revere | December 3, 2006One frequent refrain about why we don't have to worry about a bird flu pandemic is the astounding progress we've made in medical science in the 88 years since 1918. It's a good point. In 1918 we didn't even know the causative agent.
In this spirit I offer you an excerpt from a December 1918 report of the American Public Health Association's committee on influenza, sent to me by a loyal reader:
It is the opinion of this committee that epidemic influenza is spread solely through the discharges from the nose and throat of infected persons finding their way into the nose and throat of susceptible…
revere | December 3, 2006The Soldiers of God are on the warpath. The initial forays of the godless insurgents Dawkins, Dennett and Harris have provoked the predictable counterattack. The homosexual agenda and Islamic extremism are being displaced by insidious atheist subversion:
The Rev Campbell Paget, vicar of All Saints' Church, Brenchley, for the past eight years, believes that influential atheists in the media, commerce and politics are eroding the population's freedom by clamping down on displays of religious devotion and promoting their own politically correct agenda.
Former infantry officer Mr Paget, 52, said…
revere | December 2, 2006I would be embarrassed by this cheap and easy post about chicken soup for symptoms of cold and flu, but I have a more serious purpose. I want to ask ScienceBlogger colleagues who inveigh constantly against alternative medicine (or "woo" as orac at Respectful Insolence insists on calling it) what they think of this and why.
Here's the set-up:
The suspected benefits of chicken soup were reported centuries ago. The Egyptian Jewish physician and philosopher, Moshe ben Maimonides, recommended chicken soup for respiratory tract symptoms in his 12th century writings which were, in turn, based on…
revere | December 1, 2006We mostly like being right, but we sometimes wish we weren't. A few days ago we concluded a post) on some scientific background about Polonium-210 by saying this assassination could also become a public health problem. That now seems to be the case, as a trail of radiation is being found in the victim's wake. UK authorities are scrambling to track down anyone who might be exposed and establish where the contamination is.
Several British Airways planes on the Moscow - London route have been impounded after it was reported traces of radiation had been found aboard. The UK authorities are…
revere | December 1, 2006Health Canada is following the US FDA in warning of adverse neurobehavioral effects of the influenza antiviral, Tamiflu. The drug is prescribed much more often in Japan, where it is used in seasonal flu, than in the US. The effects have been reported mainly in children and have included some suicides. It isn't known whether the drug was responsible for these deaths and if so, how. The US FDA has not made any determinations but issued the warning as a precautionary measure.
The Vancouver Sun ran the story under the headline, "Bird flu vaccine leaves 10 Canadians dead." (hat tip,…
revere | November 30, 2006Like most computer users I hate spam. But I've gradually gotten used to it. You can get used to anything, I was once told, even a stone in your shoe. Apparently I've gotten used to more than I thought. In a terrific piece in New York Press, Lindsay Beyerstein (aka Majikthise) calls our attention to scaffold spam in New York, the illegal use for advertising of the fabric sheathes on the construction scaffolding over building facades.
Vinyl construction wraps loom over sidewalks all over the city--from the towering blue Infiniti ad wrapped around a vacant lot in Soho to the new Equinox Fitness…
revere | November 30, 2006Helen Branswell had an interesting piece about a rumor there was a human case of H5N1 in Canada, in a child. Branswell's pieces are the occasion for frequent posts here, although this is a bit awkward as it turns out she quotes us. Accurately. Which is characteristic of all her reporting and also why she has the best contacts and gets more information out of them then any other flu reporter. Everyone trusts her to report reliably.
Anyway, here's the story:
The power of the Internet rumour mill slammed up against a hospital in Rimouski, Que., on Wednesday, leaving doctors and administrators…
revere | November 29, 2006There's been a lot of notice that the South Koreans are responding to two outbreaks of bird flu (H5N1) not only with the culling of poultry by the hundreds of thousands, something that has become quite routine, now, but also the slaughter of neighboring dogs and pigs. Pigs are a well known host for influenza and dogs are susceptible to several subtypes, although there have been only a few reports of infection with H5N1. The South Koreans insist that dogs have also been killed elsewhere but the fact not publicized. I don't know if it is true or not. The big news in the West is killing the dogs…
revere | November 29, 2006The "father" of epidemiology is a nineteenth century doctor, John Snow. He had more than one disciplinary child, since he is also considered the "father" of anesthesiology, having popularized the use of chloroform in obstetrics by using it on Queen Victoria in the 1850s. That distinction aside, Snow is famous for his pioneering studies showing cholera was a waterborne disease. I've been thinking about this in relation to bird flu. Here's the connection.
In Snow's Victorian London, the predominant scientific theory on cholera's etiology was from miasmas, a general term for noxious elements in…
revere | November 28, 2006Misery doesn't love company. Misery loves hope. Unfortunately, those of us in the beleaguered northern hemisphere won't find it in the Land of Oz, where Bush clone John Howard apes the chimp.
Via the sometimes hopeful, sometimes despairing but always excellent blog, The ImpactED Nurse (Canberra, Australia), comes an exasperated groan.
