public health
mikethemadbiologist | September 15, 2006
(from here)
There's been an outbreak of E. coli food poisoning due to contaminated lettuce. This gives me an opportunity to briefly talk about one of my favorite organisms, Escherichia coli. But first, from the AP:
Consumers nationwide should not eat fresh bagged spinach, say health officials probing a multistate outbreak of E. coli that killed at least one person and made dozens of others sick.
Food and Drug Administration and state officials don't know the cause of the outbreak, although raw, packaged spinach appears likely. "We're advising people not to eat it," said Dr. David Acheson…
mikethemadbiologist | September 15, 2006From Kristine at Amused Muse:
People are always pointing at scientists and screaming, "Why don't you find a cure for cancer?" Well, now that scientists finally have, loopy-loo fundies deny the treatment for their daughters! Screw them. Not only should this vaccination be required for all young girls, any parent who seriously thinks that this "encourages immorality" should have his or her children taken away. They aren't fit to be parents.
Pregnancy as punishment, cancer as coercion. Welcome to Bush's America.
tsmith | September 14, 2006The new vaccine against the human papilloma virus is something I've discussed a time or ten here. Reaction to the vaccine by many religious groups has morphed with time, from outright resistance to a more common stance right now that they're accepting of the vaccine, but don't want it to be mandatory. Well...
Michigan legislation would require girls to get HPV vaccine
Michigan girls entering the sixth grade next year would have to be vaccinated against cervical cancer under legislation backed Tuesday by a bipartisan group of female lawmakers.
The legislation is the first of its kind in the…
scientificactivist | September 14, 2006Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future
by Jeff Goodell
Houghton Mifflin: 2006. 352 pages.
Buy now! (Amazon)
Coal tends to inspire a few common images in our collective minds. Grizzled and hardened miners, working in deep, dark underground tunnels, piece by piece haul out the black feed needed to power the oversized, dirty, rumbling machines spewing out their noxious waste through tall smokestacks. In the process, these beasts power the rise of the world's up and coming superpower, the US.
Dirty. Dangerous. Imprecise. Big.... Old school.
In the Twenty-First Century…
mikethemadbiologist | September 12, 2006If you haven't read the Science letter by George Mandel and Elliot Vesell, and which was nicely summarized by fellow ScienceBlogling Nick Anthis, you should. It chronicles the coming dissolution of American science.
If you think " the coming dissolution of American science" is too bombastic, I have some very nice 're-sized' levees to sell you. Without repeating the letter or Nick's post, here's some data (and analysis) to chew on:
1) the funding rate of new, unsolicited research grants ("R01" grants) has dropped from 20.1% in 2000 to 9.1% in 2005. Mandel and Vesell write, "Peer review…
mikethemadbiologist | September 11, 2006It's good to see antibiotic resistance as today's "Buzz in the Blogosphere." Ironically, this weekend I had started putting together a post about how this issue isn't given the attention it deserves.
Antibiotic resistance is a silent plague: the CDC estimates that 14,000 people per year in the U.S. die from hospital-acquired resistant bacterial infections--this figure doesn't include resistant infections acquired outside the hospital. These figures are certainly underestimates because the mortality due to hospital-acquired infections is dramatically underreported. Also, the reporting of…
tsmith | September 7, 2006 Drug-Resistant TB in South Africa Draws Attention From U.N.
The World Health Organization will hold an urgent meeting this week to seek ways to deal with deadly strains of tuberculosis that are virtually untreatable with standard drugs.
The meeting, in Johannesburg on Thursday and Friday, comes in response to recent reports from a number of the world's regions about a small but growing number of cases of the deadly strains, known as extreme drug-resistant tuberculosis, or XDR-TB.
"XDR-TB poses a grave public health threat, especially in populations with high rates of H.I.V." and few health…
tsmith | September 4, 2006Last week I mentioned how poverty and poor health go hand-in-hand. The United Nations is well aware of this fact, and has a number of lofty goals they're encouraging countries all over the world to work toward:
Goal 1. Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger
Goal 2. Achieve Universal Primary Education
Goal 3. Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women
Goal 4. Reduce Child Mortality
Goal 5. Improve Maternal Health
Goal 6. Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other diseases
Goal 7. Ensure Environmental Sustainability
Goal 8. Develop a Global Partnership for Development
I also wrote previously how many…
mikethemadbiologist | September 3, 2006A recent study demonstrates that treatment failure of P. aeruginosa pneumonia infections due to antibiotic resistance is critical: a resistant infection is four times as likely to kill a patient as a sensitive one.
Mortality Rate Is Twice As High In Patients With Pneumonia Caused By Highly Resistant Bacteria
Patients suffering from hospital-acquired pneumonia caused by a type of bacteria that is highly resistant to virtually all antibiotics are twice as likely to die as patients infected with other, less resistant bacteria.
A study published recently in the journal Critical Care shows for…
tsmith | August 31, 2006... Poverty and poor health are intertwined, experts say
So, yeah, the headline is a no-brainer, but the article is worth reading and makes many good points--and notes that fewer and fewer of us can say that "poverty doesn't affect us":
An analysis of poverty rates and health published in the September issue of The American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that people living in extreme poverty tend to have more chronic illnesses, more frequent and severe disease complications and make greater demands on the health care system.
