revere
Posts by this author
April 17, 2008
Peter Doshi has a bone to pick with CDC . His particular idée fixe is that CDC is cooking the books on their estimates of excess mortality attributable to influenza and he aims to set the record straight. He's done it before. Doshi is not the kind of critic CDC is used to. He is a graduate student…
April 16, 2008
Thanks to a local health officer in Colorado I get word that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has begun an investigation of claims made by my favorite infomercial quacks, the Kinoki Foot Bad folks (see my howl of pain in the post The TV ad that DRIVES ME CRAZY). Here's some of the AP story…
April 16, 2008
Because of bird flu I probably spend too much time thinking about the world's industrially produced poultry. Arguably these chicken factories, with tens of thousands of birds crammed together under the most unsanitary conditions are the perfect bioreactor for virulent bird viruses, like influenza A…
April 15, 2008
I haven't posted on the vaccine/autism question for several reasons. It is quite well covered by other science bloggers, it tends to generate more heat than light, and we didn't have anything new to say. I have on several occasions discussed it with two of the world's top experts on the health…
April 15, 2008
US Secretary of Health and Human Services, Michael Leavitt, is in Indonesia to discuss matters of mutual interest with the Indonesian government. Topic number one was the Indonesian government's opt out of the international influenza surveillance system which has been in place for almost 60 years…
April 14, 2008
Boingboing had a short notice about the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) Fatality Analysis Reporting System ("FARS"), plugging it as an all purpose dicing and slicing source for information on motor vehicle related deaths in the US. You can make your own custom queries to find…
April 14, 2008
I'm a supporter of mathematical modeling as another way to get a handle on what might happen in an influenza pandemic. But a recent paper by the group at London's Imperial College, published in Nature, shows what can happen when modelers allow their work to bear more weight than it can sustain.…
April 13, 2008
Since we posted here less than a week ago on a recent paper authored by Chinese and US scientists in The Lancet giving scientific details confirming what most people had already assumed was a person to person transmission of H5N1 between a father and son, it was with considerable surprise we read…
April 13, 2008
Is a report about aliens less believable than a report that someone rose from the dead? You have to admit, this guy has a point:
April 12, 2008
If you want to know the single most important class of public health interventions with respect to infectious diseases in the 20th century it wasn't vaccines but provision of clean water and food supplies. But vaccines may be next. With major waterborne diseases like typhoid and cholera under…
April 11, 2008
Faith-based disaster relief sounds a bit like a contradiction to me. Why did God send the disaster in the first place? But what do I know. I'm an atheist. I'm also an American, however, and it seems passing strange to me that money raised from Missouri taxpayers should be used to support religious…
April 11, 2008
I have professional colleagues who are dedicated birders but it has never interested me, and their interests are mainly independent of their lives as epidemiologists, toxicologists or whatever else they do at work. But the biosphere is truly interconnected in strange ways and sometimes what seems…
April 10, 2008
The news article is a month old but that doesn't make it any less infuriating. Potable water is becoming a major environmental issue, something that folks in the southeast of the US already know since they are experiencing a drought. What better time to sell the multinational food and beverage…
April 10, 2008
First Tamiflu (oseltamivir), now Relenza (zanamivir):
Health officials [in Canada] are investigating whether Relenza - a drug provinces have stockpiled in case of a pandemic flu outbreak - can be linked to fatal reactions or abnormal behaviour in children.
[snip]
The investigation is a response to…
April 9, 2008
The first time I can remember flying on a commercial airplane was in August of 1955. It was a DC3 or DC7 or something like that. Before that the family traveled by train or car. In the years following I always enjoyed air travel. I flew the Atlantic on a prop plane once (refueled in the Azores, I…
April 9, 2008
If you pay attention to the latest news about bird flu I will not be telling you anything new that there is a detailed description in The Lancet (a British medical journal) of a case in China of probable person to person transmission of bird flu. You can get details from the incomparable reporting…
April 8, 2008
I'm writing this on an Apple Computer (a MacBook Pro). I've been using Apple products since 1981. I love (heart?) New York, too. Great city, full of energy. Few cities equal it in my opinion (Paris or Barcelona maybe). Now Apple Computer (the company) has filed a trademark challenge against GreeNYC…
April 8, 2008
We can argue about the cause, but climate is changing. It may be called global warming but the effect most people will see is an increased variability of weather events, with more frequent extreme weather. Little things. Like Hurricane Katrina. WHO is among many warning that it is not only the…
April 7, 2008
What's the surest signs that animals of the human species have been somewhere? They always seem to leave their shit lying around. Literally:
Exploring Paisley Caves in the Cascade Range of Oregon, archaeologists have found a scattering of human coprolites, or fossil feces. The specimens preserved…
April 7, 2008
To everything there is a season, including flu. We are now emerging from the other end of one of the more difficult flu seasons in recent years, although by no means out of the ordinary for the genre. Last time we commented, almost every state was experiencing widespread flu activity by the end of…
April 6, 2008
About a month ago (March 1, 2008) we brought you the story of how a highly reputable and knowledgeable scientist, Dr. Deborah Rice of the Maine Department of Maine Department of Health and Human Services, was bonced off of an EPA scientific advisory committee because the chemical industry trade…
April 6, 2008
When Mrs. R. saw the Vatican for the first and only time -- as a lapsed Catholic the place had some kind mysterious attraction for her, almost like the swallows and Capistrano except that one trip was enough in her case -- she was aghast and repelled by the ostentatious display of such immense…
April 5, 2008
Since this piece in Wired referenced an email with a date of April 1 I was pretty sure this was an April Fool's joke. But the joke was on me. It's was for real:
A U.S. government-funded medical information site that bills itself as the world's largest database on reproductive health has quietly…
April 4, 2008
The Global War on Terror is claiming yet another victim: the reputation of Attorney General Michael Mukasey as a principled guardian of the Rule of Law. Even before joining the Bush administration Mukasey was forgetting the meaning of the word "torture," and since being confirmed is equally…
April 4, 2008
One of the least talked about problems in pandemic preparedness planning is that even if there is flu all around us and the health care system is struggling (and almost certainly failing) to handle the resulting demand of patients, people will still be getting sick from the usual things (heart…
April 3, 2008
After 2,629 days of George W. Bush in office, it's a little comforting for Americans to know our country doesn't have a monopoly on sheer stupidity. We now give officials in New Zealand their well earned share of the World's Biggest Morons Award (hat tip Boingboing):
Passengers on an Air New…
April 3, 2008
The index case was a 5 year old Miniature Schnauzer with 5 days of nasal discharge and sneezing. The dog recovered but the next case, a 3 year old Cocker Spaniel wasn't so lucky, nor were the 2 Korean hunting dogs (Jindos) or a 3 year old Yorkshire terrier. Then 13 dogs in a shelter started to show…
April 2, 2008
The World Wide Web began at the Swiss nuclear research facility, CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research), and that may be its biggest claim to fame. But CERN really is a nuclear research facility and is home to some of the most advanced technologies for probing the inner workings of…
April 2, 2008
If a worker refused to report for work because it was a demonstrably dangerous workplace they would be within their rights, with a few exceptions. One of the exceptions in some states seems to be health care workers (HCW) who refuse to work during a pandemic. A HCW, like any other worker, might not…
April 1, 2008
If the Osama bin Laden Foundation or the Adoph Hitler Memorial Fund offered to support your scientific research -- no strings attached -- would you take the money? Remember, you are hoping to do good with your work, say, investigate a new cancer drug or a model of the cardiovascular system. Pure…