Commentary
laelaps | October 20, 2007
I knew this movie was going to be painful, but Supercroc makes last week's film (Raptor Island) look like classic American cinema by comparison. I'm actually surprised that the film was not called "The Thing That Ate Los Angeles," although the film's super-sized antagonist seemed to accidentally step on/fall on its victims rather than consume them. At least it was short; mercifully, anticlimactically so.
Playing with relative sizes of organisms to make human beings helpless is a classic technique in science fiction and horror films, most notably seen in pictures like 1957's The Incredible…
mementomori | October 16, 2007"India to host world toilet summit"
The next time you find yourself kvetching about someone misplacing the television remote, or a spot on your collar, or the spaghetti being lukewarm, or $3 a gallon gasoline, or your favorite team playing like a rafter of turkeys, or Junior failing to put the pizza in the fridge whilst you and the spousey were out puttin' on the Ritz, keep this in mind: 2.6 billion of Earth's human inhabitants have to move their bowels without the benefit of a flushable toilet. Now that's something to raise a stink over.
An estimated 2.6 billion people have no access to a…
mementomori | October 13, 2007Here's some food for thought the next time you sit down to shovel in a wheelbarrow or two from the breakfast buffet:
"Obese People Much More Likely To Develop Esophageal Cancer"
I've seen enough esophageal cancer in my career to have developed a profound loathing of this ugly malignancy. Its bite is as deadly as a coral snake's, and the treatments developed to eradicate the disease are, to put it mildly, challenging to take. The five year survival rate for esophageal cancer has risen from 4% in the 1960s to 17% in the modern era.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is what my guru calls progress,…
mementomori | October 7, 2007The story of thalidomide, the notorious teratogenic drug developed in Germany and sold around the world from 1957 to 1961 as a treatment for morning sickness, continues to unfold. By now most are familiar with thalidomide's history, how it caused phocomelia and other severe birth defects in over 10,000 babies, how it was never approved in the United States thanks to the insight and viligance of an FDA employee named Frances Kelsey, M.D., Ph.D., and how it has been approved now to treat certain types of cancer. Will its legacy be one of more than just shame?
Elderly patients with an…
mementomori | October 3, 2007Ridentem dicere verum quid vetat?
-Horace
Here's some hilarious "news" from the FDA, just hot off the press:
Taxotere Gets FDA Approval For Advanced Head And Neck Cancer Before Chemoradiotherapy And Surgery
Heh heh...
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Taxotere Injection Concentrate combined with cisplatin and 5-fluorouracil for induction therapy of locally advanced squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck before chemoradiotherapy and surgery.
Ha ha ha ha ha!
Clinical investigator, Marshall Posner, MD, Medical Director of the Head and Neck Oncology Program at Dana-…
mementomori | October 1, 2007The next time you're tempted to act like a irresponsible jerk, take a deep breath and ask yourself this:
"Would I find it refreshing to be poseyed in a chair and crapping my pants during the halftime show of Super Bowl LXII?"
"Conscientious people are less prone to Alzheimer's"
According to the World Health Organization, about 18 million people worldwide have Alzheimer's disease, a brain-wasting condition marked by memory loss and confusion that becomes so severe patients lose the ability to care for themselves.
If you are not familiar with the devastating consequences of Alzheimer's you must…
mementomori | September 27, 2007New evidence presented today by U.S. researchers suggests that women who drink at least three alcoholic drinks per day have a 30 per cent increase in the risk of developing breast cancer. Why is this important? Could it be because we don't want more women to acquire this disease? ¹ Could it be because there are individuals in this country ² who are keenly interested in getting as many adults as possible into the habit of drinking those same alcoholic beverages now linked to an increase in the incidence of breast cancer? Well, could it? ³
"Studies have consistently linked drinking alcohol…
mementomori | September 23, 2007More evidence has just been published showing how reducing the caloric intake of cells influences their survival. Anyone want to take a guess as to what happens when a living organism (eukaryotes only, please) is subjected to noshing only on insultingly small morsels of food? Such asceticism of course is an outrage to those of us who follow the modern method of nutritional ingestion.
Again, the question: What happens when eukaryotic cells are subjected to nutrient restriction?
A. Cell survival is promoted by a reduction in apoptosis.
B. Cell survival is impaired by the genotoxic effects…
mementomori | September 17, 2007My fellow SciBling Orac has commented once again on the case of Starchild Abraham Cherrix, the 17 year old man with relapsed Hodgkin lymphoma who rejected potentially curative therapy (called "stem cell transplantation") in favor of alternative/unproven therapy and localized radiation therapy. According to interviews Mr. Cherrix and his radiation oncologist have given to the AP (why a patient would let his oncologist continue to spill such intimate details of a controversial treatment to the mainstream media is beyond me - doesn't anyone value privacy anymore?), his latest x-rays show that…
mementomori | September 9, 2007You can't leave, 'cause your heart is there
But you can't stay, 'cause you been somewhere else!
You can't cry, 'cause you'll look broke down
But you're cryin' anyway 'cause you're all broke down!
