medicine
oracknows | December 7, 2009Well, well, well, well.
What is this I found forwarded to me in my in box? It's from the anti-vaccine group Generation Rescue, and it is most interesting:
Generation Rescue is in the final stages of receiving grant funding for a vaccine research study on the long term effects of the current U.S. recommended schedule. The last thing we need are declarations of support from our community who purchased Airborne Health.
Did you purchase Airborne during May 1, 2001 - November 29, 2007?
Do you support a vaccine research study on the long term effects of the current U.S. schedule?
Do you…
ddobbs | December 7, 20091. Maybe it was just the headline ... but the runaway winner was "No pity party, no macho man." Psychologist Dave Grossman on surviving killing. Actually I think it was the remarkable photo, which looks like a painting. Check it out.
2. I'm not vulnerable, just especially plastic. Risk genes, environment, and evolution, in the Atlantic. The blog post about the article that led to the book.
3. Senator Asks Pentagon To Review Antidepressants
4. Gorgeous thing of the day: Sky's-eye view of the Maldives & other islands
5. The Weird History of Vaccine Adjuvants, even though it was from Oct 1…
palmd | December 7, 2009A common theme in alternative medicine is the "One True Cause of All Disease". Aside from the pitiable naivete, it's implausible that "acidic diet", liver flukes, colonic debris, the Lyme spirochete, or any other problem---real or imagined---can cause "all disease" (in addition to the fact that most of these ideas are intrinsically mutually exclusive).
One of the popular new ideas in this category is that of "endocrine disrupting chemicals" (EDCs). These are chemicals in the environment that physiologically or chemically mimic naturally occurring human hormones. That some environmental…
oracknows | December 7, 2009The new UPSTF recommended guidelines for screening mammography of healthy women have opened up a can of worms whose consequences have not played out yet, indeed, likely will not play out for a long time. Coming in rapid succession after the announcement of the UPSTF guidelines was a study that suggested that low dose radiation from mammography may put young women with breast cancer-predisposing BRCA mutations at a higher risk for breast cancer. A consequence of the USPSTF recommendations is that politicians have pounced on it as "proof" that President Obama really is preparing death panels…
razib | December 6, 2009Two loci control tuberculin skin test reactivity in an area hyperendemic for tuberculosis:
Approximately 20% of persons living in areas hyperendemic for tuberculosis (TB) display persistent lack of tuberculin skin test (TST) reactivity and appear to be naturally resistant to infection by Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Among those with a positive response, the intensity of TST reactivity varies greatly. The genetic basis of TST reactivity is not known. We report on a genome-wide linkage search for loci that have an impact on TST reactivity, which is defined either as zero versus nonzero (TST-BINa…
terrasig | December 6, 2009I posed this question earlier today on Twitter and have already garnered a good number of responses.
STEM - science, technology, engineering, and mathematics - is the acronym used by educators, researchers, and funding agencies focused on fundamental science. The US National Science Foundation, the primarily US STEM funding agency, states:
As described in our strategic plan, NSF is the only federal agency whose mission includes support for all fields of fundamental science and engineering, except for medical sciences.
My reason for asking is that I was going to write a post that would…
oracknows | December 5, 2009Bloggers love it when other bloggers cite them to support their arguments. I'm no different, as even a blinking Plexiglass box of lights likes to have its arguments appreciated. I particularly love it when a skeptical blogger uses some small thing I've written to refute particularly egregious nonsense. Unfortunately, there's the flip side to this. There are times when I'd prefer I wasn't cited. No, I'm not talking about anti-vaccinationists like J.B. Handley launching broadsides against me when I hit a particular nerve, various quacks or boosters of quackery going after me when, well, I hit a…
clock | December 4, 2009It was 25 years ago yesterday that thousands dies in the Bhopal disaster.
Yesterday, Rhitu Chatterjee did the story about it (listen or read the transcript) on PRI The World.
Also yesterday, Rhittu and Elsa Youngsteadt interviewed Henrik Selin of Boston University about the topic (download the MP3 of the podcast here) and you can ask questions and join the discussion in the forums. Dr. Selin will be checking in and responding from now until next Thursday, December 10th.
palmd | December 4, 2009When Major Nidal Malik Hasan opened fire on his comrades at Ft Reed, he gave no indication of his motives, other than a generic shout of "God is great!" Generally we think of terrorist acts as involving a conspiracy rather than the actions of an individual, but the difference is unlikely to matter to the dead. Understanding Hasan's motives may, however, help prevent future murders. If this was a terrorist conspiracy, hopefully the government will display more competence than has been apparent. But if his actions were more closely related to those of a disgruntled teenage loner with a gun…
oracknows | December 3, 2009Remember the truly despicable and disgusting post by Age of Autism, in which its enemies were portrayed in a crudely Photoshopped picture as preparing to eat a dead baby for their Thanksgiving feast? It was an image that I likened to the blood libel against the Jews, as did Rene at EpiRen in a much more detailed post.
