revere | April 17, 2007Some of the most boring sounding parts of epidemiology are also the most important. Take the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), now in its tenth revision (ICD-10). This is a standard way to code disease diagnoses that has its origins as far back as the 1850s. It was taken over as an official function of the World Health Organization (WHO) on its founding in 1948. By then it was already in its sixth revision. Versions of ICD9 and ICD10 are used for epidemiology, national health planning and health care management, where your insurance reimbursements are governed by ICD codes. It's…
revere | April 17, 2007Some reporters are so good it just makes your head shake when you read them. In the flu world, the prize (always) goes to Helen Branswell of Canadian Press. She's not a stylish writer, just an exceptionally clear one. Her sources are the best and her reporting as reliable as her sources are good. My RSS reader seems to miss some of her stories, but when I get them they are usually head and shoulders above the competition. And sometimes there's no competition. Like her interview with Dr. Keiji Fukuda, head of the WHO's global influenza program.
In it we learn that China is still not producing…
revere | April 16, 2007There's a curious story in the UK newspaper, The Independent, on mobile phones and the collapse of bee colonies (hat tip Randy, aka MRK). I don't quite know what to make of it, although I am skeptical:
[Some scientists] are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world - the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. Late last week, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon - which started in the US, then spread to continental Europe -…
revere | April 16, 2007I admit it's a paradox, but I can't help myself. Whenever I hear that a high government official has debunked claims of a human case of bird flu, my first thought: "Oh, shit. Another case."
The minister of information and communications, Frank Nweke Jnr., has debunked claims that there was any other human case of avian influenza reported in Nigeria since the beginning of the year.
The minister, quoted in a news bulletin from the Avian Influenza Crisis Management Centre, Abuja, and released on Thursday, noted that the "multi-Sectoral Steering Committee on the Management of Avian Influenza in…
revere | April 15, 2007The last time we reported on the concern of five former CDC Directors that morale was going down the toilet at the agency was September 11, 2006. That was in a joint letter sent to Director Gerberding. Now it's 7 months later and the venue is more public, a symposium sponsored by the George Washington University School of Public Health. One of them was William Foege who was CDC Director under Carter and Bush (1977 to 1983):
Foege said that CDC must eliminate the "perception ... that politics trumps science and truth" and strengthen the "role of science that has always characterized CDC"…
revere | April 15, 2007I don't like getting involved in internecine warfare, least of all amongst my SciBlings. But a recent OpEd in WaPo by two fellow bloggers I admire, Matt Nisbet of Framing Science and Chris Mooney of The Intersection prompts me to set fingers to keyboard. It is Richard Dawkins that provoked it. Good for Dawkins. Once again he is exposing muddled thinking. And he didn't even have to write about it:
Leave aside for a moment the validity of Dawkins's arguments against religion. The fact remains: The public cannot be expected to differentiate between his advocacy of evolution and his atheism. More…
revere | April 14, 2007When we consider the spread of bird flu, we often focus on the basic reproductive number, R0, the average number of new cases that a single infected individual would produce in a completely susceptible population. But individuals are not the only possible unit of analysis. One could consider infected farms, too. That's what researchers at Imperial College London and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine did in their analysis of the spread of the H7 subtype (H7N3, H7N7, H7N1) of avian influenza virus in Italy, the Netherlands and Canada. The results of several years of data showed…
revere | April 13, 2007In another post we pointed out that the number one cause of death in people aged 1 to 44 is unintentional injury. But some injuries are intentional, about half directed to other people and half self directed. Among people aged 15 to 44 intentional injury represents the second leading cause of death, about half homicides and half suicides (CDC). Guns figure prominently in both.
A recent study by Harvard School of Public Health researchers published in the Journal of Trauma shows that in states with higher rates of guns in households there is a significantly higher rate of suicide:
In the 15…
revere | April 13, 2007I admit to being prejudiced, here, but my experience living in Sweden (a long time ago, it is true), knowing a bit of the language and seeing what goes on there makes me think of the Swedes as one of the most rational people on earth. It's true most other peoples don't give them a lot of competition on that score, and I am sure there will be Swedes reading this who will protest I've done their country an injustice. It's far worse than I'm making out, they'll tell me. Sure. Come over here and live. Don't forget to bring your Swedish health insurance. We don't provide it here.
Sweden is a small…
revere | April 12, 2007Asbestos is bad stuff. You don't have to see too many workers die from asbestos-caused disease to feel pretty strongly about it. So it is distressing to read of the plight of ten workers who have spent years under the nation's Capitol in tunnels strewn with friable asbestos containing materials. They work for the Architect of the Capitol, a Presidential appointment. They have been complaining about their working conditions for years, to no avail. X-rays of their lungs reportedly show signs of asbestos scarring and they are also at increased risk for various asbestos-related cancers, notably…
revere | April 12, 2007The newswires are on it again. This one has a good hook. A flu vaccine made in insect cells. So I read the paper. And in truth, it's pretty interesting.
