revere | October 7, 2008It's Nobel Prize time, and once again I didn't get the call. In fairness to the Nobel Committee, I didn't deserve it either, but since Henry Kissinger got a Nobel Prize he didn't deserve, I don't know why this should have been a barrier. I could use the money and the fame wouldn't hurt. Anyway, this year the Medicine prizes went to French virologists and a German virologist, for pioneering work on HIV and papilloma virus. What's this got to do with John McCain? None can vote, since all three are Europeans, another sign of waning US influence in science. More importantly, Nobel Laureates seem…
revere | October 7, 2008There's another Salmonella multistate outbreak, this one involving 12 states and, so far, 32 cases. As with the infmaous tomator and/or pepper problem during the summer, the Minnesota Department of Public Health's laboratory has been in the lead in tracking down the source. Salmonella is killed by cooking, so raw produce or cross contamination of foods eaten uncooked (like a salad) by raw meat (for example, when cut on the same cutting board) is the usual source. But if you don't cook meat (for example, you just heat them up for eating) and it has Salmonella, you could have a problem. That's…
revere | October 6, 2008It's common knowledge John McCain has an anger management problem. That's what's at the bottom of his oft repeated refrain that he wouldn't win the Miss Congeniality prize in the US Senate. It's not that he's a maverick. It's that he's nasty and impulsive and without any instinct for comity with his colleagues. He also doesn't like Barack Obama. That was quite evident long before the current presidential campaign. McCain set his sights on the nomination years ago and was busy laying the mythology of his candidacy as early as 2006 and before. "Ethics reform" was one of his narratives, but it…
revere | October 6, 2008A story in CIDRAP News by the always excellent science journalist Maryn McKenna provides food for thought:.
A flu vaccine manufacturer's decision not to build a US facility has highlighted the perpetual mismatch between flu-shot supply and demand--and the reality that the mismatch may undermine plans for pandemic flu vaccines.
On Tuesday, Solvay Pharmaceuticals Inc. of Marietta, Ga., announced that it was canceling plans to build a US flu-vaccine manufacturing plant, a $386 million project that Birmingham, Ala., and Athens, Ga., have been competing for. The plant would have made both seasonal…
revere | October 5, 2008An article in The Straits Times from newswire Associated Press (AP) drew my attention to a festering disagreement between proponents of an innovative global sharing initiative for influenza information and the World Health Organization, the official UN Agency that has run the global influenza surveillance system for more than a half century. The new system, The Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Influenza Data (GISAID), began midway through 2006 and has made rapid progress. It came into being to deal with dissatisfaction with the existing system wherein WHO allowed influenza gene sequence…
revere | October 5, 2008Mrs. R. and I are in the Big Apple this weekend. We got in late so after settling in we sauntered out for a "light" dinner. In my east coast city there are plenty of fancy restaurants, even some celebrity chefs. They're too expensive for us at home (anyway, Mrs. R. is a terrific cook) and in The City crank that price up a notch. But what we can't get in our city of residence is NY Deli. Our city is deli illiterate. I used to live in Manhattan and I know what I'm missing. So we popped into the Carnegie Deli on Seventh Avenue and I ordered my "usual": Corned beef on light rye, side of potato…
revere | October 4, 2008My father was an old fashioned "physician and surgeon," something we don't have today. He did everything: delivered you, took out your appendix or tonsils, treated your parents' heart disease, your childhood diseases, your broken bones, your kids' childhood diseases, the diabetes you got later in life and the heart disease that went along with it. And probably delivered your grandchildren, too. He went to the office seven days a week, made housecalls in the middle of the night, met cooks from the White Castle hamburger chain in his office at 3 am to sew up their lacerations, made his own…
revere | October 4, 2008I'm on record here as being very optimistic about the younger generation. Perhaps it's conceit. They remind me of us (sixties era and even before). Still, there is no shortage of older folks who are condemned to repeat history by bemonaing how the young 'uns have gone to the dogs. And the world is going to hell in a handbasket with them. Academics are just as prone to this nonsense as anyone and in 2006 the mainstream media, enablers of whatever conventional wisdom floats their way, were talking about how sociologists were revealing that people were increasingly isolated ("bowling alone")…
revere | October 3, 2008I just watched the Biden - Palin "debate." Governor Palin succeeded by not failing. Biden succeeded by not putting his foot in his mouth. The rest of us were losers. Like the Presidential debate, we learned little, and everyone will see the "winner" in terms of his or her own preferences. Probably the main outcome will be that the Palin-induced hemorrhaging in the McCain campaign is staunched. McCain's economy-induced free fall is likely to continue, since Dishonest John's only response seems to be to jump on his horse and ride madly off in all directions. Congress's reaction seems to have…
revere | October 3, 2008I went to medical school at a time when it was still affordable. Even though it was a private Ivy League university, tuition was only $1200/yr at the start and I had a half scholarship. Room was $33/month. Still, it was a long time ago and that was still real money for some of us, so I ate dinner in the cafeteria and often made lunch by heating up a 19 cent can of Spaghetti-O's on a hot plate in my room across from the hospital. Medical school classes didn't allow much time for part time jobs, so I supplemented my income working as a guinea pig and blood donor. Whenever open heart surgery was…
