terrasig | August 31, 2007Another Wine Experience: Châteauneuf du Pape Tastings
By Erleichda
Another twosome of Jim's Disciples, not to mention their also being members of the "Hiking Group", celebrated one of those even decade important birthdays. Well, important enough to justify spending a little extra celebrating the milestone. Those of us attending the party, dedicated to toasting the couple with Châteauneuf du Pape (CdP) wines, were appreciative of the opportunity to help usher in their next 50 years. [Wikipedia has a brief but informative history of the Châteauneuf du Pape, literally, "New House of the Pope…
terrasig | August 30, 2007Karl Schwartz is a tireless lymphoma patient advocate who is co-founder and president of Patients Against Lymphoma. Karl also oversees their excellent website, Lymphomation.org.
A missive from Karl came in today detailing how the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is proposing to cut reimbursements for two radioimmunotherapy drugs to less than their cost. Their collective response to the Deputy Administrator of CMS can be viewed in PDF or HTML.
The two immunotherapy drugs in question are Bexxar (I-131 tositumomab) and Zevalin (Y-90 ibritumomab). They are among the most…
terrasig | August 29, 2007Nick Anthis at The Scientific Activist had a great post yesterday on the fallacies in an article from the UK Guardian detailing a peer-reviewed publication on replacing animal research with in vitro and computational models. As much as all scientists would wish this were true, there are simply no replacements for animal research in many areas, as noted by PZ Myers.
One of my favorite sources for promoting the factual necessity for animal research (and exposing extremist groups for attacks on scientists) is the Washington, DC-based, Foundation for Biomedical Research. The poster above is…
terrasig | August 26, 2007[Sort of a repost from last year, updated appropriately - APB]
Five years ago at 11:24 am EDT (1624 GMT), your humble blogger was handed the keys to a whole new vocabulary of love.
The gift came in the form of a 7 lb. 13 oz. (3,544 gm), 20.5 inch (52 cm) bundle of drooling, peeing, meconium-pooping bundle of baby girl, yanked from an incision in PharmGirl's abdomen.
The lessons of compassion and unconditional love I have been taught by these two women have comprised the most formative experiences of my life.
In return, PharmGirl has suffered tremendous indignancies on my behalf: the…
terrasig | August 24, 2007Another Wine Experience: Little Known or Under Publicized Grape Varieties
by Erleichda
It was my turn again to name a theme for the almost monthly get together of our wine dinner group, "Jim's Disciples". I thought to push the envelope a bit by asking everyone to bring a wine that used a grape variety they hadn't heard of before, and which represented at least 70% of the wine in the bottle. There were no other restrictions or guidelines. Unfortunately, only about half my tasting notes survived the evening, and so I can only relate a portion of what occurred.
I also chose a BYO Italian…
terrasig | August 23, 2007By now you have probably heard of the excellent primer published in PLoS Medicine entitled, HIV Denial in the Internet Era. Written by my fellow ScienceBlogger, Tara Smith, and academic neurologist, Steven Novella, this concise but forceful article tells you everything you need to know about the faulty arguments made by organizations and individuals who deny that HIV is the cause of AIDS (HIV denialists, if you will). The article is free and it is simply awesome.
Many bloggers have noted what to them is most important point of this article. For me, it is the first three sentences of the…
terrasig | August 22, 2007This is just heart-wrenchingly sad:
A [Pittsburgh area] doctor was charged with involuntary manslaughter Wednesday for administering a chemical treatment that state police say killed a 5-year-old autistic boy.
The child, Abubakar Tariq Nadama, went into cardiac arrest at Dr. Roy E. Kerry's office immediately after undergoing chelation therapy on Aug. 23, 2005.
Chelation removes heavy metals from the body and is approved by the Food and Drug Administration for treating acute heavy metal poisoning, but not for treating autism. Some people who believe autism is caused by a mercury-containing…
terrasig | August 22, 2007...if they contrain sibutramine.
Sold under the trade name of Meridia in the US and Reductil in Europe, this prescription appetite suppressant for weight loss was recently detected in an apple cider vinegar supplement called MetaboSlim sold by Confidence, Inc. An alert by the FDA notes that the affected lot was only sold in Canada but we are fortunate to have a good number of Canadian readers.
This episode is yet another in a long string of reports of dietary supplements being adulterated with prescription drugs, intentionally or accidentally. Interestingly, Confidence Inc. was also the…
terrasig | August 20, 2007As noted in the previous post on the anticoagulant, Coumadin (warfarin), last week demonstrated how pharmacogenetic variations in drug metabolism and drug responses are giving rise to what is increasingly known as "personalized medicine."
In their second such warning last week, the US FDA alerted clinicians and the public to the use of codeine in nursing mothers. Not well known to most people is that codeine is metabolically activated to morphine by a drug metabolizing enzyme called CYP2D6. While we normally think of drug metabolism as breaking down a drug, the chemical conversions…
terrasig | August 19, 2007Late last week saw two announcements from the US FDA on genetic issues in drug safety. The first of these addresses the prescribing guidelines for Coumadin, or warfarin. Coumadin is a "blood-thinner" (or anticoagulant) prescribed for conditions from heart valve and hip/knee joint replacements to pulmonary hypertension and following strokes due to inappropriate blood clotting.
