revere | March 17, 2007The UK's Health Protection Agency has a follow-up on their monitoring of people and places potentially contaminated with the extremely dangerous alpha-emitter, Polonium-210, the weapon used to kill Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko (see our posts here and here about Polonium-210, and here and here about the murder). Their spin is that tests "so far" show minimal risk to the general public. What surprised me is that their tests showed widespread exposure to the public. Here are the reported results:
Test result update
Category 1
*596 people had results 'below reporting level' - below 30…
revere | March 16, 2007Even Republican jerks like Texas's Senator John ("I never met a surge I didn't like") Cornyn can get it right sometimes. Law of Averages? I don't know, but I certainly approve of his promise to re-introduce the Federal Research Public Access Act (S.2695) which would require tax-payer funded research to be freely available within 6 months of publication -- in other words, Open Access for federally funded research. Even more amazing, the bill is co-sponsored by Independent (as in "really a Republican") Senator, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut (as in, "I never met a surge I didn't like"). Maybe he…
revere | March 16, 2007In a paper in the Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry [JAAS] (in case you haven't read your latest issue), I learned that bird migration patterns in Europe are still kind of hazy, despite the long standing and often intense interest on the part of birders and conservationists. It's just not an easy problem. Not being a birder myself, I didn't know this, nor did I have much interest in migratory patters of birds prior to bird flu. Now many of us have a newfound interest in it. Which is why a new method to figure out migratory bird patterns caught my eye.
The usual methods are both labor…
revere | March 15, 2007You probably don't know what PDUFA is (pronounced pah-doofah) but it's about to expire. Which is good. If they let expire. "They" are our friends in congress. PDUFA stands for the Prescription Drug User-Fee Act and it is an integral part of the FDA drug safety program. You know. The one that brought us Vioxx. I wish I had the great cartoon I saw at the time of the Vioxx trial that showed a bottle of medicine with a label on it that said, "FDA Approved Drug." On the label was a small box that said: "Warning: contains FDA approved drug." So what's PDUFA?
The idea behind PDUFA sounds very…
revere | March 15, 2007The problem of H5N1 contaminated food keeps coming up (see here and here). First it was, don't worry, stomach acid will kill it. Then it was, don't worry, you can't be infected through the intestinal tract. Then it was, don't worry, proper cooking kills the virus. The last of these is correct but isn't a reason not to worry. Somebody has to "properly cook" the food, so during preparation and food handling there is a risk of contact with possibly infectious material. Then there is "ready-to-eat" foods (like from the deli) which aren't cooked. Then there is contamination of animal foods that…
revere | March 14, 2007It took four years, but the majority of Americans now realize the Iraq War is not winable. By roughly the same margins they want troops out of Iraq in a year or less and believe they were misled into the war. The only thing I wonder about is what took them so long. It didn't take the Prophet Daniel to see the handwriting on the wall. But this is an aggressive and war-making country, so it's not so surprising its citizens didn't mind the Grand Adventure at the outset. Now we and the Iraqis are reaping the whirlwind. And we don't like paying even a fraction of the price we've made others pay.…
revere | March 14, 2007A few weeks ago an FDA advisory committee recommended approval of Sanofi-Aventis's prepandemic H5N1 vaccine, despite data that it required very large amounts of viral antigen (90 mcg) in two doses. At the time it seemed there were far better vaccines available or about to be available. What set this vaccine apart was that Sanofi had been making it to fill an order placed by the US Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) and there was enough for 3.75 million people in the US stockpile, although because of elapsed shelf life that was down to about 3 million. Ninety micrograms is a lot…
revere | March 13, 2007Food safety again. Peanut butter, spinach, lettuce, cantaloupes, sprouts. That's just produce. There's the meat problem, too, from E. coli O157 and Salmonella to Mad Cow. Food production now involves long chains, often mixing ingredients from many sources and countries. Regulation of the food supply, now beyond the control of the individual consumer, needs to catch up. It's not likely to make much progress this way:
The government has new rules for preventing food poisoning in fresh-cut produce, but companies don't have to follow them.
[snip]
In the new, voluntary rules, announced Monday by…
revere | March 13, 2007Be prepared, and be careful not to do
Your good deeds when there's no one watching you
If you're looking for adventure of a new and different kind
And you come across a Girl Scout who is similarly inclined
Don't be nervous, don't be flustered, don't be scared,
Be prepared
(Tom Lehrer, Be Prepared)
The recent stories that CDC has not been able to determine the effectiveness of tax dollars meant to improve response to bioterrorism comes as no surprise. Not because CDC has misspent the money (which they probably have) or because they have been negligent in seeing if the money is well spent. The…
revere | March 12, 2007If anything should signal the dire shape of the US food safety problem it's FDA's announcement last week that it is extending the warning over Salmonella contaminated Peter Pan peanut butter to products bought as far back as October 2004. FDA warnings about Peter Pan peanut butter have been steadily pushed back from May 2006 to December 2005 and now to October 2004.
