Various viruses
tsmith | August 22, 2007Seems like just yesterday that I was watching (from afar) Ewen head off to grad school in journalism. Well, now he's making a splash in the latest issue of Nature, with a story on the potential for a dengue vaccine, and why there may be more of a market for it currently--largely because it's becoming a disease of the wealthy. Check out his Nature article, and read more over at Complex Medium.
tsmith | August 21, 2007Since there are already several threads on HIV running, and I'm loathe to have another, I'll post this up for consumption but leave the comments for one of the other threads. While I was in New York over the weekend, PLoS Medicine published an article authored by myself and Steven Novella (also of the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe): HIV Denial in the Internet Era.
tsmith | July 27, 2007XDR-TB has been in the news quite a bit lately, largely thanks to Andrew Speaker's notoriety. Even though his TB was later re-classified as "just" multi-drug resistant (MDR-TB) instead of the initial extremely drug resistant (XDR) type, it did serve to raise awareness about the issues public health authorities face when dealing with something like tuberculosis--and where the gaps are in the control of its spread. (Indeed, a breaking story out of Taiwan shows how difficult it can be to enforce a travel ban).
However, while XDR-TB is rather new on the radar of the general public (and even…
tsmith | July 18, 2007The strange and tragic case of the Tripoli Six, a group of 5 Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor working in Tripoli, Libya, is finally drawing to a close. The six health workers had been found guilty of infecting up to 400 children in the hospital where they worked with HIV, and had previously been sentenced to death--even though the science had shown that the epidemic began prior to the arrival of the workers. This saga has been dragging on for the better part of a decade (Declan Butler at Nature has a very nice story here discussing the various twists and turns along the way), but…
tsmith | July 9, 2007Last year, Seed magazine and Scienceblogs noted the 25th anniversary of the recognition of AIDS. You'd think that in all that time, especially with the identification of HIV and all the public education campaigns in the 1980s, people would realize by now that HIV isn't spread by casual contact. You can't get it by sharing drinking glasses, by coughing and sneezing around others, by being in the same swimming pool. However, the message still hasn't gotten out in some areas, it would seem, as a two-year old HIV+ boy was restricted from using the pool and showers at an Alabama campground.…
tsmith | June 13, 2007 Over at The Examining Room of Dr. Charles, the good doc brings up another instance of quackery from an unexpected source: Dr. Henry Heimlich, originator of the Heimlich maneuver for choking. While that procedure has clearly saved many lives, Dr. Heimlich doesn't stop there--he advocates using his maneuver for drowning victims and asthmatics, neither of which have been scientifically proven (and indeed, major medical associations have spoken out against them). Dr. Charles also reveals that Heimlich also carries out other questionable research, including deliberately infecting HIV+…
tsmith | May 31, 2007Today is the kids' last day of school, and just happens to be an early dismissal as well, so I'll be busy with them and not tied to the computer this morning/afternoon. However, there are tons of good things to read elsewhere.
First, Orac has a long-awaited update on the Tripoli Six: the group of nurses and doctors accused of killing children in Libya by deliberately infecting them with HIV. The science exonerated them, but that didn't change the court outcome, and I've not seen updates until now.
Next, Revere writes about the H7N2 influenza outbreak in Wales, reminding us (as as I've…
tsmith | May 25, 2007A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, I reviewed the HIV/AIDS chapter in Tom Bethell's book, "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science." I discussed his characterization of AIDS in Africa:
As the chapter title suggests, Bethell claims that AIDS in Africa is a made-up epidemic; AIDS is really due to simple malnutrition and dirty water supplies, rather than a virus. Government officials, scientists, and journalists are either too brainwashed or too scared to speak against the "AIDS orthodoxy." The evil liberals aren't concerned about AIDS because the real concern of the left,…
tsmith | May 23, 2007 Everyone knows about the "butterfly effect": the idea that a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil could eventually result in the formation of a tornado in Texas by virtue of very small alterations in the initial conditions of a system. Though this description of it is often decried by people who study chaos theory as an inaccurate oversimplification, it's a useful illustration of the tiny perturbations that can have vast effects on a downstream chain of reactions.
When it comes to infectious diseases, climate change may be the beginning, but environmental effects extend much farther…
tsmith | May 22, 2007I haven't had a chance yet to mention Seed's promotion of the Intel Science and Engineering Fair, the cream of the science fair crop. It's so prestigious, in fact, that it attracts young adults from all over the world to share their research. However, one brought more than the judges bargained for, as she also happened to be in the early stages of measles:
A 15-year-old girl from India who was visiting for the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair has been hospitalized with measles, and New Mexico health officials say she was likely infectious when she was traveling and while at…
tsmith | May 18, 2007 I think it must be difficult to study infectious disease without having some kind of interest in history. The field is so rich in stories from decades and centuries past, and infectious disease has played an enormous role in shaping our societies today. As with many fields, I believe our understanding of the present can be improved if we view it through the lens of the past--realizing as much as we can the historical influences and legacies that have brought us to where we are today.
