revere | March 29, 2010If you eat raw shellfish you are asking for trouble. I know, I know. There are people who love rawbars and think nothing is better than letting a raw oyster slide down their gullet. The FDA is warning consumers and retailers nationwide, though, that they might love nothing less that what could happen if they eat oysters recently harvested near Port Sulphur, Louisiana from an oyster bed known as Area 7. Not that if you do it will likely kill you. But you might wish it would, because these oysters are suspected in an outbreak of norovirus.
We've dealt with norovirus here (and in real life) a…
revere | March 28, 2010I'm an epidemiologist, not an immunologist or a virologist but I like reading immunology and virology. It's interesting, in some ways for me it's more interesting than reading epidemiology. In an epidemiological paper I can see pretty quickly where things are going (or going wrong) and there isn't much mystery. But the sheer number of moving parts in a cellular system is amazing and confounding. Navigating through the myriad bits and pieces that appear every week in the scientific literature is tough for experts and even tougher for the rest of us who aren't experts. Vincent Racaniello over…
revere | March 28, 2010Orac at Respectful Insolence hates "woo" (for some reason I dislike that term; I prefer to call it quackery). He's a surgeon and has seen cases where that kind of stuff killed people through delay or refusal of treatment. Fair enough. But I am fascinated by this example where it didn't kill someone:
When a famous tantric guru boasted on television that he could kill another man using only his mystical powers, most viewers either gasped in awe or merely nodded unquestioningly. Sanal Edamaruku’s response was different. “Go on then — kill me,” he said.
Mr Edamaruku had been invited to the same…
revere | March 27, 2010I've written a couple of times here about TV commercials that drive me crazy or just perplex me (that post on what the Cialis bathtubs are all about continues to get a couple of views a week even though it was over a year ago). In general, though, I don't get too exercised about TV ads, maybe because we have a TiVo and don't see as many per TV hour watched (usually late at night and old TV series like Have Gun Will Travel and Maverick, or the preposterous Bones or the amusing Monk). Mrs. R. is pretty laid back about them, too, but like me she has some that drive her round the bend. At the…
revere | March 26, 2010We continue to learn a great deal about influenza infection as researchers harvest information from the recent swine flu pandemic. The pork producers don't like to call it "swine flu" but it may well be that its long sojourn in that animal since 1918 (did we give Spanish flu to pigs or did pigs give it us?) may hold an important clue to why older people suffered less than younger ones. It seemed fairly likely that the difference was related to immunity, but since H1N1 came back in 1977 after being absent since 1957, it wasn't clear why younger people born after 1977 would be as immune as…
revere | March 25, 2010The Robby in the title refers to Robby the Robot in the 1956 movie, Forbidden Planet, and what follows was a tag line in an ad for Grant's whiskey: "While you're up, get me a Grant's." That's in case you've forgotten or never knew.
I'm still working on the grant, doing things it feels like a robot could do. Writing pieces on the facilities, lists of Key Personnel, charts of graduate students trained, budgets, budget justifications, etc., etc. I have lots of help from great staff and colleagues, but it is the kind of necessary but tough slogging that doesn't feel very creative. I don't mind…
revere | March 24, 2010I had to laugh when I saw FDA was warning consumers in Puerto Rico that some hand sanitizers had high levels of bacteria (Burkholderia cepacia) that can cause serious infections. It's not really funny of course, except that one of the hand sanitizers was called “MD Quality Hand Sanitizer” (the other one was "Bee-Shield Hand Sanitizer”). Most appropriate, considering that a persistent problem with hospital infections is that we doctors are insufficiently conscientious about washing our hands between patients, A study in 2004 showed that doctors washed their hands only about half the times…
revere | March 23, 2010We are now almost through the period considered to be the traditional flu season (to the end of March in the temperate northern hemisphere) and so far the amount of documented influenza infection is at a relatively low normal level and pneumonia and influenza deaths are about usual for this time of year. Said another way, there so far has been no big "third wave" of pandemic swine flu. Most flu experts didn't know what would happen but if they had to bet, probably would have bet on a resurgence. I suppose it could still happen, since the original transmission in the community occurred "out of…
revere | March 22, 2010I'm a coffee drinker. I'm not finicky about grind or bean or method of preparation, although I guess I have some preferences. There is one thing that coffee has to have for me, though, and that it's strong. Very, very strong. The spoon has to stand up in the cup by itself. My usual cup in the morning is from an ordinary drip pot with whatever coffee is around. We usually buy it already ground and it's either a mail order Green Mountain espresso or sumatra or a Starbucks Goldcoast blend or Trader Joe's Bay Blend. Mostly dark roast and extra bold. Nothing fancy. Just good, strong coffee.