ConAgra makes Peter Pan peanut butter products at a single plant in Sylveter, Georgia. It is also marketed by Wal-Mart as Great Value Peanut Butter with lot number 2111. The product recall for the Peter Pan and Wal-Mart Great…
revere | March 12, 2007We've discussed the problem of an affordable vaccine for the developing world several times (here, here, here). We advocate ten to a dozen regional international vaccine institutes to make influenza vaccine at cost, license and patent free. Another suggestion has come from Dr. Carl Nathan from Cornell Medical College in a Commentary published in Nature Medicine and summarized at the Cornell news site:
Weill Cornell Medical College scientist Dr. Carl Nathan has issued a bold call for reforming the pharmaceutical development and patent systems in order to increase the number of vaccines and…
revere | March 11, 2007The CDC chief, Dr. Julie Gerberding was publicly spanked by a congressional panel this week. Not that she acknowledged it. As a good Bushie, she never admits fault. Like George W., she "understands" everybody's concern and she is concerned, too. About what? Morale at the very agency she runs, CDC. The only news here is that she admits there is a morale problem, because she has been denying any such problem for years even as morale was tanking as she bravely mismanaged the agency in the face of overwhelming evidence she was making a mess of things. Her acknowledgment was not an admission of…
revere | March 11, 2007I don't believe in God, but I think I know how God would feel if he or she or it or they actually existed. Because we have a dog. Having a dog is like having your own small, pious believer. Unconditional love. Total dependence. True, obedience is just fair, but our dog worships us no matter how we treat her. And we treat her disgracefully -- that is, better than we treat our fellow humans. Mrs. R., of course, understands the pooch better than I do because it's "her" dog and if you ask Mrs. R. the best dog in the world:
Pet owners notoriously make excuses for their own animal's bad behaviour…
revere | March 10, 2007Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) is in the news lately because its maker Merck is marketing a vaccine against it which they bill as the first anti-cancer vaccine. It may be effective against HPV, one of the main risk factors for cervical cancer, but it isn't the first cancer vaccine. The hepatitis vaccine gets the honors there. The HPV vaccine has become controversial in part because the risk factor it is preventing is infection with a sexually transmitted virus. Anything to do with sex is controversial in the US.
There's another sexually transmitted disease, much better known: gonorrhea ("the…
revere | March 9, 2007Too much nutrient in wastewater can lead to serious water pollution. The nutrients act as food for micro-organisms and algae who use up dissolved oxygen in the water when they metabolize them. When oxygen levels go too low -- when the stream or river or pond "goes anaerobic" -- new micro-organisms predominate, ones that don't use oxygen as their final electron acceptor but use other oxidizing agents. Many use sulfur compounds, and when these become reduced by the transferred electrons they produce hydrogen sulfide, the rotten egg odor. Hydrogen sulfide not only smells bad. It is quite toxic.…
revere | March 9, 2007Headlines in the last day: South Korea records seventh outbreak; Bird Flu Strikes Hanoi, Over 1,000 Chickens Culled; Bird flu erupts in Vietnam south; total 5 provinces infected; Bird flu found in 6 more areas of Afghanistan; Laos teenager dies from bird flu; Indonesian Villagers Hide Birds And Spread Flu; Myanmar takes preventive measures against bird flu; Southern China is epicenter of bird flu, U.S. researchers find; Suspicious bird flu deaths in Tehran's Pardisan Park; World experts in Kuwait as more bird flu cases detected; Dubai plans bird flu blood tests at airport -- Report: plan to…
revere | March 8, 2007We don't write much about quackery here. My SciBling colleagues like Orac at Respectful Insolence cover this. Sometimes I make an exception. This is one of those times. This is about magnet therapy, the belief that magnetic devices can cure you of many diseases or relieve you of symptoms. The magnet itself doesn't do anything but these devices can be dangerous in other ways, for example, by resulting in fatally delayed treatment for an otherwise preventable condition. Mostly, though, they are just an efficient way to do a wallet-ectomy.
Or so we thought. Tuesday we heard of an entirely new…
revere | March 8, 2007The H5N1 in cats issue returns once again. We know felines, including big cats in zoos and domestic cats on city streets and backyards, can be infected with the virus. The assumption is they acquire it by eating infected birds, although we don't know the mode of transmission for sure. Now we have a story by the Bloomberg agency that a major study of feral cats is about to start in Indonesia:
For the cat study, scientists led by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization will examine feline habits and collect blood samples to test for exposure to the H5N1 virus. Disease trackers aim…
revere | March 7, 2007Name brand drugs got more expensive last year. A lot more expensive.
Prices for the 200 brand-name drugs most commonly used by the U.S. elderly rose an average of 6.2 percent last year, almost twice as much as the rate of inflation, a report says.
Sanofi-Aventis SA increased the price of its sleeping pill Ambien 30 percent, more than any other medication of the 200, the AARP, a lobbying group for people 50 and older, said in a report today. Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals Inc. boosted the price of its Combivent inhaler for lung disease 18 percent, the second-biggest increase.
The AARP,…