I mentioned a few weeks back that, despite its eradication in the natural world, the smallpox virus still…
tsmith | May 17, 2007I wrote several posts last year on the mumps outbreak here in Iowa. We didn't get hit with mumps this year, but there has been an ongoing outbreak in Canada, primarily in Nova Scotia. So how do I fit into this?
Most recently, mumps has been diagnosed in Toronto:
Canada's ongoing mumps outbreak has hit the country's biggest city. And Toronto's public health officials expect the current case count of three infections to climb before the outbreak subsides.
"I think we may see more cases," Dr. Barbara Yaffe, director of communicable disease control for Toronto Public Health, said in an…
tsmith | May 17, 2007There were a few comments in the vaccine creation post asking about HIV vaccines. I've not had the time to get back to them yet, but in lieu of my response (and since I'm not 100% up-to-date on all the HIV vaccine literature anyway) I'll offer up a new review from the latest issue of the New England Journal on "HIV Vaccines--Evolving Concepts."
tsmith | May 9, 2007I've mentioned several times here at Aetiology that, when it comes to pandemic influenza preparedness, we need more than just vaccines specific for H5N1. Though this virus looks like a looming threat right now, we can't be 100% certain that it will actually cause the next global pandemic; while we're focused on H5N1, a new strain of H2N2 (or another serotype) may pop up out of the woodwork, catching us unawares. However, while this is well known in the infectious disease community and the scientific community, it's been rare to read such information in the mainstream media. Therefore, this…
tsmith | May 8, 2007 Smallpox is, without a doubt, the biggest success story in all of vaccination. The practice of variolation, or the purposeful inoculation of naïve individuals with material from scabs of smallpox victims, was practiced for years prior to Edward Jenner's substitution of cowpox for the smallpox (Variola) virus. The vaccinia virus, thought to be a derivative of cowpox, has been used in the 20th century in smallpox vaccination campaigns. Vaccina elicits antibodies that protect from smallpox infection, yet typically causes an asymptomatic or only mildly symptomatic infection. This…
tsmith | April 27, 2007I wrote a post back in February about HIV's "Kitzmiller vs. Dover" trial. The trial was appealing the sentence of one Andre Chad Parenzee, a native of South Africa who'd been convicted in Australia back in 2004 of infecting one woman with HIV (and exposing two others). Parenzee knew of his HIV+ status, telling the women he had cancer instead and not disclosing his infection nor using condoms. In the appeal, the HIV "dissidents" led the way, with Valendar Turner and Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos of the Perth group taking the stand and denying that HIV even existed. Papadopulos-Eleopulos…
tsmith | April 27, 2007Of all the vaccines in a child's repertoire, perhaps the most controversial is the vaccine against Hepatitis B virus. It's not because of concerns about the vaccine's safety necessarily; parents tend to be more worried about the MMR vaccine, since that has received so much press. But many parents feel that the HBV vaccine is unnecessary. HBV is transmitted primarily via exposure to blood or other body fluids, or by sexual transmission. Because they assume their kids will be smart, stay away from drugs, and not have sex with the "wrong" people, they assert that the vaccine is a waste and…
tsmith | March 30, 2007I don't know if you've seen any of the posts here at Scienceblogs or Panda's Thumb about the Discovery Institute's newest protégé, Dr. Michael Egnor. A professor of neurosurgery at SUNY-Stony Brook, Dr. Egnor has been pontificating on how "Darwinism" has nothing to offer to medicine; and indeed, that evolutionary biology has "hijacked" other fields of study. Mike has already aptly pointed out many of Egnor's strawmen and intellectual dishonesties, so I won't review them all. I've stayed out of the fray until now because I've had limited time and others have been handling it quite ably,…
tsmith | March 29, 2007Influenza season is wrapping up here in the United States, and it seems so far that the 2006-7 season was pretty typical. The first cases of the disease were reported in late October, and cases were sporadic throughout November and early December. After increasing a bit in mid-late December of 2006, outbreaks declined slightly in January, and then picked up again later that month, increasing again in February before falling again, and continuing to do so in March. Early reports suggest that the vaccine matched the circulating strains pretty well, and that most of the isolates which were…
tsmith | March 14, 2007The most recent edition of Tangled Bank, your one-stop science blogging carnival, is up over at Living the Scientific Life.
In addition, there are a few other posts I've been meaning to plug:
Nick on Texas House overturning mandatory HPV vaccination.
Burt at Panda's Thumb on Why you should care if cattle get fourth-generation cephalosporins and why doctors need to know about evolution (a takedown of this Discovery Institute essay).
And a nice follow-up to those: Mike on why antibiotic resistance matters.