It's gone now. If you go to the link, earlier this evening you'd get a message "Nothing to see, move along now." Now, if you go to the link, it's a blank page. Fortunately, for now at least, the it's stlll cached in Google, and I, of course, have saved web archives, a screen…
palmd | December 3, 2009He looked sick---really sick. He was sitting on a stretcher in an ER bay, flushed, breathing a bit quickly, but his youth seemed to compensate for the acuity of his illness, and he didn't feel nearly as bad has he looked. His fever was 104, his systolic blood pressure was in the 90s, his heart was racing. He'd had a sore throat recently, and rather than getting better started to feel weak, tired, and feverish. His mom finally dragged him in when he wouldn't stop shivering. His blood work was not normal, and his chest X-ray looked as if he'd inhaled a box full of cotton balls…
oracknows | December 3, 2009I'm beginning to understand why evolutionary biologists are so sensitive about how creationists abuse and twist any research that they think can be used to cast doubt upon evolution. Whenever there is research that changes the way we look at evolution or suggest aspects of it that we didn't appreciate before, where scientists get excited because they see an opportunity for better understanding of evolution, creationists see a chance to use it to launch specious and fallacious attacks against evolution. Sadly, there is no shortage of creationists willing to make fools of themselves to try to…
palmd | December 2, 2009Remember the Zicam debacle? To catch you up, Zicam has been promoted for years as a "homeopathic cold remedy". It is of course neither. Since it contains measurable amounts of zinc, it isn't "homeopathic", and since there is no cure for the common cold, it's not a remedy. In addition to having neither of it's promoted qualities, the FDA has received hundreds of reports of people losing their sense of smell (became "anosmic") after using intranasal Zicam. As Steve Novella has pointed out, there is some scientific evidence pointing to a causal connection between zinc and anosmia. Now…
Deepak Chopra and his Choprawoo translated: "Skeptics, take my ill-informed speculations seriously!"
oracknows | December 1, 2009He's baaaack.
Deepak Chopra. Remember him? It's been a while since I've said much about him and him alone. True, I've gone after him this year when he joined up with three other major league woo-meisters Dean Ornish, Rustum Roy, and Andrew Weil to try to try to help Senator Tom Harkin hijack the health care overhaul bill currently before Congress. However, given that a couple of years ago, Chopra was the man for whose abuses of quantum theory, evolution, and "universal consciousness" ideas I coined the term "Choprawoo" and the only response ever needed to Choprawoo, it's been a while since I…
clock | December 1, 2009You can follow the event virtually in Second Life - just click here and teleport.
palmd | December 1, 2009Today, the 21st annual World AIDS day, comes at a time when AIDS has become an everyday fact of life. Conservative estimates have over 33 million people living with HIV world-wide with an adult prevalence of 0.8%. This is a common disease, but its distribution is unequal. Due in part to economic, cultural, political, and genetic differences, Sub-Saharan African has been hit particularly hard, although comparisons can be difficult. It is widely believed that some large countries, including China and Russia, significantly under-report HIV disease.
Coming to terms with HIV has been hard for…
oracknows | December 1, 2009I debated whether or not to blog about this. The reason is that I suspect that gathering a lot of attention and controversy is exactly what Generation Rescue wanted when it posted what I'm about to blog about. On the other hand, no matter how low my opinion is of the principals who run Generation Rescue's anti-vaccine propaganda blog Age of Autism, there were limits below which they wouldn't go. Oh, sure, AoA has launched at least three broadsides at me over the last year and a half, all penned by the ever-offensive blowhard J.B. Handley, the founder of Generation Rescue who's allowed himself…
palmd | November 30, 2009In medicine we use all of our senses to evaluate patients. If I open up an abscess and I'm overwhelmed by the smell of rotted cheese, I can be pretty sure the abscess started as a sebaceous cyst. If I hear a "whooshing" sound over the abdomen in a smoker, I look more closely for an aortic aneurysm. A subtle buzzing sensed through my fingers can indicate an arterial fistula. And the glowing yellow of jaundiced skin can point me straight to the liver.
But what about subtle changes? With just our senses, distinguishing normal from abnormal is a coveted skill, one that some argue is being…
clock | November 30, 2009TECHIE TUESDAY
"Celebration of Life"
Research Triangle Global Health Excellence & World AIDS Day
Date: December 1, 2009
Time: 4:30 pm to 7:30 pm
Location: RTP Headquarters - 12 Davis Drive
Catering By: Nantucket Café & Neomonde
Did you know the Triangle region is a center of excellence in global health?
Help celebrate World AIDS Day and find out how RTP companies and stakeholders are making an impact on HIV/AIDS and other important global health concerns.
Global health organizations in the Park are helping people live longer, more productive lives by working to address HIV/AIDS and…
oracknows | November 30, 2009I've been writing about the attempts of proponents of various pseudoscience, quackery, and faith-based religious "healing" modalities to slip provisions friendly to their interests into the health care reform bill that will be debated in the Senate beginning today. If you want to know what's at stake, check out the first press release of a newly formed institute designed to promote science-based medicine in academia and public policy, the Institute for Science in Medicine.
It's an embryonic institute, only recently formed by 42 physicians and scientists, but it's jumping right into the fray.…