens, and how politics affects HIV education.
tsmith | November 7, 2006Male circumcision is a difficult topic to discuss rationally. At the core, it's a medical procedure, but it's one tinged with centuries of cultural influences, and emotions tend to run high on both the pro- or anti-circumcision side of the discussion. One of the reasons that's been given in favor of circumcision is that it lowers the risk of disease, including diseases transmitted by sexual contact. However, while this data has been fairy unambiguous regarding some diseases (including the reduction in HIV transmission due to circumcision), the effect circumcision has on the spread of…