Genetically engineered flu vaccine made from yellow striped caterpillars instead of hen eggs has been shown for the first time to keep people from getting the flu, scientists say.
The results are preliminary but suggest the insect method could be a quicker, easier alternative to the lengthy, antiquated egg-based procedure now used and could lead to a more rapid response to a pandemic, the study authors say. (Lindsey Tanner, AP)
There's more…
revere | April 11, 2007A political pundit recently likened the Bush administration to the refrigerator that was never cleaned under the Republican rubber stamp congress. Now that new housekeepers have moved in they are finding lots of gross and moldy half eaten meals in the back. The latest to stink the place up is Director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), the most public health oriented of all the NIH institutes. Or it used to be, as we noted in an earlier post. Under Director David Schwartz it was on its way to being the kind of harmless agency most congenial to the Bush…
revere | April 11, 2007The newswires are carrying a story that the journal, Chest, is about to publish a retrospective study of influenza mortality and statin use. As happens more and more frequently, press reports are appearing prior to the actual article, so I haven't read it yet. This is very irritating. The whole press embargo system is irritating, in fact, and should be deep-sixed (Full discolosure: I frequently get advance copies of embargoed articles and I honor the dates. But I don't think journals should do it. It serves no useful purpose.).
The embargo issue aside, here is what the press is saying:…
revere | April 10, 2007Soon, maybe as soon as the end of the month, the Libyan Supreme Court will hear the appeal of the five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor, the "Tripoli 6" (here, here, here, here, here and here). As it approaches there is intense activity from the international scientific community. On March 23, ten major medical associations wrote to Colonel Qadhafi:
We the undersigned leading health professional associations in the United States are writing to urge you in the strongest terms to immediately release and exonerate the five Bulgarian nurses--Valya Cherveny, Snezhanka Dimitrova, Nasya…
revere | April 10, 2007Several readers have pointed me to an online piece on face masks and ultraviolet light as influenza control measures just published in the American Journal of Public Health. Both are presented as a Plan B in the (lkely) event Plan A's vaccine and sufficient or sensitive antivirals are unavailable. The review by Weiss, Weiss Weiss and Weiss (I know a joke that goes like this, but this isn't a joke) is measured an informative. First, face masks.
The authors point out that cloth surgical masks protect other people from you, not you from them. They discuss N95 and N100 respirators and provide…
revere | April 9, 2007Too hilarious:
Engineers in the past week have huddled over blueprints in an underground complex that also can serve as a safe haven for visiting presidents in the event of an emergency and as a lookout point for government agents monitoring terrorist activity. (Denver Post)
The underground complex is in wing off the Glenwood Canyon Tunnel section of Interstate-70 in Colorado. And the engineers are huddling there because it's caving in:
A crack in concrete above the main Glenwood Canyon tunnel on Interstate 70 is growing wider and worse than expected and will force multimillion-dollar repairs…
revere | April 9, 2007A trip with Mrs. R. to buy something for the kitchen doesn't seem to have much to do with influenza virology, but let me try to make the connection. We're at Williams Sonoma. I'm wandering around, idly looking at various pieces of kitchen equipment and thinking random food thoughts. I'm not looking for anything particular, myself. But as I'm cruising by a set of shelves I see it has books on it. Quite a few of them. All about food and cooking and associated subjects, but books. I stop. I start to browse. Fifteen minutes later Mrs. R. retrieves me. She is going to shop for something else. I…
revere | April 8, 2007To date, more than 90% of the bird flu victims have been under the age of 44. But what's the leading cause of death in people between the ages of 1 and 44 in the US? And the fifth leading cause of death (after heart disease, stroke, cancer and chronic respiratory disease) for overall? And largely preventable? Answer below the fold.
Injury. And working teenagers are among the victims:
Despite federal regulations intended to protect them, many teenagers in the U.S. use dangerous equipment or work long hours during the school week, according to a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill study…
revere | April 8, 2007It's Sunday -- Easter Sunday for Christians -- and time for Freethinker Sermonette, so you probably thought you'd get a day off from mathematical models. After all, we've just completed 18 posts on the subject and if you've read them all, you're exhausted. So it must be a day of rest, right? No such luck. More on mathematical models, offered in a spirit of conciliation and perhaps explanation why I don't mind the differences of opinion that erupt in the comment threads. A mathematical model tells me I shouldn't mind:
To model the evolution of opinions, physicists Renaud Lambiotte and Marcel…
revere | April 7, 2007For some reason the subject of masks evokes great emotion here. I'm not sure why. The idea that masks will help in a pandemic is a strongly held belief that might even be true. We don't know. I venture into mask territory knowing that, like gun control and atheism, I'll get a reaction. But a recent paper in the CDC journal, Emerging Infectious Diseases, brings up once again the difficulties in proper mask use. The subject was N95 Full Face (FF) respirators, the kind you would need in an influenza pandemic if you were to cover your mouth, nose and eyes, the latter because you can be infected…