Commentary
mementomori | March 28, 2007In accordance with the shoddy standards of medical communication upheld in this country, here is a clarification on White House Press Secretary Tony Snow's condition. Yesterday it was implied that he had a liver metastasis removed. I assumed this required a hepatic lobe resection, which as fellow ScienceBlogger Orac has remarked, is a major operation. It turns out that the offending lesion was on the surface of the liver, not within.
The recurrence of cancer found in White House spokesman Tony Snow was attached to his liver, not in the organ, his deputy said Wednesday. On Tuesday, Dana…
mementomori | March 27, 2007I just got back from a relaxing holiday and heard the shocking news that another political figure has suffered a relapse of cancer. White House Press Secretary Tony Snow apparently is recovering from an hepatic resection where a small ("tip of the finger-sized", if one believes these idiotic news reporters and their unscientific description of medical data) metastasis was removed. I read one story where a commenter remarked that the average survival of metastatic colon cancer was only six months. For once, somebody got their facts correct - the problem is that this terrifyingly short "…
mementomori | March 26, 2007Tomorrow is a travel day for me, so I guess I had better take every precaution that I don't succumb to a deep vein thrombosis stimulated by air travel. Maybe this will help:
Chocoholics were given further reason to rejoice on Saturday when a small clinical study showed that dark chocolate improves the function of blood vessels.
Although this small study showed the necessary salutary effect of cocoa on arterial blood vessels, unfortunately the subjects were given cocoa without sugar. Egad! Are they prepared to deal with the outrage we members of Chocolate Forever are about to unleash on the…
mementomori | March 22, 2007I am up late tonight (several hours ahead of U.S. time), just heard the news that Elizabeth Edwards has been diagnosed with a recurrence of her breast cancer and wanted to let ScienceBlogs readers know what information we medical oncologists look for in this situation. Reading the news reports about her relapse is an exercise in futility; even if her doctors provided all of the details of her tumor most (if not all) reporters would be unable to translate it into anything comprehensible.
This is one of my gripes about medical news reporting - no reporters can understand what the data actually…
mementomori | March 19, 2007I am leaving on a jet plane tomorrow and I do know when I'll be back again - March 27th to be exact.
Oh, the agony of having to go on Spring Break (with the family, of course). Whatever will I do to entertain myself?
I have scheduled some surprise posts to fill the vacant hours while I'm gone. I might even contribute something in my free time if my hotel has internet access, which I have been assured it does.
Until we meet again, I leave you with the latest headlines:
Reliance on ready meals puts men at risk from too much salt
35,000 Britons die a year from eating too much salt? Holy…
mementomori | March 12, 2007"Chemical reactions in the brain force teenagers' mood swings"
Oh, no...this is the worst possible news I could receive on a sunny Monday afternoon. What's it all about?
Hormones have long been blamed for mood swings in teenagers, even though the specific scientific causes have never been identified, making it hard to understand and treat adolescent angst. Now scientists have discovered that a hormone normally released in response to stress, a steroid called THP, actually reverses its effect at puberty, when it increases anxiety. In adults, the hormone THP, tetrahydropregnanalone, normally…
mementomori | March 10, 2007Does This Explain the Disaster That Was my High School Prom?
Bad-tempered women 'can blame it on genes'
Ever wonder why some women seem to be more ill-tempered than others? University of Pittsburgh researchers have found that behaviors such as anger, hostility and aggression may be genetic, rooted in variations in a serotonin receptor gene. Indrani Halder, Ph.D., of the Cardiovascular Behavioral Medicine Program at the University of Pittsburgh, will present the findings today at the American Psychosomatic Society's Annual Meeting, held in Budapest, Hungary.
I'm also skeptical that one gene…
mementomori | March 5, 2007Since 1984 the U. S. Preventative Services Task Force, a panel of 16 academic medical experts, has issued advice regarding preventative treatments. It regards itself as (if I may quote from their own humble self-description) "the leading independent panel of private-sector experts in prevention and primary care. The USPSTF conducts rigorous, impartial assessments of the scientific evidence for the effectiveness of a broad range of clinical preventive services, including screening, counseling, and preventive medications. Its recommendations are considered the 'gold standard' for clinical…
mementomori | March 2, 2007Cassio. ...O strange! Every inordinate cup is unblessed and the ingredient is a devil.
Iago. Come, come; good wine is a good familiar creature if it be well used; exclaim no more against it.
-Othello, Act II, Scene iii
It's a tough job but somebody's got to do it, if for no other reason than to set an example for the vacillating chicken-hearted men of the world. I have already taken the pledge. Have you?
"Wine is key to longer life, says new study"
At the American Heart Association Conference on Cardiovascular Disease, Epidemiology and Prevention this week a study was presented…
mementomori | February 28, 2007Flash! World-Wide Death-Prevention Treatment Found to be Bogus!
Adding to a growing scientific consensus, a large study released Tuesday concluded that vitamin E and other antioxidant supplements provide no health benefits and may even produce a small increase in the risk of death.
"A small increase in the risk of death" - what, greater than 100%? Could it be that some Earthlings actually thought they could gain immortality by ingesting the proper combination of esoteric elixirs from the depths of Gaia?