Wnich…
revere | March 21, 2010The US House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on one of the many required, but in this case crucial, steps to beginning an overhaul of the chaotic situation of American health care. By all accounts the vote is close, which is really pathetic. What is being proposed in the US is a baby step in absolute terms, although it is huge in terms relative to the historically backwards and reactionary character medical care in the US. I hope it passes, since not passing it would leave tens of millions without insurance of any kind and most of the rest of us insecure about the coverage we have.…
revere | March 21, 2010I'm still grant writing (a couple of more weeks), so I Thank God for my Savior, Edward Current, who again saves me from having to write a long Sermonette:
revere | March 20, 2010We frequently use video clips on this site, many, but not all, from YouTube. To say YouTube has revolutionized web video content would be accurate, neither an understatement nor an exaggeration. The amount of material uploaded to YouTube is staggering. It is also the frequent target of specious take-down demands and is now the subject of a lawsuit by Viacom and other media giants alleging YouTube should check every upload for rights ownership. YouTube responds that such a requirement and threat of liability would put it, and most other service providers, out of business and points to explicit…
revere | March 19, 2010As predicted, the pandemic of 2009 is beginning to yield more data, some of it directly applicable to pressing practical questions. The answers are still preliminary, and, as with all science, subject to revision. But it's what we have at the moment, and a letter that just appeared in the CDC sponsored journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, addresses an important question. During a flu outbreak, can hospitalized patients contract influenza from blood transfusions? Since people getting transfusions already have compromised health (else why would they be getting a transfusion?), they are at high…
revere | March 18, 2010My lede was going to be, "I rarely watch local TV news anymore," until I realized that was false. Because I never look at local TV news. Why should I? I won't learn anything. I can get the weather faster on the internet and I'm not that interested in sports. What about the "local news," the news of my city, town or even state? I'm missing that, right? After all, a legal condition for the use of the public airways -- airways (frequencies) used by a TV station are therefore not available to others -- is that they operate in the public interest by providing "programming that is responsive to…
revere | March 17, 2010When Thomas Frieden took over as CDC Director less than a year ago, I didn't know what to think. A smart, frenetic and intense former CDC epidemiologist who was most recently head of the New York City Health Department, he hadn't made his reputation as a "people person." He was reputed to being a quick study who sized up the science and once convinced, implemented science-based policy with a vengeance. His occasional appearances as the public face of CDC during the swine flu pandemic last fall were not auspicious. He appeared arrogant and blew off reporters' questions if he didn't know the…
revere | March 16, 2010If there's one thing I have a zero tolerance policy for, it's zero tolerance policies. We see too many incredibly stupid implementations of rigid and mandatory policies (including mandatory sentencing), no matter how reasonable they sound when first advocated, to believe there should ever be policies that provide absolutely no flexibility. The world is a messy place and not everything fits into pre-envisioned boxes.
The latest miscarriage of common sense and humane behavior comes to us from those good people at WalMart, who fired a long time, loyal and effective employee because he failed a…
revere | March 15, 2010I've had occasion to remark a number of times how much of what is reported as "science news" is just warmed over press releases from university media departments or company flacks. I read them anyway, often sucked in my a headline that turns out to oversell the case. Now I'm becoming aware headlines can also (deliberately) undersell the case. Consider two press releases that came out on virtually the same day, one from Big Pharma Pfizer, the other from biotech player, Genentech, owned by Big Pharma's Roche (maker of Tamiflu). Pfizer, first.
The headline pretty much tells the whole story, as…
revere | March 14, 2010Today is Einstein's birthday. If he were still alive he'd be 131. Those of you who have been reading here for a long time know that Einstein was (and is) one of my "culture heroes." When I was a kid I sent him birthday cards (yes, I'm that old) and when he died made a scrap book filled with news clippings. One of the great loves of my younger life gave me an Einstein bust as a present and it still sits on my desk, more than 40 years later (she reads the blog from across the ocean, so I hope she sees this! Mrs. R. knows and likes her so this isn't a guilty secret). I also have first editions…
revere | March 14, 2010The US and Israel are near the top of the list in having citizens who believe in evolution -- at or near the top, that is, if you turn the list upside down. In international surveys the US ranks last and Israel 4th from last among 27 countries regarding belief in the proposition that "human beings developed from earlier species of animals" being definitely or probably true (US, 45%, Israel, 54%). There's another similarity. The US has fringe fundamentalist crazies in positions of authority (like the Texas State Board of Education) who deny evolution (and this just in: took The Enlightenment…
revere | March 13, 2010If you check the blog for tomorrow's Sunday Sermonette, it will be an hour earlier, astronomically speaking. That's because in the US the clocks are shifted forward by an hour for "Day Light Savings Time," starting at 2 a.m. tomorrow morning (before the Sermonette goes up). The time shift will last until November 7, next fall. The sudden discontinuity in time keeping has uses other than energy conservation, however, and clever epidemiologists have used such circumstances for their own purposes for years. Here's one example.
One of the nice things about the switch back in the fall is that you…