mmckenna
Posts by this author
July 20, 2010
Let me tell you a little story about my first husband.
We met when I was in graduate school. He was a foreign journalist working in America and I interned where he worked. I left town, finished my degree, moved back. We reconnected, got married, and were considered enough of a catch -- two sharp…
July 7, 2010
I'm taking SUPERBUG offline while the Pepsi mess plays out.
I dislike and resent having to do this: I was flattered to join Sb and I have great respect for my Sciblings.
I acknowledge that Sb's management, Seed Media Group, made some concessions today, but I am dissatisfied that those changes came…
July 7, 2010
I'm late to the party: I was in Europe, and before that I was in Los Angeles, and before that Colorado, and I am time-shifted and sleep-deprived (hate it: Takes away energy, intellectual nimbleness -- yeah, I got some --Â and any ability to multi-task). And that's enough with the lame excuses.…
July 7, 2010
(You leave the country for a few days -- I spoke at a conference in Brussels, which was was lovely, thanks for asking -- and all kinds of news breaks out. So, sorry to be late on this, but it's an important issue.)
Last week, the Food and Drug Adminstration took the first (baby, mincing, tentative…
June 28, 2010
In the winter of 1999, I stood in an outpatient clinic in a pediatric hospital in New Delhi and listened to a father sobbing over the paralysis of his only son. He was a farmer and lived in Uttar Pradesh; counting walks, minibuses and trains, it had taken him 24 hours to get to the hospital. He had…
June 24, 2010
There's a troubling item in this afternoon's issue of the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report or MMWR: The first report in the United States of a novel resistance mechanism that renders gram-negative bacteria extremely drug-resistant and that has been linked to medical care carried out in…
June 21, 2010
In case anyone's in the general vicinity of the Twin Cities this week:
On Tuesday night, I'll be discussing antibiotic use in US agriculture at Fair Food Fight Night (a regular event sponsored by the food-policy blog Fair Food Fight) with Thom Petersen of the Minnesota Farmers Union and Fair Food…
June 17, 2010
A set of papers published this month in two journals provide an unsettling glimpse into the rocketing incidence and complex epidemiology of one really scary pathogen, Acinetobacter baumanii.
In the all-star annuals of resistant bugs, A. baumanii is an underappreciated player. If people -- other…
June 15, 2010
The Center for Global Development, a DC think-tank, is releasing what looks like a thoughtful report aimed at refocusing policy debates over drug resistance toward the epidemic's global impact, with particular attention to the the developing world.
From the report's preface:
Problems with drug…
June 15, 2010
Via the Journal of the American Medical Association, a report from Spain: the first recorded outbreak, in a Madrid hospital, of Staphylococcus aureus resistant to linezolid (Zyvox), one of only a few drugs still available to treat very serious infections of drug-resistant staph, MRSA. This is bad…
June 10, 2010
A coule of days ago, I talked about the link between a potentially massive hepatitis B outbreak in West Virginia and the lack of access to primary dental care. I was mushy qualitatively descriptive, ahem, about the number of people who lack access to dental insurance.
Comes now the CDC to save the…
June 9, 2010
Joanne Manaster (site, Twitter) and Jeff Shaumeyer (site, Twitter) are running a Summer Science Reading Contest for kids and teens. They're looking for science authors to contribute books as prizes. Some cool people have stepped up, including Sciblings Deborah Blum and Rebecca Skloot (and me), but…
June 8, 2010
The Subcommittee on Health of the Energy and Commerce Committee of the House of Representatives has announced a hearing for Wednesday: "Promoting the Development of Antibiotics and Ensuring Judicious Use in Humans."
The witness line-up is:
Janet Woodcock, M.D., Director, Center for Drug…
June 7, 2010
Via ProMED Mail comes a news report that about 2,000 people in 5 states are being sought by health departments so they can be checked for hepatitis B infection. The potential source: the Mission of Mercy Dental Clinic, a free dental-care fair held just about a year ago in Berkeley County in the far…
June 7, 2010
So, hi, Scienceblogs. I'm thrilled to be joining the conversation here.
By way of introduction, I'm Maryn McKenna, journalist and author and sole proprietor of Superbug, which has been running for 3+ years at Blogger but moves over here today, thanks to an invitation from the Sb staff and some…