revere | December 9, 2009Long time readers may have noticed that the subject of West Nile Virus (WNV) pops up periodically here (and here, here, here, here, here). It's more than a passing fancy. I was professionally involved in public health measures around West Nile after its introduction to the US in 1999 and have maintained an interest, even though flu occupies much (too much) of my time.
WNV is a mosquito-borne flavivirus of birds that occasionally infects humans (in this sense it is like bird flu, although only in this sense; bird flu is not passed from birds to humans via mosquitoes). The resulting infection…
revere | December 8, 2009Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, testified in Congress yesterday. Not surprisingly he said what Generals always say: "we" can win.
Back in 1963 Pete Seeger gave a concert in Melbourne, Australia. If you never saw him in concert, this is what he was always like. The Australians are hesitant at first, unlike typical American audiences, so the pay-off doesn't come until near the end (around 7:07), where Pete asks, wouldn't it be great if all the Generals around the world could be there to hear them sing this song. The response is immediate and spontaneous. That's…
revere | December 8, 2009An interesting blog post came my way yesterday about The Legend of the Boiling Frog. The gist of the post was that the legend was just that: urban (or science) legend. The post apparently started out with a query to a noted biologist who studies amphibians (I originally wrote, "a noted amphibian biologist" until I realized I didn't know if were any biologists who were amphibians):
"I am writing a weekly column for Die Zeit, Germany's major weekly paper, on scientific urban legends that my readers ask me about. Now you surely have heard the story of the boiling frog that is often told by…
revere | December 7, 2009The only flowers growing in Afghanistan seem to be poppies. When will we ever learn?
revere | December 7, 2009Any concerns about the current swine flu vaccine inevitably bring up the swine flu episode of 1976. This is not 1976. For starters, this year we have a bona fide pandemic and in 1976 the virus never got out of Fort Dix, NJ. That in itself is a game changer. If there are any risks from a vaccine (and there are usually some risks, even though they are much safer than most over the counter drugs) and they are for a disease no one is at risk for, the risk - benefit equation has nothing on one side and if there is anything, no matter how rare, on the other, it makes it unfavorable for the vaccine…
revere | December 6, 2009Yesterday we were all Universal Soldiers. Today this one's not marching any more. Phil Ochs:
revere | December 6, 2009Like David Rind over at Evidence in Medicine I'm a consumer of statistics, not a statistician. However as an epidemiologist my viewpoint is sometimes a bit different from a clinician's. As a pragmatic consumer, Rind resists being pegged as a frequentist or a Bayesian or any other dogmatic statistical school, which is wise. Let the record show most practicing statisticians are similarly pragmatic, as was the great R. A. Fisher, who thought there was a place for different viewpoints in different contexts, even though Fisher was famous for his argumentative and contentious manner (people are…
revere | December 6, 2009Whether religion is related to survival or not is obviously highly context dependent. It's negatively correlated with survival for minorities in intolerant societies. So why do religious identities persist? I would claim there is evidence they aren't persisting, but the basic question is not something of much interest to me. However it seems to be a preoccupation of many people, because atheists are frequently confronted with the alleged universality of religion, as if that were some argument for its worth or truth.
Richard Dawkins seems to agree to the claim that religion is a cultural…
revere | December 5, 2009If you are a publishing scientist this will hit home. It's making the rounds of the science community, so you may have seen it, but if you haven't, it's hilarious. In fact it's still hilarious after the third and fourth times through. Warning: If you are sensitive about Hitler associated parodies, don't watch it; I take my cue from Mel Brooks on that subject [added: in light of a comment from a German speaker, please take this warning seriously. While the German dialog is irrelevant and it is the English subtitles that are funny, if hearing and understanding the German in this already much…
revere | December 4, 2009We've just received news that last night the Senate unanimously confirmed our friend and colleague, Dr. David Michaels as an Assistant Secretary of Labor -- specifically, Director of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). He starts sometime next week.