Supplements "have great biological plausibility, and we all wish that they would work,"…
mementomori | February 26, 2007"Honey, what's for dinner?"
"You know, I just ran out of time today and didn't get a chance to cook anything. I could make you a salad, or there might be some of that leftover soup from Sunday..."
"Nah...let's go out for a quick bite. How 'bout I meet you at [name deleted on advice from T. C. O. Enterprises' astute legal department]."
"No, not there..let's go to [vide supra]. I want to try their new Ultra-Cheesy Bacon and Sour Cream Stuffed Pizza Burrito."
"That sounds delicious, but what about your New Year's resolution?"
"I've been good all week, plus I've worked late every night. Don't…
neurontic | February 25, 2007I've been holding off on commenting about the anti-religion campaign being spearheaded by Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett for a number of reasons. But I find myself growing increasingly frustrated with it and I finally feel compelled to put in my two cents.
Initially I hesitated to speak out because I understand the impulse behind the Dawkins/Dennett campaign and I have some sympathy for their plight. There are, of course, a number of factors fueling their crusade. First and foremost, there is fear. For most of the twentieth century, secular humanism reigned supreme. And those of us who…
mementomori | February 15, 2007Watercress Diet 'Can Cut The Risk Of Cancer'
Watercress (Nasturtium officinale) is a semi-aquatic perennial herb grown for thousands of years not only as a foodstuff but also for its medicinal properties. In Victorian times it was used by the working class as a bread substitute (hey, wait a minute - I work, so I must be a member, compared with all the foyl olreitniks). Perhaps the gentle reader recalls the effervescent watercress sandwich Mother used to make for breakfast, hmm?
Well, guess what - as the title above states, new research suggests that the ancients were right to cram the leafy…
mementomori | February 13, 2007After years of hoping and praying, my fondest wish has finally come true. I can hardly contain myself:
New research on napping provides the perfect excuse for office slackers, finding that a little midday snooze seems to reduce risks for fatal heart problems, especially among men.
This is like telling circus clowns to ride teensy unicycles, or Donald Trump to try out a combover, or delusional teenagers to try out for American Idol, or kettles to remind the pot what color it happens to be, or Lenin to open a couple of summer camps for dissidents, or peanut butter to run smack dab into a…
mementomori | February 5, 2007Ever wonder what happens when you live in a parsimonious country that isn't willing to spend any money on new treatments against cancer?
"Cancer patients having to dig deep for new drugs"
TORONTO -- Whether patients survive cancer increasingly depends on where they live and how much of their own money they can afford to spend on the latest drugs, an advocacy group reported Monday. "Essentially, we will continue to ration life-saving cancer treatment, and some Canadians will live and some will die simply because of where they live," said the Cancer Advocacy Coalition of Canada report.
Ever…
mementomori | January 23, 2007As a continuing public service to ScienceBlogs readers we present another edition of "News Youse Can Snooze By":
1. Eating 30 grams of cereal fiber a day cuts the risk of developing breast cancer in half for women up to age 50.
A study of 35,000 women over seven years found those with the highest fibre intake of 30 grams a day had a 50 per cent lower incidence of breast cancer than those eating 20 grams a day. But the effect was only seen in pre-menopausal women up to the age of about 50. In post-menopausal women, a high-fibre diet offered no protection. Professor Janet Cade of the…
mementomori | January 18, 2007In a small study of female college students, researchers found that a caffeine supplement seemed to lessen the muscle pain that crops up a day after a challenging workout.
Just when we got our membership card into the haughty I-Eshew-Coffee club, they publish this little study. We confess we're having trouble trying to figure out this caffeine thing. Every month we hear of some new revelation as to its mythical powers over Homo sapiens. Is caffeine good for you or is it so dangerous to users that they might as well fry their arteries in coconut oil? We certainly know about the call-to-…
mementomori | January 17, 2007"Bush Hails Drop in U.S. Cancer Deaths"
President Bush on Wednesday hailed the downward trend in cancer deaths in the United States, a signal that medicine is making strides in the battling a disease that kills nearly 1,500 Americans a day. "This is the second consecutive year there was a drop in the number of cancer deaths in the United States," Bush said at the National Institutes of Health Laboratories. "And the drop this year was the steepest ever recorded."
This bit of encouraging news really requires little explanation on my part. If you still don't understand how to reduce your risk…
mementomori | January 9, 2007"One should pour tea into the cup first. This is one of the most controversial points of all; indeed in every family in Britain there are probably two schools of thought on the subject. The milk-first school can bring forward some fairly strong arguments, but I maintain that my own argument is unanswerable. This is that, by putting the tea in first and stirring as one pours, one can exactly regulate the amount of milk whereas one is liable to put in too much milk if one does it the other way round."
-George Orwell
Thank you, George, but as my old professor used to say, "You're just…
neurontic | January 5, 2007(Information and statistics purloined from The Edge's 2007 World Question )
Violence has declined precipitously over the course of recent human history, says Chris Anderson, curator of the TED Conference. According to the 2005 Human Security Report "the number of armed conflicts in the world [has] fallen by 40% in little over a decade," as have the number of deaths per conflict. Need more convincing? Consider this: Roughly 30 percent of the male population in hunter-gatherer societies died violent deaths. "Percentage of males who died in violence in the 20th century complete with two world…