The reasons for this warning relate to data that has accumulated whereby individual patients respond quite differently to the same dose of Coumadin. Two genetic markers have been identified to account for much of…
terrasig | August 18, 2007Among these pages, you've probably seen Orac's take on the Providence, RI, feline resident of a nursing home that could allegedly sense when inhabitants were about to die, curling up with them during their final hours. (In critical thinking circles, Orac notes that these observations can be explained by confirmation bias.).
Well, The Daily Redundancy reports today that Oscar, the psychic cat, is no more:
Officials at the facility would not reveal the cause of death, but did acknowledge rumors that the cat was becoming increasingly unpopular among the patients. One knowledgeable source - who…
terrasig | August 17, 2007The irregular frequency of The Friday Fermentable has been due mostly to my focus on two cases of a (inexpensive) private label wine that has kept my summer drinking variety to a bare minimum. Thankfully, my guest blogger, Erleichda, has often come to the rescue with fabulous descriptions of his group wine dinners.
The focus this time is instead a very interesting research letter published in this week's (16 August 2007) New England Journal of Medicine entitled, "Wine-Induced Anaphylaxis and and Sensitization to Hymenoptera Venom." The full text is currently available freely. Two Spanish…
terrasig | August 14, 2007The Wall Street Journal reports that a top Mannatech (Wikipedia, corporate) distributor has been found guilty of not paying federal income taxes.
He [Raymond Gebauer] became an associate in 1994 and his sales network, operating through companies he owned, was still signing up associates this year, said Karyn Johnson, assistant U.S. attorney in Seattle. He was a featured speaker in March at the annual national sales conference, MannaFest. In his book, "How to Cure and Prevent Any Disease," Mr. Gebauer said that he owned a million-dollar home, a ski boat and drove a Lexus RX 300.
Kind of…
terrasig | August 12, 2007This may at first seem to be an esoteric development but scientists at the Oregon Health & Science University have succeeded in propagating human liver cells in severely immunocompromised mice. The full report appears in Nature Biotechnology. The work was done in collaboration with colleagues at Stanford University, the University of Pittsburgh, and Texas Children's Hospital at Baylor.
Human liver cells, or hepatocytes, have become an important part of preclinical drug safety testing since the liver is the primary source of drug metabolizing enzymes. These are generally split into the…
terrasig | August 9, 2007A federal appeals court has denied the right of patients to the use of cancer drugs prior to their complete assessment of safety and efficacy. The case was filed against the US FDA in 2003 by the Abigail Alliance for Better Access to Developmental Drugs, who argued that patients have a constitutional right to any drug in clinical trials.
The 8-to-2 decision by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit came in a closely watched and emotional case that pitted desperate patients willing to try unproven, even risky, therapies against those arguing that drugs should be proved safe…
terrasig | August 6, 2007Back in June, we reported on several botanical/non-botanical supplement studies presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting. One was a Mayo Clinic study of a proprietary Wisconsin-grown ginseng (Panax quinquefolius) extract showing positive effects of the preparation in relieving cancer-related fatigue. The study authors were very careful to note this study was conducted specifically with Wisconsin-sourced product.
From my own post:
Note that the extract can't be compared to anything on the market since it was made for the study from a single source of Wisconsin…
terrasig | August 1, 2007Bear with me. I'm posting this on ScienceBlogs because many of us have had our own beefs with the US airline industry. Many readers also travel around to conferences and, as a result, must use a US airline. Hence, this really is a science-related post.
But pardon me if I am suspicious of anything represented by an airline that is purported to be in my best interest.
This came in today from Delta Airlines - you know, the one Janet pointed out has a breast-feeding aversion:
Providing the highest quality service to our customers is the guiding principle in everything we do at Delta. But it is…
terrasig | July 30, 2007The author of Natural Causes: Death, Lies and Politics in America's Vitamin and Herbal Supplement Industry, Dan Hurley, has a three-minute video editorial at Medscape today.
I must admit to being a little ambivalent about his message that, "Evidence-based medicine is the rallying cry of a generation of physicians. So why do so many physicians ignore the evidence when it comes to dietary supplements?"
My issue is that Hurley lumps multivitamins together with herbal supplements. Certainly, many herbal supplements have been failures in double-blind clinical trials (as I reposted earlier today…
terrasig | July 30, 2007This post appeared originally on 8 Feb 2006 at the old site for this blog. A frequent reader and commenter, Joe, suggested that I repost it here as it illustrates many common problems with clinical trials of botanical medicines.
You'd think the funding folks would learn at the NIH National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). But, not as evidenced by the report in tomorrow's New England Journal of Medicine detailing the lack of efficacy of saw palmetto (Serenoa repens) extract in the treatment of benign prostatic hypertrophy.
Yet another well-designed double-blind,…
terrasig | July 28, 2007Only 74% of the States? How 'bout you?
create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.