-Sly & the Family Stone
(From the Department of Common Sense:)
"Testing patients' families could prevent 850 heart attacks a year"
A new Scottish study concludes that the "close relatives" of a heart attack patient are at increased risk of also suffering a coronary event and might avoid this fate by reducing their risk factors, excluding the factor entitled "positive family history of heart…
mementomori | August 26, 2007200 scientists attended an international conference in Chicago this last week in order to sniff out the latest research on a ubiquitous health disorder.
"We want to advance the science in this field," said Christine Wu, a researcher at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who helped organize the conference.
[The disorder] is neglected because it is not a disease that will kill people," she said in an interview. "But it's a huge problem. Everybody suffers from [the disorder] at one point in their lifetime."
The treatments for this malady range from over-the-counter medicines to an overhaul…
mementomori | August 19, 2007"Better to hunt in fields for health unbought than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught. The wise for cure on exercise depend."
-John Dryden
I have never been on a deer hunt but I care for a lot of patients who are avid hunters. Missouri, as you may or may not know, is blessed with a plentiful deer population, and my folks take advantage of this every fall. This may be just a weird coincidence, but I often wonder how some of my patients resurrect the stamina needed to stalk, shoot and field dress a buck while living with cancer. Of course they have help from their fellow hunters, but just…
mementomori | August 13, 2007"West Nile Virus Season Starts In New York City"
This message is published not just as a service to the fine residents of New York, not just because your narrator made it out of LaGuardia today without making any involuntary blood donations to Culex pipiens, not just as a reminder to all the ScienceBloggers headed there this weekend to keep a sharp ear out for calls of "Bring out your dead!" while strolling around the sidewalks of New York.
This message is a thank you to the Agricultural Research Service of the USDA, which developed DEET as an insect repellent after World War II. There are…
mementomori | July 31, 2007On any given day millions of Americans inch forward in a brutally tedious queue, staring at the big board over a Starbucks counter with the same keen look seen in a church pew around thirty minutes into the sermon. Typically they make only one major decision during this visit, viz. whether to order a caffeinated or decaffeinated drink. If they only knew that two other crucial decisions lie before them, two that could affect their health for years to come. They are:
1. Should I leave my car in the parking lot and run home?
2. Should I renew my membership in the nudist beach club?…
mementomori | July 27, 2007The American Cancer Society has released its summary of a telephone survey of 1000 Americans in which they were asked whether twelve statements about cancer were true or false; the paper will be published in the September 1st edition of Cancer. The top five responses given as "true" are listed below; the percentage of adults who thought that the statement was true is in parentheses:
1. The risk of dying from cancer in the United States is increasing. (68)
2. Living in a polluted city is a greater risk for lung cancer than smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. (40)
3. Some injuries can cause…
mementomori | July 24, 2007A new study from a team of Stanford University School of Medicine researchers led by David Spiegel, MD, shows that participating in support groups doesn't extend the lives of women with metastatic breast cancer. The results differ from oft-cited previous findings by Spiegel that showed group psychotherapy extended survival time.
This study contradicts an earlier experiment done by Dr. Spiegel in 1989 which did reveal that the survival of similar patients was extended by joining a support group. His comments regarding the disappointing lack of a time benefit from state-of-the-art group…
mementomori | July 17, 2007Roll over, Grandma, and tell Grandpappy the news - it's time for him to get off his duff and hit the weights:
A scientific statement released Monday by the American Heart Association indicates that weight lifting, also known as resistance training, can provide multiple benefits for patients with heart disease and can be safely performed if certain guidelines are followed.
What do we recall about this sport of Hercules? Lifting weights is arduous, time-consuming and costly. It cannot be done without proper instruction first. It may even have a certain aura around it that some folks find…
mementomori | July 10, 2007"Boob job with your hot dog, ma'am?"
"Patient's Own Body Fat Used in Breast Remodeling"
These two headlines have something in common. Did you decipher what it is?
That's right - they both refer to the same news release about an advance in reconstructive surgery for breast cancer patients, and I might add they prove the theorem that many headline composers are nothing more than unemployed comedy writers. Let's parse this news by first reading the copy below each headline. Here is story number one:
A scientific journal says that women could be having breast-enhancement procedures during…
mementomori | July 9, 2007reputation (noun)
1. the estimation in which a person or thing is held, esp. by the community or the public generally; repute: a man of good reputation.
2. favorable repute; good name: to ruin one's reputation by misconduct.
3. a favorable and publicly recognized name or standing for merit, achievement, reliability, etc.: to build up a reputation.
Since I work in a field where customers have no qualms about firing their doctor for any number of deficiencies or transgressions I tend to put a lot of effort into doing a respectable job in order to build a favorable reputation. I believe that…
mementomori | July 2, 2007First it was cancer, then AIDS, now with the release of a new study showing once again the astonishing prevalence of a serious disease that gets meager attention in this country, one is forced to ask:
Is alcoholism the next health problem to be undertreated due to shame, guilt, blame and ignorance?
More than 30 percent of American adults have abused alcohol or suffered from alcoholism at some point in their lives, and few have received treatment, according to a new government study.
Some of the facts in this report from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism are worth listing…