Now the top two posts (Michaels as Director, Jordan Barab as Deputy) are held by strong advocates for the health and safety of workers. We will say here publicly what we said to David and Jordan privately. The way ahead will be difficult but we're all here to help. Just ask.
For those who want to more background, see our posts…
revere | December 4, 2009Marilyn Mann pointed me to an interesting post by David Rind over at Evidence in Medicine (thanks!). It's a follow-on to an earlier post of his about the importance of plausibility in interpreting medical literature, a subject that deserves a post of its own. In fact the piece at issue, "HIV Vaccines, p values, and Proof," raises lots of interesting questions about different ways to view what we mean by probability (the nub of the frequentist/Bayesian debate), the difference between proof and evidence, the thorny and mental cramp produced by the question of multiple comparisons, and finally…
revere | December 3, 2009Frequent readers here know we are fascinated with the similarities between computer viruses and real viruses. Both use their unwittingly infected hosts (computers or host cells) to make copies of themselves and in the process can cause varying degrees of sickness. It's hard to give any solid criteria which will differentiate one as qualitatively different than the other (except perhaps one is purely carbon based). But now you don't have to choose. You can have both at once:
A new malware campaign uses faked e-mails that appear to inform of H1N1 vaccination programs from the Centers from…
revere | December 2, 2009From a reader in Western Massachusetts:
10 Reasons to Oppose the Escalation of War in Afghanistan
Human cost of war: Soldier and civilian deaths and injuries have been escalating each year since 2001. Nearly 1000 U.S. soldiers have been killed while 32,000 Afghan civilians have died as a result of the war.
Economic cost of war: Each soldier in Afghanistan costs U.S. taxpayers $1 million per year. Private military contractors, known to de-fraud the Pentagon, exceed the number of soldiers in the war. No matter the war’s outcome, the defense industry wins with windfall profits.
U.S. economy…
revere | December 2, 2009While I was otherwise occupied with family matters last week there was news on the flu front that got past me. Declan Butler at Nature News reported on the extensive efforts to get a handle on the prevalence of swine flu infection in various populations by looking for evidence the immune system has reacted to the presence of the virus. All of the studies mentioned are still underway or being peer reviewed so Butler didn't report results, but Fergus Walsh did report some preliminary but leaked results from one of the smaller studies in the UK. Both reports have interesting information, but I'…
revere | December 1, 2009What else is there to say? Lyndon Johnson may have done a powerful amount of good for civil rights but his legacy went down the Vietnam toilet. He was a big fool who listened to the wrong people, people who told him to push on. Barack Obama seems to be another Big Fool:
Pete Seeger, singing on CBS television, 1968. Afghanistan, 41 years later. Stuck in Afghani quicksand:
But every time I read the papers, that old feeling comes on,
We're waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.
Waist deep in the Big Muddy,
The big fool says to push on.
Waist deep in the Big Muddy,
The…
revere | December 1, 2009I don't know what happened in the Ukraine regarding swine flu (or some other illness) and without any hard facts we refrained from speculating on it (we did post once on the lack of clarity and WHO's reponse). We still don't know what to say about what did or didn't happen, although it appears others are now talking:
The global swine flu outbreak has become something of a political football in every country where the pandemic has spread, but Ukraine's response to the virus has achieved a new level of blatant politicization. According to a campaign advisor to Yulia Tymoshenko, the Ukrainian…
revere | November 30, 2009Swine flu started in pigs (although we don't exactly when or where), adapted to and passed to humans who returned the favor and passed it back to pig herds. Then we heard that turkeys in Chile had contracted the virus, followed by ferrets and a house cat. We can infect animals cross species with flu in the laboratory, but all of these are cases acquired in the natural world by animals interacting with humans. Once cats were on the menu, the next question was dogs, another population "companion animal" (aka, pet) in the US and Western Europe (and literally a menu item in many parts of Asia).…