It's all in the comments.
revere | November 28, 2006[This is Part II of our explanation of some of the science behind the Polonium-210 poisoning case of Alexander Litvinenko. Part I. is here.]
In Part I. we sketched the physical background to understand radioisotopes like Polonium-210, the agent in the Litvinenko poisoning, but have yet to explain its connection to the biology. That's today's order of business.
Remember that the chemistry is located in the orbital electrons of each atom. Sharing electrons or pairing charges is how atoms bond with each other -- literally and figuratively. So if you mess up the electron structure you can mess up…
revere | November 27, 2006It's been a while since we visited the FDA's benzene-in-soft-drinks failure (see here, here, here and here). No time like the present.
Serious questions remain over how America?s food safety watchdog handled the presence of benzene residues in soft drinks, a senior ex-official has said, after tests showed some drinks still contained the chemical 15 years after the industry agreed to cut it.
The source told BeverageDaily.com it was "embarrassing" the Food and Drug Administration had failed to eradicate benzene residues from all drinks.
His comments come as newly released meeting memos show at…
revere | November 27, 2006It's bigger news in the UK than elsewhere but it's still big news. Apparently Russian dissident and former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko was fatally poisoned with Polonium 210. Time for some science.
Polonium 210 is a radioisotope, meaning it is an isotope of the element Polonium that is radioactive. Three things here: element, isotope and radioactive.
Things in our world are made of chemicals and the chemicals are made of elementary building blocks, called, naturally enough, elements. Last time I checked there were 117 different flavors, ninety four of which occur naturally and the rest can…
revere | November 26, 2006This weekend is Effect Measure's Second Blogiversary and it coincides with two other events: the new Flu Wiki Forum and the incipient debut of a new progressive public health blog, The Pump Handle, to which The Reveres will be occasional contributors (some original posts, some cross posts). We are semi-thrilled to still be around after two years. Semi-thrilled, because two years is a long-time in the blogosphere, especially if you blogged all 730 days of it. Just a few under 1500 posts all told. We know there are a lot of blogs more prolific than ours and older. Our hats are off to them,…
revere | November 26, 2006I'm no fan of WalMart's. Too much disruption of the retail world at the expense of the global environment and workers around the world and too little attention to the needs of its own workers. My side of the political fence is not friendly WalMart territory, to be sure. It turns out that right wing religious whackos also hate WalMart. Oops. Sorry. They love WalMart, which is why they want to ruin its business. From the Christian Newswire:
In a statement to the American Family Association yesterday, Wal-Mart agreed that they, "...will not make corporate contributions to support or oppose…
revere | November 25, 2006After many travails and gnashing of keyboards, The Flu Wiki Forum has a gorgeous new look. We have migrated from PMWiki to SoapBlox and in the process acquired some wonderful new capabilities, among them the option of having nested or threaded comments (you can keep the old forum comment organization if you want to, however) and full-fledged Diaries. First, let us say that the editorial "we" includes The Reveres in spirit but all the heavy lifting -- and we mean just about all of it -- was done by my wiki partners Dem, Melanie, pogge and SusanC (aka anon_22). It's a terrific job and everyone…
revere | November 25, 2006If you want to know where the WMDs are, look no further. In fact in at least seven US communities you can see them by looking out your window. We're talking about our WMDs, of course. It's OK for us to have them. They won't get into the hands of terrorists from us. At least we hope not. They are a mighty tempting target, though, which is why Congress wanted them destroyed ASAP as "a homeland security imperative." Which isn't a problem because the US is committed to destroying them anyway by 2012 in accordance with the international Chemical Weapons Convention. Except we won't be doing that,…
revere | November 24, 2006One of the remarkable things about The Flu Wiki is how it has taken root in other places. There are now several non-English versions of it, including français, español, Türkçe and norsk.
In a recent comment our Norwegian colleagues asked we remind you they are there. I went and took a look at the Flu Wiki.no site and if you are in Scandinavia join in. The Swedes and Danes won't have any trouble with the language (my Swedish isn't great and even I could read the Norwegian) and while facility with English is widespread in the Nordic countries they also have their own issues and local…
revere | November 24, 2006This week The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) published three articles on the evolving story of the influenza A/H5N1 panzootic that has the potential to become a human pandemic. Two are rather meager case series, one from Turkey and one from Indonesia. It is an extraordinary indication of the paucity of information that these papers could get published in one of the world's premier medical journals, a fact duly noted by Canadian Press's Helen Branswell. The two papers have some moderately interesting information, none of it startling for those who follow this issue. But the Commentary…
revere | November 23, 2006It seems like only yesterday that Dear Leader was making a surprise visit to the troops in Iraq for his annual Thanksgiving photo-op. Here's the report on CNN from 2003. You will see that things weren't going so great even then:
His visit marked the first time a U.S. president had traveled to Iraq, and concern for Bush's safety kept the trip cloaked in secrecy. Even some members of the Secret Service were kept in the dark about it.
The whirlwind trip came amid persistent insurgent attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq -- and less than a week after a cargo plane was struck by a missile and forced to…