revere | October 2, 2008Tonight is the much anticipated Vice Presidential debate between Governor Palin and Senator Biden. As Governor Palin noted, we all know a lot about Senator Biden. He's been around a long time. He's not as old as Senator McCain but he's more experienced. Governor Palin? Not so much. Here's some of what we know, a compilation of the Governor Palin's Greatest Hits (from Talking Points Memo):
revere | October 2, 2008Scientists have been using genetic data to estimate when species first appeared for some time. The basic idea is to use differences between species and a guess as to how fast sequences change as a molecular clock, running it backward until they show the same sequence. The same trick can be done with viral genetic information. If you know the genetic sequence of a virus at one point in time and then at a later time you can make an estimate of how fast the clock is ticking. An analysis along these lines has just been done with a newly found lymph node sample from Kinshasa (Democratic Republic…
revere | October 1, 2008You may have heard of the Keating Five scandal but not know much about it. Given the size of the scandal, that's a bit curious. Maybe it's the fact that four of the five Senators were Democrats that explains why the Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee have been fairly quiet about it. All five Senators were dinged by the impotent Senate Ethics Committee in 1991, three for substantial and improper interference with a Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB) investigation, two with exercising poor judgment. They all finished their terms, but only two stood for re-election and both…
revere | October 1, 2008Yesterday we noted the intricate interconnections between the physical, biological and social environments that conspired to affect the risk that a person might become infected with West Nile Virus. The same Adjustable Rate Mortgages that are part of that public health problem are at work in the spectacular collapse of the global financial system. Effects span huge scale differences, from local to global. Tight interconnections with unpredictable effects are also at work in our food supply, which now has long chains of production and supply that often combine local and global scales in one…
revere | September 30, 2008Many people characterized Dishonest John McCain's shenanigans around the bail-out bill a gamble that didn't pay off, but it was hardly uncharacteristic. McCain is not only a risk taker but an inveterate gambler, literally and figuratively. He is also a Big Friend of the gaming industry and a customer. Over the weekend the New York Times ran a very long investigative report about McCain's close ties to the gambling industry and his own fondness for the dice. Here's how it starts:
Senator John McCain was on a roll. In a room reserved for high-stakes gamblers at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in…
revere | September 30, 2008A fascinating paper in CDC's journal, Emerging Infectious Diseases has more details on a problem we first mentioned, on the basis of news reports, back in June. It's about a possible relationship between West Nile Virus infection and the mortgage crisis, but the paper also gives a dramatic example of how the physical, biological and social environment can affect disease patterns and risks in populations.
Infection with West Nile Virus is primarily a disease of birds. It is transmitted from bird to bird by mosquito bites and the disease is maintained by the cycling between birds and mosquitoes…
revere | September 29, 2008A lot of people, especially in the media, have had a hard time reconciling John McCain's past reputation as an honest reformer with his current dishonest and dishonorable campaign behavior. Now that he is in the harsh spotlight of a national campaign, dogged investigators are beginning to lift the rock and what's come crawling out isn't very attractive. Two of the most recent creature sightings involve McCain's campaign director, Rick Davis, and McCain's assurances that Davis had long ago severed ties with his old lobbying firm that was intimately tied to the failed mortgage enterprises,…
revere | September 29, 2008A new study of foodborne illness has just been published and has made quite a bit of news. The typical headline is something like: "Animals Farmed For Meat Are The No. 1 Source Of Food Poisoning Bug, Study Shows." That makes it sound like most cases of food poisoning are from a particular bug and that bug comes from farm animals. Although it is inaccurate, the stories beneath the headline don't do much to dispel it:
Researchers from Lancashire, England, and Chicago, IL, have discovered that animals farmed for meat are the main source of bacteria responsible for food poisoning.
They suggested…
revere | September 28, 2008There's been a lot of talk about McCain's failure to look at Obama during Friday night's debate. Here's Chris Matthews (who is a total bonehead as far as I am concerned) speculating:
In fairness to Matthews, his view was mirrored by many others. The dominant views were either it was an expression of contempt or anger.
However since this is also a science blog I thought I'd share this interesting take by one of Josh Marshall's readers over at Talking Points Memo (TPM):
And here's another note from TPM Reader TB. I guess I'm really not sure quite how to characterize it ...
I think people…
revere | September 28, 2008Mirabile dictu. This is not the place you usually read about miracles, but I have to say this one is pretty convincing. To me, anyway. These two guys were working on drywall down in Florida and suddenly this image appeared to them. They've been doing this for 30 years and never seen anything like it, and frankly neither have I (of course I've never worked on drywall). The fact that they misidentified it as Jesus notwithstanding, it is quite obvious it is the face of Charles Darwin:
Here's the clip from the Florida TV station (where else?) so you can see for yourself:
WKRG.com Video
There…