"When we talk about poverty, there is the tendency to feel it…
tsmith | August 30, 2006 Yesterday's New York Times had an excellent story on the discovery of the human papilloma virus as the cause of cervical cancer, and ultimately, the development of a vaccine against it. It's also a good lesson in how, while solid evidence triumphs over anecdotes, even folk stories can be useful in ultimately pointing to a cause if they're rigorously investigated.
If you're curious about what all this has to do with the messed-up looking rabbit in the picture, click on through...
I've written previously about the new cervical cancer vaccine, and its potential to lessen dramatically the…
tsmith | August 28, 2006 Tomorrow marks the first anniversary of the landfall of Hurricane Katrina. coturnix and others are collecting strories from around the blogosphere on the aftermath in New Orleans and elsewhere; the cleanup effort (still ongoing, barely begun in some areas); rebuilding (likewise; lagging far behind where even many pessimists thought it would be by this time); and moving back into the area (not an option for many). The area, it seems, will never be the same.
I've discussed problems with disaster preparedness previously on this blog; therefore, I won't use this as another soapbox to discuss…
tsmith | August 25, 2006Seed's Jacob Klein has a video up from his time at the AIDS conference last week: link. It includes short interviews with Kay and Rick Warren, evangelical Christians and founders of Saddleback Church, the grandaddy of all mega-churches. (Warren is also the author of The Purpose-Driven Life, which I've admittedly not read). It's interesting to hear their views, but as noted in this SF Gate article, there's still a lot of skepticism about their motivations and methods. (For example, while they discuss treatment and dealing the HIV, they don't pass out condoms, and their ABC's emphasize "…
tsmith | August 25, 2006Most of the stories I blog about here regarding sex (and sexually-transmitted infections) have bad news to offer. People are still poorly educated about STDs, or worse, actively misinform to try to scare people away from sex. Admittedly, good news about sexual issues are few and far between, but there actually have been a few positive stories in the news recently:
In the first article, the good news is that rates of sexual activity in teenagers have decreased a bit since 1991:
Some 46.8 percent of students said they engaged in sexual intercourse in a 2005 survey, down from 54.1 percent in…
mikethemadbiologist | August 24, 2006...and the Christopaths want to kill it anyway. There is a method that could be used to harvest embryonic stem cells that does not harm development of the embryo:
The new technique would be performed on a two-day-old embryo, after the fertilized egg has divided into eight cells, known as blastomeres. In fertility clinics, where the embryo is available outside the woman in the normal course of in vitro fertilization, one of these blastomeres can be removed for diagnostic tests, like for Down syndrome.
The embryo, now with seven cells, can be implanted in the woman if no defect is found. Many…
tsmith | August 22, 2006 The International AIDS conference is barely over, but already it's getting results when it comes to working against stigma and combatting denial--and is receiving help from one U.S. politician. Stories after the fold...
First, from Buisness Day comes harsh words for South Africa's leaders:
Former International AIDS Society president Mark Wainberg has launched a blistering attack on the South African government for failing to contain the country's HIV epi demic, widely acknowledged to be one of the world's worst.
Describing the government as "obtuse, dilatory and negligent" on the treatment…
tsmith | August 21, 2006I blogged previously on the potential of bacteriophage, viruses that infect--and often kill--bacteria, in treating bacterial infections that are resistant to our current antibiotics. This is an area that's really just opening up, and while there is a lot of promise, there are also a significant number of obstacles. One thing I didn't mention, however, was the potential of bacteriophage for other public health measures--such as a bacteriocidal food additive.
(More below)
A mix of bacteria-killing viruses can be safely sprayed on cold cuts, hot dogs and sausages to combat common microbes…
mikethemadbiologist | August 21, 2006One of the 'low tech' life-saving advances for HIV patients has been the prophylactic use of the antibiotic cotrimoxazole. Cotrimoxazole, a combination of two antibiotics, trimethoprim and sulfamethoxazole, is effective against bacteria, including Pneumocystis jiroveci pneumonia ("PCP") and toxoplasmosis, two of the leading killers of AIDS patients. The WHO's support of universal prophylaxis of HIV patients with cotrimoxazole will greatly increase the adoption of this critical disease prevention strategy.
Many developing countries have been reluctant to adopt the use of this drug as a…
tsmith | August 21, 2006I've blogged several times on here about the connection between microbes and obesity (aka "infectobesity;" previous posts here, here, and here.). It's an interesting area of study, with two general directions: investigating which of our gut flora (alone or in combination with others) affect our metabolism; and how other types of infections (such as adenovirus serotype 36) can play a role in this process as well.
A recent story in the New York Times Magazine by Robin Marantz Henig provides a nice introduction to this whole area, weaving in the threads I mentioned above (as far as the…
purepedantry | August 20, 2006I found this article interesting, if for no other reason than people seem to be misunderstanding what it says and what it does not say.
The article by Leigh and Jencks for the Kennedy School of Government is entitled "Inequality and Mortality: Long-Run Evidence from a Panel of Countries." It compares the inequalities of income distribution in countries around the world with measures of health. The measure they use for income inequality is the percentage of income recieved by the top 10% of the income distribution. The measures of health that they use are infant mortality and life…